2016 read #46: The Wind Whales of Ishmael by Philip José Farmer.

The Wind Whales of Ishmael by Philip José Farmer
130 pages
Published 1971
Read from May 26 to May 27
Rating: ★½ out of 5

It takes a certain amount of hubris to write a "science fiction sequel" to Moby-Dick. This isn't the same thing as taking, say, The Tempest and reworking its elements into a fun but progressively less rewarding fantasy trilogy (1, 2, 3). That, at least, can be interpreted as a loving tribute to a classic of world literature, building somewhat organically from the storyline and characters established in the original. The only redeeming quality of The Wind Whales of Ishmael, by contrast, is its title. The title is, so far as I can tell, the only part of this book that draws anything akin to inspiration from Herman Melville's masterwork. Farmer's prose is lifeless and mechanical, nowhere approaching the off-kilter fluency and manic energy of Ishmael's narration. The character of Ishmael himself bears no likeness to Melville's narrator; he is a manly blank-slate figure straight out of any number of Burroughsian pulp adventures, bringing red-blooded American pluck and "survival instinct" to a fatalistic native tribe and teaching their virgin priestess to love -- all while coolly musing on the ecology of this strange new world, his thoughts referencing Darwinian evolution and plate tectonics despite being flung straight out of the year 1842. I mean, come on now.

Disregarding its tenuous-at-best lineage, Wind Whales is nothing more nor less than a generic Dying Earth fantasy, a subgenre popular in the late '60s and early '70s that served to give a science-fictiony sheen to hoary old heroic fantasy story conventions (the same genre-bending role Old Mars tales occupied in the decades before Mariner probes). The climax here cribs even more from heroic fantasy than most, dragging us through the world's most tedious dungeon raid, creature battles more goofy than exciting, and a running skirmish with temple priests. Farmer's clunking prose sucks out any element of pulpy adventure inherent to hunting sky-whales from airships, leaving the White Savior and "men should take the lead while women stay behind as precious breeding stock" narratives naked for all to see, without even the distraction of a fun story to blur them. And daring to link Whales directly to one of my favorite novels of all time invites no end of expectations and comparisons, all of which leave Farmer at a disadvantage.

It's possible this would have been a marginally more enjoyable book had it not been styled as a sequel to Moby-Dick -- there is certainly no thematic or character-driven necessity for this story to claim that status, nor is there even a remote equivalence in quality, so the connection serves only to make Whales look worse. The only reason to construe Whales as a "science fiction sequel," so far as I can tell, is to intrigue gullible readers into buying the damn thing. The trick sure worked on me.