Involution Ocean
Bruce Sterling
172 pages
published in 1977

This is Bruce Sterling's first novel, written over 25 years ago. It's always interesting to read the first works of writers more famous for later books, to see if the qualities they have now were always there, whether they came later and to see how their writing style evolved. Few writers spring fully grown from Zeus' brow most only hit their stride after they've written a couple of novels or a few dozen short stories. This goes for Sterling as well. There is little here that reminds me of the manic cyberpunk writer of the eighties, or the mature, literate Sterling of the nineties and naughties. Involution Ocean has promise, is certainly not a bad book but it doesn't come close to the masterpiece Harlan Ellison's foreword would make you believe.

the story is fairly simple and takes place on the almost uninhabitable planet Nullaqua, sometime in the far future. Life, both indigenous and human is concentrated in one big crater. This crater is amost entirely filled with an ocena of dust, here and there punctured with rocks. In this ocean live the dustwhales, which are hunted by the Nullaquans.

John Newhouse is not a Nullaquan, but an offworlder come there to get syncophine or Flare, a potent drug gotten some way or the other from the guts of dustwhales. He lives a happy live, until the drug is outlawed and the bred to be lawful Nullaquans won't sell him the drug anymore. Therefore he has to join a whaler ship on its roundtrip through the dust ocean and get his Flare himself...

The story is is episodic in nature, following the ship's journey. Newhouse gets his flare, is troubled by the strange captain of the ship, Desperandum and falls in love with its alien lookout Dalusa. Some of the mysteries of the ocean are first hinted at, then more fully shown, but never explained.

Good book, but not "an absolutely stunning tour de force".