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The Dolphins of Altair
Before the dawn of man . . .
. . . there was a covenant between the land and the sea people - a covenant long forgotten by those who stayed on shore, but indelibly etched in the minds of others - the dolphins of Altair.
Now the covenant had been broken. Dolphins were being wantonly sacrificed in the name of scientific research, their waters increasingly polluted, their number dangerously diminished. They had to find allies and strike back. Allies willing to sever their own earthly bonds for the sake of their sea brothers - willing, if necessary, to execute the destruction of the whole human race . . .
. . . there was a covenant between the land and the sea people - a covenant long forgotten by those who stayed on shore, but indelibly etched in the minds of others - the dolphins of Altair.
Now the covenant had been broken. Dolphins were being wantonly sacrificed in the name of scientific research, their waters increasingly polluted, their number dangerously diminished. They had to find allies and strike back. Allies willing to sever their own earthly bonds for the sake of their sea brothers - willing, if necessary, to execute the destruction of the whole human race . . .
188 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
1 person is currently reading
101 people want to read
About the author
Margaret St. Clair
156 books60 followersMargaret St. Clair (February 17, 1911 Huchinson, Kansas - November 22, 1995 Santa Rosa, CA) was an American science fiction writer, who also wrote under the pseudonyms Idris Seabright and Wilton Hazzard.
Born as Margaret Neeley, she married Eric St. Clair in 1932, whom she met while attending the University of California, Berkeley. In 1934 she graduated with a Master of Arts in Greek classics.
She started writing science fiction with the short story "Rocket to Limbo" in 1946. Her most creative period was during the 1950s, when she wrote such acclaimed stories as "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" (1951), "Brightness Falls from the Air" (1951), "An Egg a Month from All Over" (1952), and "Horrer Howce" (1956). She largely stopped writing short stories after 1960. The Best of Margaret St. Clair (1985) is a representative sampler of her short fiction.
Apart from more than 100 short stories, St. Clair also wrote nine novels. Of interest beyond science fiction is her 1963 novel Sign of the Labrys, for its early use of Wicca elements in fiction.
Her interests included witchcraft, nudism, and feminism. She and her husband decided to remain childless.
Born as Margaret Neeley, she married Eric St. Clair in 1932, whom she met while attending the University of California, Berkeley. In 1934 she graduated with a Master of Arts in Greek classics.
She started writing science fiction with the short story "Rocket to Limbo" in 1946. Her most creative period was during the 1950s, when she wrote such acclaimed stories as "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" (1951), "Brightness Falls from the Air" (1951), "An Egg a Month from All Over" (1952), and "Horrer Howce" (1956). She largely stopped writing short stories after 1960. The Best of Margaret St. Clair (1985) is a representative sampler of her short fiction.
Apart from more than 100 short stories, St. Clair also wrote nine novels. Of interest beyond science fiction is her 1963 novel Sign of the Labrys, for its early use of Wicca elements in fiction.
Her interests included witchcraft, nudism, and feminism. She and her husband decided to remain childless.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 2, 2019
210817: another work i really liked never heard of. i am thinking now that on first reading it is great but now i think that five is too high. i was so surprised, so impressed, by this work of the author compared to some of her other pulps. it is concise, direct, engaging, complex in simplicity. this book is pulp sff like any other woman author read in this project, published later (1967) but not poetic, literary, experimental, as new wave sff at the same time. there is an environmental concern, an obvious love of the sea, of sailing, of dolphins. the plot is quietly apocalyptic, not much portrayed but simply the overwhelming idea. there is possibility if little discussed, that dolphins and humans are related in (alien) descent not simply by evolution, that psi is real, effective, beyond mere human understanding. plot is swift, characters sketched, but it is the sff ideas/environments so fantastic that differs from contemporaneous mainstream writing- by date i realize this is a year before 'left hand of darkness', though of course i did not read that until '80s i would have loved this one too...
March 24, 2024
Dolphins of Altair
Margaret St. Clair was born (Eva Margaret Neely) in 1911. She is one of the trailblazers whose work I discovered through Lisa Yazsek’s groundbreaking anthology The Future is Female. I can’t say I remember her story from that book, but I remembered her name. I saw it on the spine of this think paperback on the shelf at Verbatim Books here in San Diego. Her father was just elected to Congress shortly before she was born. The charmed DC childhood only till 1919. When her father died of Influenza she and her moved to the Midwest and eventually Los Angeles. She met her future husband Eric St.Clair.
