BOOKS: Dolphin Island

Dolphins Really Are Super Smart

Dolphin Island, Arthur C. Clarke

    This was a book I was weary of reading, or even purchasing for that matter. Firstly, I LOVE Arthur C. Clarke. I've only read a handful of his books (half dozen, I think), but two, Rendezvous With Rama, and Childhood's End, were two of the best books I read in their respective years . His big claim to fame I would say is writing the book 2001: A Space Odyssey (he wrote the book as the movie was being made, which is interesting). That was a good book that I definitely need to re-read at some point. Anyway, the point is, he's known as a a heavy hitter in the sci-fi game. He's part of the "big three" of the sci-fi guys (the other two being Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov). Back to my introductory sentence, why was I weary of reading this? It's a short adventure book about...dolphins? That's the impression I got from reading the back. Doesn't sound too "sci-fi" to me, and frankly, I was thinking it was just a throwaway book amidst Clarke's fantastic bibliography. How wrong I was.
    I enjoyed this book immensely. Much more than I ever thought I might. Why did I enjoy it? Well, mostly for the reasons I said above. It's quick. It's interesting. It's not too-heavy in social commentary (I didn't think so anyway). It's fun. And this book, more so than maybe any book I've ever read, made me really wish I could visit the main location. It's a beautifully detailed island community. It made me want to swim in the ocean and explore coral reefs. I really don't like the water much, and I can't swim, so in general, I stay away from the ocean. The fact that this book made me want to immediately just drive to the beach, well, that says a whole lot.
 

    I'm very glad Clarke wrote this book. I know he is deeply invested in dolphins/the sea, and his knowledge shows. He expresses in the back of the book that some of his writing about dolphins here (mostly about their high intelligence) is fantasy. He says that while dolphins are very smart, they probably aren't as smart as he depicts them in the book. Despite that bit of truth-stretching, reading this book gave me a new appreciation of dolphins in general. It also does bring up some questions of morals, such as dolphins and their general freedom (it's said in the book that dolphins are free-er than humans, because they have the whole ocean, but later in the book humans start training the dolphins to find ship wrecks, coral fish for fishermen, etc., and it's brought into question if we are indeed lessening their freedom by doing this). It's interesting to think about freedom as a whole, and are you still free if you are essentially being controlled, even just slightly?
    One very interesting bit of the story that gets little time spent on it (which, in the end, is probably for the best) is during the middle, and at the very end, of the book, there is a small mention of an alien spacecraft that crashed eons ago. It is implied that there are dolphin storytellers that have heard the tale (or is it really truth?) from older storytellers, who in turn have heard it from even older storytellers, and so forth. I enjoyed chewing on this bit of randomness, and it almost seems, judging by the very end of the book, that Clarke could write a second dolphin book that centers more on the search for this spacecraft.
    This book didn't have the bloody fighting and moral/religious quandaries of Orphans Of The Sky, and it didn't have the bizarre alien presence and mystery of Solaris, but I think this book was my favorite of the three. It's short, and for someone with time, it could be read in one sitting. It's well-written, and concise, and, as I mentioned, man did it have some great descriptions of the reefs and diving.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun adventure book. Maybe you'll learn a thing or two about dolphins!