A Door Into Ocean

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. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Sharers, a race of all women, living on the planet Shora, who reproduce by parthogenesis without males, are suddenly faced with the technological and cultural invasion of men from space. Winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

This volume presents the first collection of essays dedicated to the science fiction of microbiologist Joan Slonczewski. Posthuman Biopolitics consolidates the scholarly literature on Slonczewski’s fiction and demonstrates fruitful lines of engagement for the critical, cultural, and theoretical treatment of her characters, plots, and storyworlds. Her novels treat feminism in relation to scientific practice, resistance to domination, pacifism versus militarism, the extension of human rights to nonhuman and posthuman actors, biopolitics and posthuman ethics, and symbiosis and communication across planetary scales. Posthuman Biopolitics explores the breadth and depth of Joan Slonczewski’s vision, uncovering the reflective ethical practice that informs her science fiction.

This thesis seeks to express the architectural environment behind Joan Slonczewski's 1986 science-fiction novel, A Door into Ocean. The novel describes a water-covered planet called Shora; its inhabitants, Sharers; and their alternative way of life on living rafts. Building on Slonczewski's writing, I present a series of digital paintings and a narrative to express what living on Shora's rafts might feel like for its residents. Using case studies of existing projects and research into the world of living architecture and biodesign, I situate this project within contemporary architecture, attempting to envision how it might feel to occupy a world of living things. Life is characterized by the ability to evolve, metabolize, and reproduce. Throughout history, human attempts to provide a safe living environment have led us to a separation between the built environment and nature. With today's environmental concerns, it is imperative for us to consider visionary approaches to imagine a living, instead of a non-living, architecture. Inspiration from and use of the living world in design is encompassed within a large body of work by designers and researchers. Biomimicry (mimicking features or behaviours of living things), biodesign (synthesizing new hybrid typologies by using living organisms as the main elements of the built environment), living and soft-living architecture (using living organisms or lively matters in design), and ecological design (minimizing design's environmentally destructive impacts through integration with living processes) overlap and inform the efforts of many working in the field. These attempts at living architecture, however, remain mostly at a small scale in laboratories or at the scale of installations or concept designs. As the field grows, it is important to envision how the techniques being developed in smaller scales can affect a new way of life in the future. I am particularly interested in representing how architecture might go beyond biomimicry and use living organisms as the main elements of the built environment as described in Shora. A Door into Ocean is a compelling critique of human life, achieved through "rejecting the terrestrial" and refusing totalitarianism and dictatorship, all seen in Sharers' way of life harmonized with their aquatic environment. Acting as a robust ecosystem for many different marine species without threatening their lives, Shora might represent the future biodesigners dream about. The Sharers use genetic engineering to enable the coexistence of different living materials and their hastened evolution as needed. They use scaffolding and weaving techniques to create semi-permanent structures covered with living organisms. Finally, they modify their own bodies to further adapt to their environment. Through all these techniques, the world in A Door into Ocean combines biodesign and living architecture to arrive at a balanced ecological approach to life with the natural world. Shora is a work of science fiction, set on a fictional planet. Arriving at Shora's architecture today requiring systematic changes not just to our architectural systems, but also to sociopolitical issues. Shora can, however, act as a window to a possible alternative vision. In this way, my role as the architect is to express this world through drawings and narratives. Through this exercise of expressing the imagined, we might get closer to answering larger questions about living architecture: What is the quality of an architecture merged with nature? What are the characteristics of this kind of architecture? How does it feel to live in such a world?.

Joan Slonczewski, author of Daughter of Elysium, and A Door into Ocean, is one of the field's leading writers of biological SF. Her new novel, The Children Star, is an ambitious adventure set on the planet Prokaryon -- a world that is only habitable to humans who have been genetically altered. But disaster is close at hand when a greedy corporation attempts to alter the planet's ecosystem in an attempt to make it habitable for all humans. Spectacular and plausible world-building fun from an SF writer to watch.

This guide identifies both in-print and out-of-print works of fiction featuring continuing themes, plots or characters in which there is a sense of development and passage of time. Entries are arranged alphabetically by author and are accompanied by bibliographic information.

This annual selection guide covers new novels in the mystery fiction, science fiction, fantasy, horror, western fiction and romance genres. It is intended to help readers to choose titles of interest published during 1995. By identifying similarities in various books, it seeks to help readers to independently choose titles of interest published during 1995. Entries are arranged by author within six genre sections, and provide: publisher and publication date; series name and number; description of characters; time/geographical setting; review citation; genre and setting notations; and related books.

This collection of original essays represents the first book-length consideration of May Sarton's contributions to American literature and culture. In the course of her long and prolific career, Sarton has published nearly fifty books, yet has largely been ignored by book reviewers and others in the critical establishment. Although she is primarily known as a novelist and poet, it is probably her journals (including At Seventy, House by the Sea, Journal of a Solitude, Recovering) that have received the most praise and are responsible for Sarton's position as an increasingly important cultural figure, especially among women readers of the last two decades. As Carolyn Heilbrun observed in her book Writing a Woman's Life, May Sarton's fame at age seventy-five was greater than it had ever been. The twelve essays in That Great Sanity work together to provide theoretical and critical contexts that make possible a more judicious assessment of Sarton's achievement than has been available previously. Maureen McCarthy's introduction traces the history of Sarton criticism over the past fifty years, including the recent surge of interest in her work. Also included in the volume is a selection of letters representing the remarkable correspondence between the young May Sarton and the woman she considered her mentor, poet Louise Bogan. Nancy Weyant's bibliography of Sarton criticism brings previous bibliographies up to date. The remaining essays provide a variety of perspectives, including feminist, literary/historical, reader-response, lesbian, and archetypal, that reveal Sarton's very significant contributions to contemporary literature and culture.

Includes, beginning Sept. 15, 1954 (and on the 15th of each month, Sept.-May) a special section: School library journal, ISSN 0000-0035, (called Junior libraries, 1954-May 1961). Also issued separately.