While earning her master’s degree in Greek classics from Cal-Berkeley in the early 30s. They settled in a small bay area town, raised Dachshunds, and ran a plant nursery.
She started writing pulp fiction in the post-war era starting with a noir Detective story before turning the major focus of her output to Science Fiction publishing more than 70 stories that decade alone. Her Short story Mrs. Hawk was turned into an episode of Thriller (hosted by Boris Karloff) you can watch on YouTube, Rod Serling turned two of her stories into a Night Gallery episode. In 1966 she and her husband became Wiccan.
I checked out the Thriller episode, it is a weird and comedic episode about a figure from Greek mythology who has a pig farm where she is abducting men and turning them into pigs. The acting in the episode is hilarious and over the top. Still how cool that it was based on one of her stories.
So Dolphins of Altair sounds like the kinda of ecological science fiction I dig whether it is the brutal and realistic nightmares of John Brunner or Kim Stanley Robinson or the weirder takes of Ray Nayler I like when genre tackles our relationship with nature. In the case of Nayler his last two books I loved because they ask what does it mean to be an earthling. This novel is like a 60s pulpy version of that message.
So yeah compared to the message being made in a modern context it's pretty corny. That however is the fun of reading classic Science Fiction.
“Before the dawn of man . . .
. . . there was a covenant between the land and the sea people - a covenant long forgotten by those who stayed on shore but indelibly etched in the minds of others - the dolphins of Altair.
Now the covenant had been broken. Dolphins were being wantonly sacrificed in the name of scientific research, their waters increasingly polluted, and their number dangerously diminished. They had to find allies and strike back. Allies willing to sever their own earthly bonds for the sake of their sea brothers - willing, if necessary, to execute the destruction of the whole human race . ..”
Considered by many to be the first of a "psychedelic" era for her writing there are moments where I felt lost. The human characters are riding Dolphins and communicating with them in the form of a telepathic connection. There were times when I was lost if they were underwater and using telepathy or talking. I was lost for chunks of the book. When I found the narrative threads there were interesting moments to connect to. This book has all kinds of weird elements that include telepathic dolphins, ecological sabotage, alien ancestry, military experiments, 60s counterculture, interplanetary exchanges, and major disaster vibes. It also is a very California book.
The first part of the novel involves human characters working with Dolphins to sabotage and free captive Dolphins to help them with their plan. You see the Dolphins believe the covenant between land and sea is broken enough that they can fight back. The Dolphins call the humans splits, it took me a time or two to realize they were referring to people with legs. Their plan for freeing the Dolphins includes causing an earthquake, it becomes clear they have control over nature in an intense way.
One of the most interesting ideas is expressed when Dolphins explain to their human friends what the covenant means to them. It is expressed in a poem, one that has been passed down through generations telepathically from one generation of Dolphins to another. It is here that they suggest this poem is older than life on Earth…Yeah I mean where this is going is right in the title of the book.
When we are introduced to the radical Dolphin's plan to save the sea people you could imagine this happened because…
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It would take the heat off the sea people and their human allies – If the polar ice caps were to melt.”
Cue the piano to express deep shock. This ends and chapter and want to quote how the next chapter starts.
“I think we would laugh at him, except that, after all, he had already engineered an earthquake.”
The final act of the book is where it comes together as a disaster piece and at that point, the novel is fully in my favorite sub-genre the weird end-of-the-world novel. The Dolphins of Altair is funky very 60s Science Fiction novel, while the cover says it is a brilliant triumph I would not go that far. It is strange enough, and thought-provoking enough to get a light thumbs up from me. I was too confused at times to go with a masterpiece, compared to our modern genre the characters and prose are thin, but I prefer that, so that was not the problem.
I think many genre writers don’t trust their readers, maybe St.Clair trusted her readers a bit too much. I want to read her other novels so take that as a sign that she was up to plenty of good stuff.
