A Door Into Ocean

406 pages

English language

Published Jan. 24, 1987 by Avon.

ISBN:: 978-0-380-70150-6

(1 review)

Joan Slonczewski's A Door into Ocean is the novel upon which the author's reputation as an important SF writer principally rests.

A ground-breaking work both of feminist SF and of world-building hard SF, it concerns the Sharers of Shora, a nation of women on a distant moon in the far future who are pacifists, highly advanced in biological sciences, and who reproduce by parthenogenesis--there are no males--and tells of the conflicts that erupt when a neighboring civilization decides to develop their ocean world, and send in an army.

4 editions

Zivan reviewed A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski (Elysium Cycle, #1)

If you want to read a book from the 80s that isn't horribly outdated, your best bet is to seek a female author.

5 stars

If you want to read a book from the 80s that isn't horribly outdated, your best bet is to seek a female author.

A Door Into Ocean is about non violent resistance to an imperialist patriarchy. About the dangers of deadly technology to humanity and the environment. About a path to a society that will not destroy itself.

It pits a women lead planet that has learned to live in balance with nature and is governed through consensus against a men lead planet that is governed by a hierarchy and the threat of force.

The far future setting and restrictions on technology create a clean break from current trends and help prevent the novel from dating itself. Though the fear of nuclear war is a major aspect of this universe.

The complexity of the Sharer culture, it's language and philosophy and the powerful will of the women that make up …

If you want to read a book from the 80s that isn't horribly outdated, your best bet is to seek a female author.

A Door Into Ocean is about non violent resistance to an imperialist patriarchy. About the dangers of deadly technology to humanity and the environment. About a path to a society that will not destroy itself.

It pits a women lead planet that has learned to live in balance with nature and is governed through consensus against a men lead planet that is governed by a hierarchy and the threat of force.

The far future setting and restrictions on technology create a clean break from current trends and help prevent the novel from dating itself. Though the fear of nuclear war is a major aspect of this universe.

The complexity of the Sharer culture, it's language and philosophy and the powerful will of the women that make up it's collective are very compelling.

I appreciate that Slonczewski gives us two main points of view, that of a mature noble woman and of a young commoner man. This allows us to experience migration to Shora at two different levels, (and we don't have to spend all of our time with a stupid teenager).