Easy Travel to Other Planets

by Ted Mooney

Just a few years in the future, the human nervous system breaks down under the pressure of available information, a marine biologist has an affair with her dolphin subject, and apocalypse seems imminent

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Novels, Science Fiction Fantasy, 20th Century, Literature

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Like most fiction writers, I write to *discover* what I think, not to to report on what I already know.

Reviews

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎]

Hmm, hmm, hmmm. On page 12 a dolphin makes sweet love with a human person. They seem to love each other but otoh until this point their interactions were typical stuff you see between human and dolphin, like, you know, tossing a beach ball and being rewarded with a fish. I loved this lack of overthinking. I LOVED it. If this were written today the author would need to answer questions about free will and power imbalances and agency.

Peter the dolphin needs to be careful, because his love interest is comparatively fragile. His human partner needs to show him where to gain entry but once these pesky questions are taken care of, fun is had. I had questions but okay this book was giving me a lot of things to ponder as I turned the pages and so I kept turning them. Things progressed. Stuff happened. If there was ever an un-rateable book it would be this one.

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book so much that it has become my yardstick for measuring what I hate. It's been a year and a half since I finished this and the awful taste it left in my mouth still lingers. And now, when something REALLY rubs me the wrong way, to get my point across, I'll say "It's as bad as that awful book with the dolphins and the crazy friends and the weird dying mother". And my husband just KNOWS. I mean - A YEAR AND A HALF AND I STILL CAN'T GET OVER HOW MUCH I HATED THIS BOOK! To be fair, my husband didn't think it was that bad. But I actually have a visceral reaction to this awful, awful, awful book.

[Emrys Donaldson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main woman character has distressingly few personality characteristics aside from her breasts and her fuckability (at one point she is described as "continuous", which alarmed me—there was a possibility of her being discontinuous?). Read more imaginative, less misogynist (and free!) dolphin erotica on the Internet.

[Sha LaBare · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm rereading this one for the fourth or fifth time. I can see why some people might find this book annoying or pretentious, but I simply love it, and always have. I love the crazy juxtapositions most of all, e.g. a sudden shift to what some turtle is doing offshore in the middle of one scene, or the sudden reflection that almost no one knows how telephones work. True, oftentimes the characters aren't particularly believable... it's a bit like a Hal Hartley film that way. That said, that characters and plot aren't exactly believable per se meshes, I think, with the strange alternate present this book pushes us into. Sure, it's not our alternate present now - the book was written in the late 70s / early 80s, so the internet, personal computers, and cell phones are of course absent - but close enough. Indeed, I don't think it's dated in the slightest, although maybe this is just because I'm getting old and, besides, I'm an inveterate Talking Heads fan. (Mooney was obviously quite a fan, and slips a gazillion TH references into the novel.) Spooky? More than a little depressing? Sure. But also an excellent document in the science-fictionalization of everyday life, and well worth the read.

[DoctorM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it opens with a graphic scene of hot girl-dolphin sex. You don't get that in a lot of National Book Award winners.

But it goes on to discuss love, the way information swamps and shapes us, and what the core elements of human-ness are.

A strange and sad and lovely book.

[Feliks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Negative reviews of this innocuous novel? Those scowls are from heavy-lidded myrmidons. Yes, I'm saying it aloud. Mooney's work is a harmless and fun experiment in speculative fiction. It amusing and quirky and unafraid to explore ideas. It has guts. It takes chances.

It's not written with the, "hand-wringing" or, "handkerchief-daubing-at-the-corners-of-one's-eyes" which stymies today's authors. It's a fictional work written from the valid world, the pre-digital world, the sane world, the world prior to our now-daily round of asinine internet finger-pointing, bogeymen, and witch-hunt hysterics.

So. Please set aside all the Orwellian "woke" newspeak criticisms ('misogyny', 'sexism', etc). Because that is not book reviewing, that is sanitizing and policing. It means you're simply "negging" all material written prior to today's new-style McCarthyism.

Disdain the entire field of 'visionary fiction'? Fine! But this example is no worse than any other. And it has one strong point in its favor. Mooney's treatise was written long before the internet had arrived. So it quite fully justify claims of 'visionary' insight. He accurately predicts today's era of, "information sickness". How else would one characterize what we're suffering, in these idiotic times?