Margaret St. Clair was born (Eva Margaret Neely) in 1911. She is one of the trailblazers whose work I discovered through Lisa Yazsek’s groundbreaking anthology The Future is Female. I can’t say I remember her story from that book, but I remembered her name. I saw it on the spine of this think paperback on the shelf at Verbatim Books here in San Diego. Her father was just elected to Congress shortly before she was born. The charmed DC childhood only till 1919. When her father died of Influenza she and her moved to the Midwest and eventually Los Angeles. She met her future husband Eric St.Clair.
While earning her master’s degree in Greek classics from Cal-Berkeley in the early 30s. They settled in a small bay area town, raised Dachshunds, and ran a plant nursery.
She started writing pulp fiction in the post-war era starting with a noir Detective story before turning the major focus of her output to Science Fiction publishing more than 70 stories that decade alone. Her Short story Mrs. Hawk was turned into an episode of Thriller (hosted by Boris Karloff) you can watch on YouTube, Rod Serling turned two of her stories into a Night Gallery episode. In 1966 she and her husband became Wiccan.
I checked out the Thriller episode, it is a weird and comedic episode about a figure from Greek mythology who has a pig farm where she is abducting men and turning them into pigs. The acting in the episode is hilarious and over the top. Still how cool that it was based on one of her stories.
So Dolphins of Altair sounds like the kinda of ecological science fiction I dig whether it is the brutal and realistic nightmares of John Brunner or Kim Stanley Robinson or the weirder takes of Ray Nayler I like when genre tackles our relationship with nature. In the case of Nayler his last two books I loved because they ask what does it mean to be an earthling. This novel is like a 60s pulpy version of that message.
So yeah compared to the message being made in a modern context it's pretty corny. That however is the fun of reading classic Science Fiction.
“Before the dawn of man . . .
. . . there was a covenant between the land and the sea people - a covenant long forgotten by those who stayed on shore but indelibly etched in the minds of others - the dolphins of Altair.
Now the covenant had been broken. Dolphins were being wantonly sacrificed in the name of scientific research, their waters increasingly polluted, and their number dangerously diminished. They had to find allies and strike back. Allies willing to sever their own earthly bonds for the sake of their sea brothers - willing, if necessary, to execute the destruction of the whole human race . ..”
Considered by many to be the first of a "psychedelic" era for her writing there are moments where I felt lost. The human characters are riding Dolphins and communicating with them in the form of a telepathic connection. There were times when I was lost if they were underwater and using telepathy or talking. I was lost for chunks of the book. When I found the narrative threads there were interesting moments to connect to. This book has all kinds of weird elements that include telepathic dolphins, ecological sabotage, alien ancestry, military experiments, 60s counterculture, interplanetary exchanges, and major disaster vibes. It also is a very California book.
The first part of the novel involves human characters working with Dolphins to sabotage and free captive Dolphins to help them with their plan. You see the Dolphins believe the covenant between land and sea is broken enough that they can fight back. The Dolphins call the humans splits, it took me a time or two to realize they were referring to people with legs. Their plan for freeing the Dolphins includes causing an earthquake, it becomes clear they have control over nature in an intense way.
One of the most interesting ideas is expressed when Dolphins explain to their human friends what the covenant means to them. It is expressed in a poem, one that has been passed down through generations telepathically from one generation of Dolphins to another. It is here that they suggest this poem is older than life on Earth…Yeah I mean where this is going is right in the title of the book.
When we are introduced to the radical Dolphin's plan to save the sea people you could imagine this happened because…
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It would take the heat off the sea people and their human allies – If the polar ice caps were to melt.”
Cue the piano to express deep shock. This ends and chapter and want to quote how the next chapter starts.
“I think we would laugh at him, except that, after all, he had already engineered an earthquake.”
The final act of the book is where it comes together as a disaster piece and at that point, the novel is fully in my favorite sub-genre the weird end-of-the-world novel. The Dolphins of Altair is funky very 60s Science Fiction novel, while the cover says it is a brilliant triumph I would not go that far. It is strange enough, and thought-provoking enough to get a light thumbs up from me. I was too confused at times to go with a masterpiece, compared to our modern genre the characters and prose are thin, but I prefer that, so that was not the problem.
I think many genre writers don’t trust their readers, maybe St.Clair trusted her readers a bit too much. I want to read her other novels so take that as a sign that she was up to plenty of good stuff.
