preload
Feb 15

We did it on porpoise! Bleep bloop.Click for larger image

FluffyGhostKitten Comments: Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Or in this case, out of the spaceship crash, into the cetacean foursome.

Published 1981

Actually, that cover IS a classical work of art!I would touch it without protective gloves.I've seen worse. Far, far, worse.Interesting, but I would still read it in public.Middlng: Neither awful nor awfully goodWould not like to be seen reading that!Awful... just awful...That belongs in a gold-lame picture frame!Gah... my eyes are burning! Feels so good!Good Show Sir! (Average: 6.86 out of 10)
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15 Responses to “Dolphin Island”

  1. fred Says:

    That’s what you get for making your spaceship out of wood. You wind up In danger of drowning while being mocked for your faulty engineering by passing porpoise know-it-alls.

  2. THX 1139 Says:

    “You guys are herbivores, right? Uh, no?”

  3. Cornelius Says:

    While his friends distracted the boy, Flipper sneaked up behind him and stole his trousers.

  4. Francis Boyle Says:

    Fred, I don’t think it’s the spaceship that’s got wood.

  5. Griz Says:

    We’d like a word about this toxic blue shit you just dumped on our home.

  6. TatWood Says:

    What good’s your opposable thumb NOW, perm-boy?

  7. Ryan Says:

    I am no expert on dolphins, but the artist does seem to have given each of them a definite facial expression of mockery.

  8. Bibliomancer Says:

    I was under the impression you dolphins had an island.

  9. Bruce A Munro Says:

    Dolphin _rape_ island.

    “You look like a swinger: care for a foursome?”

    Maybe it’s a coloring error, but one of those dolphins appears to be radioactive, or at least phosphorescent.

  10. GSS ex-noob Says:

    This pic is of a faded cover. Imagine it in full color. It’d rate at least a point higher on our scientific scoring scale. Guess how I know.

    The “A” in “Island” has no business being like that. The “L” trying to cover it up doesn’t help. I somehow feel the font contributed to the crash.

    Dolphin conversation is laughter and discussing if they’re going to rape him before eating him, judging by their expressions.

    @B’man: only if they’re blue.

    Examining our actual copy, hoo-boy. It’s worse than you suspect. The title is BRIGHT. The kid’s shirt is RED. OTOH, the ocean’s all the same colors of blue, so no bad substances. The dolphins look a LOT meaner.

    The orphan is 16, stows away on a hovercraft cargo ship that crashes, whereupon he floats around on a crate till the dolphins push him to the titular island near the Great Barrier Reef, where scientists talk to the dolphins (awww) and use electric shock conditioning to train orcas not to eat dolphins (wut?). And ACC goes on for pages reproducing his scuba explorations of the reef.

    Why a bunch of cutting-edge Aussie scientists allow a random runaway foreign teenager to help with their big project is… because it’s a YA book?

    (Originally published in 1963)

  11. B. Chiclitz Says:

    “I’m telling’ ya, Earl, they taste just like chicken.”

  12. Bruce Munro Says:

    @B. Chiclitz: chicken of the sea?

  13. Hammy Says:

    @BruceM (prev.):

    Dolphins don’t want perm-boys with good taste, they want perm-boys that taste good!

  14. Alessandra Kelley Says:

    Wow! I wasn’t aware Janet Aulisio did mass market paperback cover art. I mostly know her through roleplaying game art and sf magazine illustration. She had a pen and ink stippling technique like no one else’s.

  15. GSS ex-noob Says:

    This is on sale at Amazon through 11:59 PM Eastern Monday, if you want to read it without the embarrassing cover.

    Other stuff by ACC, Poul Anderson, Brunner, etc.

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