[Charlie Rosenthal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unless you really like post-modernism (for the record, I don't particularly, which will explain much of this review), Ted Mooney's debut novel is somewhat skippable. While Mooney is a capable writer and the plot of Easy Travel is more than alright, the novel is simply drenched in post-modern stylistic touches. From the abrupt and often disorienting changes of setting to the ridiculously in depth discussions of dolphin mythology and psychology, Easy Travel to Other Planets occasionally feels a bit like Mooney created a checklist before writing. However, Mooney's greatest sin isn't really one he could have done anything about: Easy Travel to Other Planets is ridiculously dated. The novel fairly reeks of the late 1980s. An nuclear conflict in Antarctica! An ill-described disease known as information sickness (it seems to be some sort of physical reaction to having too much data in one's life) sweeping across the nation! While, as mentioned earlier, the plot--which is not the most central part of the novel--is an adequate narrative, centering on a group of somewhat confusingly related characters who are mostly in/out of love (occasionally with creatures of a different species), worried about their own mortality and place in the world, and stoned. It is often unclear why exactly various characters like each other, because, for example, Nicole is absolutely out of her mind. She's had five abortions and is pregnant again, afraid to commit to her gun-toting boyfriend Diego because, among other things, it would mean relinquishing her life-time TWA pass. However, this is but a minor consideration next to the novel's main--and, naturally, most bizarre--romantic entanglement. Peter is in love with Melissa, Melissa is dating Jeffrey, Jeffrey is sleeping with Clarice, who is married. To add to all that, Peter is a dolphin, the subject of Melissa's scientific work, which revolves around teaching Peter to speak English. The novel opens with Peter "seducing" Melissa, a coupling that certainly sets the tone for the rest of Easy Travel. All in all, Easy Travel to Other Planets is a pretty serviceable debut novel by a second-tier post-modernist that can only be fully appreciated if you love Pynchon and his ilk.

[kels · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of my favorite books I've read this year. A postmodern Elmore Leonard. Modern readers might not quite get it, but I found the novel to be as representative of the shifting American cultural landscape of the early eighties as it is about dolphin eroticism. I enjoyed the female characters (even Nona!) and found the second to last chapter absolutely mesmerizing. A plus all around.

However, I would probably only recommend this to folks who get and genuinely enjoy postmodernism - a number of the negative reviews do not seem to understand the genre.

[Lianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Ted Mooney's writing style. It's melodic yet staggering in a way. The characters also felt very real albeit I've never met people like them. Also shouldn't fail to mention that opening scene. A pretty good read.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'd have given this book 4 stars, but the ending struck me as all wrong. Even though the book's dated in a lot of ways it was still lovely, interesting to read, well written, intriguing. I don't want to give anything away, but did anyone else find what happened at the end completely out of character for our heroine? Was she having a psychotic break? Did she think she was doing Peter a favor? I understand her emotions were heavily burdened but for gods sake, she's a scientist. What the hell? It was rude and really stupid, which I could live with if I'd had a clue that she had tendencies like that in her character. Ugly and unnecessary. Or am I missing something? If so, clue me in. If not, let me know.

[Jan]

Randomly picked up this book many, many years ago at a used book store, and consider it one of my best finds. It's a book that has stayed with me throughout the years in one way or another. I consider it prophetic, in particular the description of "information sickness." I often think of that phrase as I witness the bombardment of media and technology in today's world.

[Joe Schiro · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had such a hard time finishing this book. It was terribly written. Scenes and locations would jump sentence to sentence in an attempt at being etherial when in actuality it felt lazy and immature. The way the author wrote about women was very "she breasted boobily down the stairs" and I could *not* get over how Melissa kept saying she was "seduced" by the dolphin when there was little to no actual speech the dolphin could produce. It could only sort of say her name and the book rarely talked about any real form of communication other than a few references to swim formation and body language. The first time she said she "loved" Peter, the non-speaking dolphin was after only 21 days, mind you. Not to mention the weird racialized writing of Diego and Knolly making this book feel more dated than it is.

The ending? Wild. Because it was crazy? Not really. Because it was illogical af. When I was in the eighth grade I took a short story writing class and for some reason it got in my head that in order for a story to be good/important literature someone had to die. So every story I wrote had someone die at the end no matter how forced it felt. That is exactly what happens here.

To help me finish I started highlighting my least favorite sentences which I'll share here:

"It was harder than you thought it would be, wasn't it?" (referencing dolphin-sex bruises)
"Kirk scooped some of the stew off the floor with his hands, put it on a plate, and ate it."
"Nichole was beautiful. 'Am I?' she said. Then she vomited behind a rock."
"I've never shared this part of me with anyone before" (Melissa referencing her JOB to her BEST FRIEND SINCE CHILDHOOD)
"There were ceiling fans on the ceiling."

