Customer Reviews

The Godwhale

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I read this book when it was new and reread it again several years latter. Though about twenty years has passed it still stands in my memory for it's vision and feeling. The ideas and predictions for the future were frightening and thought provoking. It had the same kind of effect the hobbit and Stranger in a strange land had on me. It brought me to look at things from a different perspective and "changed me". What more can a novel do? I've spent the last couple of decades asking for more stuff from this writer when I go in the bookstore. Alas, I've found no more. Can anyone tell me why?

Half Past Human and The Godwhale are the sum total of Thomas J. Bassler's SF output, but even after 20 years, they remain two brilliant points of light, pointing to what might have otherwise been a long and brilliant career. I would love to see him come back and take up fiction again- these books rival Cordwainer Smith and Jack Vance in the richness of the world they create. If you read this book years ago, pick it up and read it again. It is nothing sort of stellar.

In The Godwhale T.J Bass posits a future that is a realistic extension of present trends in population growth and technology. People have devolved or evolved--depending on your viewpoint--into three-toed "nebbishes" subsisting on protein "flavours". The great cities have become "hive" societies--impersonal microbe-heaps that have subjugated the earth and humanity for the greater good of the collective. As men/women relinquish their individuality/viability for the sake of the "hive"--a very few break free from the hive and meet the marine "protein rake" otherwise known as Rorqual Maru-- the Godwhale!

I've read this book several times and have always been struck by the originality and vividness of Bass' vision of our future as portrayed here. While many would dismiss a book of this sort as "wild-eyed" pulp science fiction, it is actually a brilliantly drawn narrative that merely extrapolates a future from current trends in population growth and social/biological engineeering. Clairvoyant and fun to read--T.J. Bass--who are you?

The Godwhale by T.J. Bass is a remarkable novel. It depicts the strugle of a people against the system and their strugle for survival in a very unhappy land. Bass has brought Science Fiction to a new level in human evolution and the strugle for what is just and right. This is one of the best Sci-Fi books of all time.

The Godwhale is, without question, one of the finest science fiction books I have ever read. Bass paints a vivid picture of a dismal Earth centuries in the future. It is hard sci-fi at its best and compares very favorably with futuristic works by better known authors such as Larry Niven and William Gibson. For anyone who loves science fiction, I strongly recommend it

Half Past Human was an unusual story sufficiently different from the standard pap that it was lucky to be published. The Godwhale represents an increase in literary sophistication on the part of the author in the sense that the story flow and characterization are more along standard lines, but for that reason it is also less interesting.

There I was, browsing idly in a charity bookstore, and came across The Godwhale by pure chance. The title piqued my interest, and I thought "For fifty cents, how wrong can I go?" so I bought it. I had recently finished Eternity Road and 2 Star Wars novels and was DESPERATE for some sci-fantasy with a decent narrative. In The Godwhale I wasn't disappointed.

In my opinion, there are 3 things that make the book work. Firstly, the major ideas driving the plot, while not totally original, have an original spin to them. Secondly the narrative style is economic; his use of understatement and events ocurring through implication left me feeling I was being treated with respect as a reader. So often, when writers spell out EVERYTHING, I feel patronised. With The Godwhale, this wasn't the case. And thirdly, as a yarn, the story is satisfying; many times for me, sci-fantasy consists of sterotypic characters going on long journeys for melodramatic reasons. Thankfully there are no long journeys, the events are credible within Bass's post-apocalyptic world, and the characters are plausible and lightly sketched rather than drawn in heavy outline. In summary, a jolly good read and one I'd be happy to come back to again.

Half Pas Human and The Godwhale are the sum total of Thomas J. Bassler's SF output, but even after 20 years, they remain two brilliant points of light, pointing to what might have otherwise been a long and brilliant career. I would love to see him come back and take up fiction again- these books rival Cordwainer Smith and Jack Vance in the richness of the world they create. If you read this book years ago, pick it up and read it again. It is nothing sort of stellar.

I wonder what the novels of the 00's will say about this generation of science fiction? It seems to me that science fiction often says a great deal about the collective fantasies and fears of the generation that spawned it-- I enjoyed reading _The Godwhale_ (which I read for the first time now), but found some of the more obvious political points about environmentalism, entertainment, and overpopulation to be a little bit grating.

_The Godwhale_ tells the story of a young man named Larry Dever who is put into Temporary Suspension when he's cut in half in a youthful prank. The idea is that he will be revived when science has caught up to the need of his physical problem. He's revived once, but isn't satisfied with the level of care he will receive, and when he's revived a second time he's revived into a hellish hive world where humans have overpopulated the globe at the expense of everything else and the population has devolved into helpless nebbishes of limited physical strength and form.

I was oddly reminded of Steven Spielberg's AI when I read the book-- perhaps because of the ultimate darkness of both stories combined with the length of time portrayed.