Involution Ocean

The simplest way to describe Involution Ocean is Moby Dick meets Dune. A sybaritic drug user signs up with a whaling ship that sails on an ocean of dust to obtain a sure supply of the exotic drug Flare. No book could match up to the greatness of those two, but Involution Ocean moves quickly, and sketches out a fascinating and mysterious world in the Great Dust Sea.

Reread 2021: Involution Ocean wears its homages on its sleeve, so much so that I wonder how much is below the surface. The style is great. While this is Sterling’s first novel, and he hews closely to Melville’s nautical anachronism, the bones of the patented cyberpunk eyeball kick style are still there. The protagonist John Newhouse’s addiction and masochistic love for the bat-wing alien lookout Dalusa give the book an emotional urgency that leaps over otherwise simple characterization. And the alien ecology of the dust sea, with its whales and sharks and cannibal anemones delights in its opacity weirdness. The conclusion, a heretical voyage in a submarine made from a whale carcass and John’s revelation of what lies under the sea, feels unearned and disconnected from the rest of the novel, but the journey is short, swift, and very interesting.