December 14, 2010
1967's The Dolphins of Altair is the beginning of Margaret St. Clair's "psychedelic" period. It would continue on with The Shadow People (1969) and conclude with The Dancers of Noyo (1973). Although the plots of the book are significantly different, her use of the California coast, environmentalism, and counter-cultures all link these books. They are also told in the first person.
Dolphins is told from the viewpoint of a dolphin historian named Amtor. At the beginning of the novel, the dolphins, or sea people as they refer to themselves, have become distressed.The seas are becoming increasing polluted. Humans are capturing and placing dolphins into naval research stations for underwater warfare training. The dolphins form a council and decide to reach out telepathically to three people: Madeline Paxton, a secretary at the Half Moon Bay naval research station; Sven Erikson, a former soldier and dock worker; and Dr. Edward Lawrence, a clinical psychiatrist who works for the US navy.
Madeline proves to the most receptive to the Dolphins' cries for help. Sven later joins her. Finally, Dr. Lawrence hires a boat to drop him off on the a rock far off the California coast. Together, they concoct a plan to free the imprisoned dolphins from the research station. Using Sven as a courier, they steal a powerful under water mine from a weapons shipment and give it to the dolphins. The mine is then dropped by one of the dolphins into a deep trench off the coast where it explodes, causing an earthquake. The earthquake, timed to be a minor one and on a Sunday evening to minimize loss of human life, bursts open the dolphin pens, freeing the sea people to the open ocean.
But then Dr. Lawrence disappears from the rock, with no explanation given. Moments later, the rock is strafed by a navy plane. Several of the dolphins are killed and Madeline is wounded. Why did Dr. Lawrence betray them? Do the dolphins have time to come up with a new strategy now that war between them and the "splits" (humans) seem to be immediate?
The launching point for the novel seems to have been the US Navy Marine Mammal Program where dolphins were studied for their ability to hunt for mines and rescue seamen. The navy has always claimed no dolphins were ever trained to attack humans. Obviously, the very concept of dolphins being manipulated by humans was offensive to St. Clair.
One of the more interesting ideas put forth in the book is that humans and dolphins originated from the same species. According to the dolphin historian, millions of years ago, the commons ancestors of both creatures migrated to earth from a planet in orbit around the star Altair. Over the millennia, some of the settlers stayed on land while others returned to their natural environment, the water. At some point in the distant past, the land dwellers began mating with terrestrial primates, producing humans. This is the origin of "The Covenant" mentioned in Dancers of Noyo.
The book is well-plotted and easy to dissolve into. Much of it consists of conversations between the dolphins and their human allies trying to figure out the least destructive means to strike back at the surface dwellers. This could be the original ecological science fiction novel. There are no themes of magick or Wicca in this novel.
Dolphins is told from the viewpoint of a dolphin historian named Amtor. At the beginning of the novel, the dolphins, or sea people as they refer to themselves, have become distressed.The seas are becoming increasing polluted. Humans are capturing and placing dolphins into naval research stations for underwater warfare training. The dolphins form a council and decide to reach out telepathically to three people: Madeline Paxton, a secretary at the Half Moon Bay naval research station; Sven Erikson, a former soldier and dock worker; and Dr. Edward Lawrence, a clinical psychiatrist who works for the US navy.
Madeline proves to the most receptive to the Dolphins' cries for help. Sven later joins her. Finally, Dr. Lawrence hires a boat to drop him off on the a rock far off the California coast. Together, they concoct a plan to free the imprisoned dolphins from the research station. Using Sven as a courier, they steal a powerful under water mine from a weapons shipment and give it to the dolphins. The mine is then dropped by one of the dolphins into a deep trench off the coast where it explodes, causing an earthquake. The earthquake, timed to be a minor one and on a Sunday evening to minimize loss of human life, bursts open the dolphin pens, freeing the sea people to the open ocean.
But then Dr. Lawrence disappears from the rock, with no explanation given. Moments later, the rock is strafed by a navy plane. Several of the dolphins are killed and Madeline is wounded. Why did Dr. Lawrence betray them? Do the dolphins have time to come up with a new strategy now that war between them and the "splits" (humans) seem to be immediate?
