Home from the Shore

Sea People #1

by Gordon R. Dickson

Vintage paperback

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Adventure, Fiction

221 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Gordon Rupert Dickson was an American science fiction author. He was born in Canada, then moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota as a teenager. He is probably most famous for his Childe Cycle and the Dragon Knight series. He won three Hugo awards and one Nebula award.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Home from the Shore began as a novelette published in the February 1963 of Galaxy magazine edited by Frederik Pohl, and it was nominated for the Hugo ballot for short fiction but didn't make it. (Poul Anderson's No Truce with Kings won that year, though I think Roger Zelazny's A Rose for Ecclesiastes should have.) Berkley published a novel which is a follow up to it in 1967 called The Space Swimmers. As Dickson explains in his lengthy introduction, he was approached by Ace Books' publisher Tom Doherty and asked to expand it for publication as a heavily illustrated book, and he did so with James R. Odbert. Ace published it in a trade edition in 1978, making it something of a prequel to The Space Swimmers. There's also a lengthy critical appreciation/analysis/afterword by Sandra Miesel which was just way too dry for me. It's a pretty good land and sea rivalry in space story with a military backdrop. I wasn't moved enough to pick up the second book, but I thought it was a very fetching volume with all of the neat illustrations.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book surprised me. I got it on a whim at a used book store but it was really good. I'll definitely read the sequel

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I keep happening into Dickson novels and not quite getting the appeal. I like this one better than the couple of his Dorsai books I've tried. It's a totally serviceable military sci fi story with an Age of Aquarius leaning. Taken any other way, the story of a species of Atlantians having difficulty integrating into a Terran space force has some weird racial overtones. If that were the intended message, I'd have to reevaluate, but I don't think I'd be favorably inclined.

The illustrations are also slightly below average quality for Ace illustrated novels of the time.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up as a Staff Pick at Half Price books. Some great themes about war and evolution but I couldn't relate to any of the characters, world building was disjointed and only leveraged at key points in the book. The storytelling was very direct and linear. Example. One character says if anything happens to me make sure you'll X then on the next page something happens to them.

[Katherine B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel like this was not supposed to be book one. There was so much that we were just thrown into. The world-building was subpar and the storyline was kind of ridiculous. If it hadn't been so short, I would've DNFed it.

The one good thing was the art. I enjoyed the formatting of the book.

[Stephen Simpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate that Dickson was trying to do something different with this work (highly illustrated, but not quite a graphic novel), but it didn't quite work. The ideas he was working with could have supported a good book, but this was much too short and I feel like it was almost more of a summary or "Cliffs Notes" version of a good story.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid good read. I may go find the sequel.