Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Joan Slonczewski is a science fiction writer who has more than an armchair understanding of science, and it shows. When you have solid input from the real world, your new spins on old tropes can be surprising and fresh.

What follows isn't really a spoiler, but it is part of the story: When I first read DOOR INTO OCEAN in college, my classmates were saying "A whole planetful of purple lesbians? Really." But the purple color of the Shorans' skins derives from a microbe living in their bodies that stores and releases oxygen, providing them with built-in scuba tanks. When these microbes are fully charged with oxygen, they look purple. I want to say this has something to do with rhodopsin, but this is so beyond my own very armchair-science enthusiasm that I can't form the question for a search engine to answer. What's more, Dr. Slonczewski doesn't get overabsorbed in the biological speculations to the expense of the characters' cultures-- indeed, this is where she shines. Her characters' biology and the world upon which they live inform their ways of life, and things go horribly wrong when they conflict-- but she also allows that thoughtful examination can heal those wrongs as well.

DOOR is a classic feminist science fiction novel, and the starting point of a series of related novels that build cultures upon cultures in a way unique to science fiction. Read the whole Elysium Cycle, it just gets richer and deeper.