The launching point for the novel seems to have been the US Navy Marine Mammal Program where dolphins were studied for their ability to hunt for mines and rescue seamen. The navy has always claimed no dolphins were ever trained to attack humans. Obviously, the very concept of dolphins being manipulated by humans was offensive to St. Clair.
One of the more interesting ideas put forth in the book is that humans and dolphins originated from the same species. According to the dolphin historian, millions of years ago, the commons ancestors of both creatures migrated to earth from a planet in orbit around the star Altair. Over the millennia, some of the settlers stayed on land while others returned to their natural environment, the water. At some point in the distant past, the land dwellers began mating with terrestrial primates, producing humans. This is the origin of "The Covenant" mentioned in Dancers of Noyo.
The book is well-plotted and easy to dissolve into. Much of it consists of conversations between the dolphins and their human allies trying to figure out the least destructive means to strike back at the surface dwellers. This could be the original ecological science fiction novel. There are no themes of magick or Wicca in this novel.
July 25, 2025
A very interesting story, I'm really enjoying the 70s trippy sci-fi genre. My second Margaret St. Clair book and I'm excited to read The Shadow People next.
June 1, 2022
Very weird and trippy, but quite readable and distinctly "St. Clairian." I've really been enjoying diving deeper into her bibliography. I can say that I've never read a book like The Dolphins of Altair - telepathy, dolphins, military experiments, doomsday devices, cross-planet communication, ancient alien ancestry, and more. And yet it all hangs together way better than it should.
June 12, 2019
I was curious to read Margaret St. Clair and I wanted to see what a book published in 1967 had to say about human-caused enironmental damage affecting dolphins on the California Coast. I was disappointed that it had (a) dolphins with psychic powers, (b) somehumans have psychic powers, but the psychics weren't the humans able to communicate with dolphins. The story is of a handful of dolphins and humans taking on the world - causing an earthquake to free captured dolphins, and melting the ice caps with silly devices. The environmental issues are in the background, and we don't see the final result... Didn't work for me in multiple ways.
January 11, 2019
absolute insanity from beginning to end, loved it. Only recommended to people that love weird happenings and 1960's hallucinogenic imagery.
February 20, 2024
The Dolphins of Altair sounds like an intriguing book with an interesting story line of humans & dolphins working together to save the "sea people" from humanity's actions, but I was sadly disappointed. The writing is insipid & lackluster, the characters two-dimensional and flat with no real development, and the ending of the book is implausible even in the framework of the story. The story is disjointed in parts and the "occult" bits thrown in aren't really explained as to why they're needed. The dialog is mechanical and about as human as AI-generated conversation. The really sad thing is by the end of the book you don't actually care about these characters or what happens to them even in the face of their self-induced ending of humanity as we know it, though you have a certain amount of sympathy for the dolphins. The human characters are about as interesting as advertisements in People Magazine. Reading it wasn't exactly a waste of time, but I won't read the book again.
January 2, 2021
I don't know what the consensus first cli-fi novel is, but this is a cli-fi novel. It is also batshit. We have dolphins accelerating global warming to end their long holocaust at human hands, we have astral projection to communicate with the species ancestral to both dolphins and humans who inhabit a planet of Altair, we have the promise of a mertopia...gonzo, bonkers, breathless, but maybe a bit half-baked. Not for the logical or pedantic.
April 17, 2025
If you’re looking for a quick-read that will entrap you from beginning to end, this is a book for you!
I won’t say it’s particularly inventive in terms of tonal quality in the writing…but it holds you captive in the most absurd ways!
It’s the most ridiculous short story I’ve ever picked up thus far, and in the spirit of that - it’s endearing.
I won’t say it’s particularly inventive in terms of tonal quality in the writing…but it holds you captive in the most absurd ways!
It’s the most ridiculous short story I’ve ever picked up thus far, and in the spirit of that - it’s endearing.
January 1, 2023
Just brutally stupid, no character development, horrible narrative devices. Plot entirely driven by psychic bullshit, new contrivances as demanded. Dolphins and some human collaborators prosecute a war against the human race, and I was never brought to care.
Nice job breaking it, heroes.
1 star.
Nice job breaking it, heroes.
1 star.
August 9, 2023
wild from start to finish. this book has become the marker by which i judge all other weird scifi. is it standard weird old scifi, or is it "dolphins causing the apocalypse"?
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews