So Merwen placed a hand, then a foot upon the pier. And that answer would save her own people. Here in Chrysoport, a small, quiet place, she might find out. On planet Valedon, most people lived "ashore," upon dry land-if in fact Valans were people, Merwen reminded herself. Usha had been right to escape to the sea, though a strange sea it was with its floor jutting out hard as a whorlshell. Away from the space landing that had been an unintelligible place of screeching noises and choking smells. At Merwen's elbow, Usha wrinkled her nose as her long arms yanked tight the rope of the houseboat, which had born the two Sharers down along the shore, this endless edge of dry floor. If she were to flinch now, dear Usha would balk altogether and drag her home from this parched planet. She shook herself and straightened her back. Across the sky, where Merwen was born, none but the dead ever sank to touch the world's floor. To be sure, spring morning breathed peace through Chrysoport harbor, and the sea rippled without a crest. Science Fiction Book Club selection.MERWEN REACHED OVER the boat rail, but her hand froze above the weathered pier. Fortunately, this schematic political framework is enlivened by the full-blooded characters who negotiate between the two cultures. In the inevitable confrontation, Shora uses Gandhian techniques of passive resistance to thwart Valedon's troops. It gets by without any government, shuns the mechanical and, knowing its limits, lives in harmony with nature. On the other is Valedon's watery moon Shora, an all-female society based on life sciences and the principle of sharing.
On one side is the planet Valedon, a patriarchal, capitalist, mechanistic and militaristic society. (Particularly ingenious are the clickfliesinsects that collectively serve as both a living computer and a communications network.) But the book has problems with its rigid ideological structure. In her ambitious second SF novel (after Still Forms on Foxfield biology professor Slonczewski has created an intriguing ocean world with its own culture and biological adaptions.
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