Big Planet meets Waterworld

[james_davis_nicoll]

http://www.rense.com/general49/dsndt.htm

This has to make it into an SF novel one of these days.

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

That'll be "Waterworld" by Lee Goodloe & Jerry Oltion, which was the cover story of the March 1994 Analog.

("Lee Goodloe" is a nom de plume of Stephen L. Gillett)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Really? Damnation, now I have to go hunt down a backissue of Analog.

Was it any good?

1994? Doesn't that predate the discovery of "hot jupiters"?

[(Anonymous)]

If memory serves, the plot revolved on how to rescue the aluminum lander slowly turning to slush because of the waterworld's pH. And there were sharks, too.

I do remember thinking, I wish Hal Clement had written this instead. (I enjoyed Noise, but in the way a music aficionado might enjoy an uncompromising avant-garde classical composition.)

Carlos

[del-c.livejournal.com]

You can also read a bit about water worlds in Gillett's World-Building, if you have a copy.

Was it any good?

<shrug> it's been over a decade. I remember I quite liked it.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That's just made it into The Jennifer Morgue as back story.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Didn't Alan Dean Foster's _Cachalot_ have a similar idea?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

That had an Earth mass world with a world-ocean. This would be a bit more massive and with an ocean potentially hundreds of times larger in terms of volume (In terms of biomass, who knows?).

I'm not really sure how carbon cycles work on ocean worlds....

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

first waterworld book I read was Heinlein's, hmm, _Time for the Stars_? or something like that. I think I read it about 25 years or more ago - It had spacemen being menaced by sea monsters on the cover...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

That world had land as well. Not that it did the explorers much good, since the entire planet seemed to be under the control of biologically oriented civilization (or at least an organizing principle). Star-farers: the other white meat.