Genocide by Dolphin

The Dolphins of Altair

By Margaret St. Clair
p. 1967

I will admit that St. Clair’s The Dolphins of Altair is a fantasy novel I picked up mostly out of novelty—the idea that super intelligent dolphins would join up with some hippies and free themselves from the tyranny of humanity was just too good to pass up. Just under 200 pages, the book was a quick read and, just like other fantasy novels of the 1960s that I’ve encountered, far more of an interesting case study than it was a layered, poignant, or well-written story. I am not going to spoiler-tag this one, because honestly no person in their right mind would seek out this book after reading this review.

Altair jumps right into the action, joining together in the very first chapter the legendary intelligent dolphins, or sea people as they call themselves, with a trio of humans who happen upon their psychic call. It is narrated by Amtor, a dolphin who considers himself a historian of his people. The humans are Madelaine, a young woman who loses her memory when the dolphins call out to her and acts as their primary vehicle for translation, Sven, a young man who hears the call accidentally, and Dr. Lawrence, Madelaine’s psychologist, who follows the girl out of curiosity when she goes to answer the call of the sea. He has the hardest time fitting in to this covenant he wasn’t necessarily invited to join, but he sticks around anyway to help the dolphins with their ultimate plan.

And what is that plan, you might ask? Well, it’s simple, really. Phase One: the sea people must free all the dolphins from human-run research labs; Phase Two: make sure humans never bother them again. No problem, right? Should be a cinch.

For whatever reason, the dolphins decide this must be done immediately, and in lieu of peaceful protests or sending in the animal rights activists or something else sane, if a bit mundane, our righteous heroes decide to steal a device that causes an earthquake—yes, an earthquake—to free all the sea people at once.

And they do just that.

But wait (!) there’s more! Despite numerous setbacks, including being hunted by the irate government for their pretty severe crimes against humanity (the details of which are glossed over) and betrayed by an ally, the dolphins and their loyal humans go ahead with Phase Two, which involves making another device called the ahln, to plant in the sea that melts the polar fucking ice caps. But only a little! At least, that’s the plan. The brilliant logical reasoning behind this idea is that by melting the polar ice caps gradually (just a smidge!), humanity will be too busy dealing with the repercussions (a nice gloss-over of worldwide devastation and death by drowning) to worry about the dolphins anymore.

And they do that, too. Actually, they fuck it up like the indecisive morons they are and melt the ice caps all at once, thus kickstarting an apocalypse, and they barely even feel bad about it.

Here is my problem with this story: the trio’s plan isn’t just extreme, it’s fucking overkill. Literally. I was ready to chalk all this up to the inclinations of the author, Margaret St. Clair, who I assumed to be a ‘Save the whales!/Damn the man!’-style hippie of the highest order (I was close; she is, however, an established Wiccan). I figure, all right, this woman clearly loves dolphins, so she wrote a love letter to them in the form of an anarchist what-if novel. This would have been acceptable if her main character (and the one the dolphins trusted and revered the most), Madelaine, had any sort of conviction whatsoever, any sort of drive to make things happen.

But she doesn’t. She just fucking sits there feeling bad for everyone and hemming and hawing over making the tough decisions. After being passively injured, she actually becomes less active, instead laying about like the damsel in distress she clearly is, until she’s needed to help the dolphins contact their spiritual leader or whatever, using Udra, a process of meditation which involves—you guessed it—more lying around.

For a lead heroine being written by a proud female author, there is no excuse for the vacuous hole where Madelaine’s personality should be. Though she is a 20-something woman, the book only refers to her as a girl, subtly stripping her of maturity and responsibility. Worse than that, she is actually stripped of every vestige of her personality when she loses her memory and wanders off, and when she recalls a bit of her former life, she doesn’t care. She is an instrument of the sea people now, here to do their bidding because that’s the only important thing in life. St. Clair makes it clear that “Madelaine” does not matter, insofar as calling her by various other names interchangably—Sosa, Moonlight, Madelaine—what does it matter?

And the dolphins are on the same field as the girl. They call the humans and implore them to help initiate change, then decline taking violent action, pretending like they love the humans they feel wiser and better than. Their personalities are equally interchangeable and not one of them stands out from the next. We are supposed to root for Madelaine and the sea people, I guess, because the writing straight up tells us we’re supposed to root for them, but when it comes to making the hard decisions—killing millions of one race to save another—Madelaine and the dolphins alike seem awfully comfortable from up on their high horses.

Sven is a bit more active but disappears for a majority of the novel when he is abducted by the ‘government’ only to reappear in a weird subplot that bears no relevance to the rest of the story so I won’t mention it here. It’s Dr. Lawrence who really makes all the tough decisions. He argues that humans are brutal beings who kill each other so wantonly that they deserve punishment, formulates the earthquake plan, then reneges and tattles to the government, leading to Sven’s capture, Madelaine’s injury and the slaughter of many dolphins. Inexplicably he comes back, begs for forgiveness, and helps Madelaine build the ahln, which would kill even more people than the earthquake. Despite being directly contrary to the prior fears that led to his betrayal, Dr. Lawrence again argues that humans deserve to die and goes against Madelaine/Dolphin wishes by stealing the ahln and setting it on full power, thus being the direct cause of the apocalypse. Distraught, he throws himself off a bridge before he can see the repercussions of his actions.

Conveniently, the sea people and the main couple take no part in this action, so we aren’t burdened with having to wonder whether the heroes did the right thing. The third man played the part of scapegoat and he paid for it with his life. If he was wrong or right, it doesn’t matter. Somehow, Madelaine still gets credit for saving the dolphins, which is total bullshit. Dr. Lawrence was the one with the conviction needed to make shit happen and he was vilified for it. I’d care about him more if he weren’t such a woefully inconsistent character... but even that is something the author couldn’t commit to.

I don’t want to drag Margaret St. Clair through the mud here. I’m sure she was a nice person and this book is hypothetical at best, but I can’t help but feel cheated. This was a story with true moral dilemmas... which the author made damn sure we wouldn’t have to feel too bad about. This mystical ocean tale just lacked serious depth.