The Lord's Pink Ocean

by David Harry Walker

It is the story of two feuding families isolated in the last fertile valley of North America after the world's oceans have turned toxic and the lands grey with total death.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1972

About the author

David Harry Walker was Scottish-born Canadian novelist. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, later moving to St Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada, where he began his career as a writer. His work has been made into films.

Reviews

[Karl]

DAW Collectors #67

Cover Artist: Josh Kirby

Name: Walker, David Harry, Birthplace: Dundee, Scotland, UK, (9 February 1911 - 5 March 1992)

The instrument of annihilation in this doomsday novel is no longer the Bomb but the Ecology. David Walker fancies a blight of pink algae smothering the planet Earth, save for spots in Greenland, Siberia and a few isolated hideouts.

One of these oases is a Canadian valley giving shelter to a black and a white family, imperfectly integrated, but ready to join forces against any intruder who threatens their noble savagery. This calls for the rubbing out of stray missionaries or potential world leaders who happen to stop by, and it even leads to a bit of parricide.

[A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was so much better than it should have been. There's six people left on earth, one family is black, one is white; one has a son, the other a daughter, and the whites are racists! Hijinks ensue!

[Kent · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really not the best sci-fi book I've ever read. That's probably why it was on the 50 cent shelf. The book starts off well enough in a world where a strange pink algae has infested almost all water on Earth and only a small population still exists. The story centers on two families living on an uninfected lake. The whole book is much more about the race relations between the two families and trying to keep their son and daughter from spending time together, because racial mixing is against the rules of the Lord of the Pink Ocean. The families are also very anti-technology, because they say that's the reason the lord sent the pink ocean.
The book has a decent writing style, but after the beginning it really doesn't go anywhere and could have been the same story without the pink ocean.

[Emma Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A "things get lost in translation" apocalypse fic where you get to sigh your way through the 70s era blunt force examination of racism and sexism BUT I promise you it's worth it for Ian and Mary keeping this thing on the rails.

[Scott Nieradka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This really shouldn't have been as charming as it was, a diamond in the rough or something. A post apocalyptic tale, where the world is destroyed by poisonous pink algae, but our heroes survive cause they are in a mountain valley separated by a waterfall from the rest of the world and the algae cant visit them. The valley is occupied by one black and one white family, both after a few generations have gone fairly superstitious and medieval and all, and are occasionally visited by religious eskimos in water landing planes.

If you look at its cover, that plot description , and that it was published by DAW in its splattiest days of publishing, you would be forgiven if you thought it would suck goat. But, this book, despite the odds, is actually well written, and, well, good.

[Aditya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short sci-fi read focused on the relations between two uneducated families, and some visitors, in a little oasis amid a world that's been destroyed by a red tide. There was a weird focus on miscegenation, but I wasn't around in the 70's to know if that was a reflection/rebuke of real-world sentiments. The patriarchs of either family were also uncomfortably boorish, but luckily the POV switches to the children later on. Overall, somewhat interesting, but you're not missing much if you skip it (although it is very short - I'm a slow reader and I managed to get through it in an evening).

[Jason Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Extremely boring, obvious 1970s-era parable about racism, with almost no exploration of the deus-ex-machina apocalypse (a poisonous pink algal bloom kills everything in contact with water, apparently instantly) which brings the white & black survivors together in some remote corner of Appalachia.

[LInda L · Rating 5 out of 5]

No explanations will suffice -- just read this.

[LInda L · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the few sci-fi books I've read and I must say I enjoyed it. Even with few people left, racism rears its ugly head.

[James Giddings]

I was just reminded of this book, which covered themes that are quite relevant today. I read it a long time ago and was favorably impressed.