[Paul]

Reminded me of White Noise and Crash by Ballard in that the setting was a normal, everyday, white bread world but with an undercurrent of weird sexual tension and subversion. Of course after the first chapter I was sort of angry that I had been coerced into reading a book about a scientist having sex with a dolphin (based on a true story by the way, look it up) but I kept open minded and became convinced this was about “human” connection, longing, loneliness, and all these things we (humans) struggle with in relationships with lovers and family, and it had nothing to do with beastiality. I found the characters were better than other reviewers seem to be giving them credit for, and there was a lot of good ideas in this book, and hell, I wouldn’t have minded another 100 pages of it given Mooney is so damn readable. The characters weren’t the best people, or the most realistic, but I found myself rooting for their happiness and success. Of course there was information sickness and Antarctica, but there was so much more. The theme of music was interesting and hasn’t been commented on. The ending was strange of course, but to me made some sense.

Overall a very interesting, uncomfortable, but enticing book where the scifi and the mundane blend together. Good stuff, very pre-DFW vibes.

[Nik Maack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit hit and miss. There are some terrific passages and great ideas. Some really moving moments. But there are also long stretches where I wasn't sure what the point was and I grew bored. Sections could have been tightened up in places.

You know how sometimes you read a book and an author gets hung up describing a dinner party of 5 friends and it goes on for pages, and it feels like the author is having a good time, and you're not? That's a feeling in this book in some sections.

All the same, I really enjoyed reading the book, and parts of it will stick with me. Information sickness is a fun and interesting idea. Antarctica was well played out. These are great. But they do feel a bit like background noise. Not much is done with the concepts.

If anyone remembers this book, they know it as the novel where the woman has sex with the dolphin. Which makes sense, I suppose. The book is definitely more than that. There is depth here, of a sort.

By the way, with the title, you might be expecting science fiction. This book is not really that. Sorry.

I read this book specifically because of the crazy author of "Dolphins ETs and Angels", Timothy Wyllie. He mentioned this novel in his dolphin book. I looked up Mooney's book, ordered it online, and here we are.

[Jane Trucksis · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I first read this, in the 80's, I was impressed. It was unlike anything I had read before, and I see now it was the newness of the style that intrigued me. Now that I've read many more books in the past 45 years, it doesn't hold up. The story itself was interesting, but the development left a lot to be desired. Some of the dialogue was painfully bizarre; no one talks the way these characters did. And the phony Southern accents of Kirk and Nikki really grated on me. Another reviewer felt this book reminded him of a Hal Hartley film, and I see his point, but the trouble is that Hartley's films are funny, and this book was not.

[Khiana · Rating 2 out of 5]

tldr: interesting world building, poor character development

I was hoping for a time capsule-esque experience by reading this 1980s award winning book.
I couldn't figure out many of the references though to what was currently relevant at the time.
(I mean was the whole south pole thing still commenting on the Vietnam War or what?)

Regardless of my expectations going into the book, Mooney painted a vivid and conceptually interesting world where information sickness must be expelled through (yoga?) poses and people can see those that they love in their mind in real time. The let down was definitely the characters and the development (or lack thereof) of them. The entire time I was waiting for something click, some type of understanding about what these people were supposed to represent and the message being relayed but even after the last, awful scene, I can't say I felt or understood anything more about them.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning and ending of this are five stars!! But overall, I'm at a three.

I can't quite say why it's not rated higher for me. A lot of unlikable characters, probably. I can't stand them. Melissa's the only one I found sympathetic, and there wasn't enough of her—especially in terms of her and Peter's relationship. I needed more of that. Everyone else, except maybe Knolly, are irritating and something less than ancillary.

Cool premise, though. And some interesting commentary on the '80s political climate.

Recommended for selkies.

[Ted Goldstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not about traveling to other planets. May be about breaking the communication barrier between humans and dolphins, a new “information sickness” disease, and the dawn of a new emotion on mankind. More surely about people, relationships, learning to accept the past and coming to grips with your future. “I’ve tried and tried and tried to understand, but sometimes a person just never comes back.”

[Jade Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really enjoyed this book, despite the unexpected events at page 13, for which there's never a prosecution. The story can, at times, be difficult to follow if you're not able to give it your full attention.

[Gregory Lamb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book shortly after it was published. I recall it as an imaginative piece of experimental literature that I plan to read again very soon (as soon as I can find a copy in print).

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked that it showed the alienness that can be found on our own planet. Both within and outside our species there can be greater distance and closer intimacy than we could imagine.

[Bethany Creed]

"We have hands with which we make things. We have sleep in which we dream, and afterward we are rested and may forget the dreams. We walk upright on our feet, but that is only the beginning, for always we are finding new ways to travel farther and faster and with greater ease. We fear death, but to distract ourselves from the fear we make things. We are not really distracted, but it is better to pretend, and better to have things that you have made. We have more emotions than thoughts, and more needs than emotions. We believe in different things at different times; our memories are short and will grow shorter. I will not tell you what hair is for."

This is an interesting and at times well written book. The passage above is one of my favorite parts, a speech (recalled by the dolphin Peter from his species' sagas) that the woman made to the dolphin hero Nel Nu, about what it’s like to be human. Although the book is mostly not about dolphins, my favorite parts are those from Peter’s point of view and more specifically about the sagas. But I’ve been interested in cetacean intelligence for a long time, and have wondered if they have oral traditions, since their flippers do not allow for a literature.

My friend found this book in the $1 section at Half Price and I had to read it because of the title and because the first sentence is, “It took Melissa nearly the full three weeks to grow used to sleeping in the bed that hung suspended from the ceiling of the flooded house, and even then, after she had surrounded the bed with shower curtains to protect herself from water splashed or slapped, she would find herself awake in the night’s stillest hour, listening to the pump’s dull pulse as it circulated fresh seawater through the rooms, listening beyond that to the sea’s slow suck as it entered the cove on which the house was built, and from the center of her insomnia she would gaze up through the skylight above her at the meteor showers that streaked the Caribbean sky, and she would think: I am going to die from the strangeness of this.”

Something about the imagery of a shower-curtained bed suspended from the ceiling of a flooded house in the Caribbean really grabbed me. I didn’t realize at the time - not until I was nearly done with the book, which inspired me to a bit of dolphin research - that it is based, in this respect and others (including down to the dolphin’s name) on the real-life experiment in the 1960s (http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-preview...).

Except, in the book, the historical dolphin hand jobs turn into full-blown intercourse. On page 11.

More disturbingly, to me anyway, is what the real Peter’s suicide becomes.

I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

[Jon Thorsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. It's aged a bit since I first read it in the early '80s, but the characters still resonate and some of the plot elements that seemed a bit far-fetched at the time seem eerily prescient now. The absolutely deft and engaging writing doesn't hurt either. A wonderful read.

When this book first came out, I was managing a B. Dalton Bookseller store (one of many now defunct chains) at the Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Many customers did me the honor of seeking recommendations, and I always included this one. We had a "B. Dalton Recommends" rack at the checkout counter, and I can guarantee that my store sold more copies of this book (as well as The Great Gatsby in any store where the local high school didn't have it on the required reading list) than any other store in the country.

Sometimes you have to proselytize - in the positive sense.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides]

Maybe I'm just hopelessly unenlightened but ... this is not a hauntingly erotic story about a young woman and a dolphin, as a Time magazine reviewer claimed. It's just squicktastic. Well, that scene is. And other parts are just ... kind of depressing. The information sickness plotline seems like it's probably cool. But I couldn't wade through everything else to get to that.

[Tanya Patrice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 2.5. I didn't love this book, but after reading the othe rreviews, I appreciate it a little more than I did when I was reading. I found that I just didn't care about the characters. Nichole was interesting, but Melissa and Peter ... I didn't know what motivated them or drove them. They were sort of 1 dimensional for me.

[Maura Alia Badji · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oddly fascinating, disturbing, sensual, and strangely prescient. I first read Easy Travel to Other Planets as an undergrad along with several of my housemates. I can't think of this book without echoes of Africa Bambaata's Planet Rock, which seemed to be played on an endless loop at that time. Time to re-read this one.

[Kenneth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this novel off a remainders table, as I recall, and found it surprisingly memorable. I particularly remember the new emotion people were feeling, which was like rushing very fast while standing still... and the mordant significance of the title. A fine work of speculative fiction from the period that brought us cyberpunk.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, I read this thirty years ago, but I still remember it fondly. It was prescient in that it was a futuristic book in which people suffered from 'information sickness.' I loved it so much that I remember it now. I know you can find it on amazon.

[Sandy G · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating, though sometimes difficult book, to read. I was intrigued by the tone, texture, and mood of the society that Mooney created (the book was written quite a while ago, so it is somewhat dated, but if you get past that, it's great!). The ending, however, left me very depressed.

[Breakzqueen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible.