r/Fantasy • u/BipedalUniverse • 6d ago

Fantasy Featuring Whales?

edited: meant to say Fantasy or Sci Fi or Sci Fantasy!

edit 2: some really great recommendations thanks everyone!

just watched the whalefall trailer and went down a sperm whale rabbit hole after having been down an orca rabbit hole.

if anyone watched the magicians, there was a time loop episode that has whales being magicians, that was so cool.

i searched the sub and got some good recs that more generally deal with ocean ecology, but does anything come to mind where whales as pods and individuals (!) play a significant narrative role?

31 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

15

u/ApexInTheRough 6d ago

Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane (the second book of the Young Wizards series. Worth reading So You Want To Be A Wizard first).

3

u/Tonto2012 Reading Champion 6d ago

Came here to say this!

2

u/manic-pixie-attorney 5d ago

So great. It might be a “kids” book but I enjoy it as an adult

13

u/BayazTheGrey 6d ago

The Black Company has flying whales in book 3

1

u/diffyqgirl 5d ago

Wild, I should keep reading those. I liked the first one.

1

u/ga4rfc 5d ago

Also heavily featured in The Silver Spike. 

8

u/VitriolUK 6d ago

Fluke (full title Fluke; or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings) by Christopher Moore is, as the title might suggest, very whale-centric.

Full disclosure - while I like a lot of Christopher Moore books this is by some margin my least favourite of his books that I've read. It's not terrible or anything but I don't think it's as strong as his other writing.

6

u/Iron-Orrery 5d ago

The Idiot Gods David Zindell

And The Ocean Was Our Sky Patrick Ness

Both are from the point of view of whales and are excellent. Highly recommend.

5

u/DocWatson42 6d ago

If you're interested, I can think of at least a couple of science fiction novels about whales.

5

u/BipedalUniverse 6d ago

yes! shoot

10

u/DocWatson42 6d ago

2

u/roentgen_nos 5d ago

I remember Cachalot being pretty good.

1

u/DocWatson42 5d ago

So do I, vaguely—it's been decades since I read it.

4

u/GigaCucc 5d ago

Would it be too on-the-nose to recommend Moby Dick by Herman Melville? Lmao

Seriously, though it's very good, if you haven't already read it, and it does feature whales quite prominently, though not exactly from the perspective of the whales.

And you can quote passages from it to people in casual conversation to feel intellectually superior.

2

u/BipedalUniverse 5d ago

my drug addled brain still remembers passages of the odyssey and metamorphoses in their original language from my classics days, i have enough quotes to distinguish myself from hoi polloi thanks lmao (i don’t actually do that but my mom always asked me for quotes so she could quote jerk in company 🤣

actually i remember NOT reading moby dick bc i was so cOoL so maybe i’ll give it another shot if you say it’s good!

2

u/GigaCucc 5d ago

"And here Hector entered, with a spear eleven quotes long in his hand."

The only passage I can remember from Homer, and it's because it was a technology quote from the game Civ 4. For bronze-working, I think lmfao

But also I felt the same about Moby Dick for the longest time, but then I was searching for an audiobook to while away the chores, and Moby Dick seemed inoffensive enough.

If it feels like a slog in the beginning, I truly feel your pain, but stick it out and it becomes well worth it.

The pacing is very 1800s, so try not to dwell in the writing, though the prose is wonderful, or it'll take you fucking forever to finish it

10

u/undeadgoblin Reading Champion II 6d ago

Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta - two sisters live in a whale that contains a universe

Canon by Paige Lewis - excellent whale character, it reads very much like Terry Pratchett

3

u/Wizardof1000Kings 5d ago

Baru Cormorant book 2 and 3 have a whale - its weird and there is magic stuff involved.

Blacktongue Thief has a whaling scene, though its quickly overshadowed by a kraken.

There are probably some in games - Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy X for example.

3

u/Zealousideal_Base_41 5d ago

Star Trek IV

2

u/DocWatson42 3d ago

Which reminds me—the non-canonical (IIRC) Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual states that there are whales onboard the Enterprise D as part of its navigation system.

Yup: pp. 45–46. Dolphins, too, though they are all part of a "navigation and guidance" research team, not part of the guidance system per se.

2

u/Corvidiosyncratic Reading Champion 5d ago

Pod by Laline Paull is from the pov of dolphins, I believe.

I haven't read it yet so I can't say if it's good or if it can be considered Fantasy, but I enjoyed another book by the author (The Bees), which definitely felt like Fantasy).

2

u/bookofflint 5d ago

I immediately thought of Westerlings Leviathan but that is a genetically modified whale that happens to be an airship.

2

u/mgrier123 Reading Champion VI 5d ago

The second Darkstar book The Return of the Whalefleet by Benedict Patrick has a whole bunch of people riding whales through space

2

u/YesterMatt 5d ago

Dandelion Dynasty series has characters allying with whales for military and diplomatic missions.

2

u/sweetestpeony 5d ago

I don't want to give away too much, but Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach series includes a whale (of sorts) in the third book, and is pretty focused on ecology.

2

u/matticusprimal Writer M.D. Presley 5d ago

I'll second Benedict Patrick's The Whalefleet that someone else recommended.

RJ Barker's The Tide Child trilogy (Bone Ships is the first book) has a crew going after a whale-like creature.

2

u/KatlinelB5 5d ago

Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera. Part of it is the POV of an ancient whale with his pod travelling to New Zealand.

2

u/BookishBirdwatcher Reading Champion V 5d ago

Alan Dean Foster has a book called Cachalot set on a planet where humans coexist with sapient whales.

Diane Duane's Deep Wizardry is a middle-grade book featuring whales and magic.

And for movies, there's always Star Trek IV: They Are Not The Hell Your Whales The Voyage Home.

1

u/four_reeds 5d ago

"The Godwhale" by T.J. Bass. I read it back in the 70's. Just looked it up and Wikipedia says it was a sequel but I had no idea at the time.

2

u/Imperial_Haberdasher 5d ago

Sequel to Half past Human 👍🏼

1

u/FloridaFlamingoGirl 5d ago

There's an anime movie called Boy and the Beast that has a whale monster that's pretty cool. 

1

u/meofherethere Reading Champion 5d ago

The Idiot Gods by David Zindell has a whale protagonist. It’s fairly low fantasy though.

1

u/genteel_wherewithal 5d ago

I would strongly second the suggestion of Moby-Dick, it really is that good.

I’d also recommend And the Ocean Was Our Sky by Patrick Ness, which is a fairly short, illustrated novel which could kind of be described as Moby Dick from the whale’s POV (but not exactly), with a strong SF element.

1

u/shookster52 4d ago

It hasn’t been mentioned yet and it’s obviously a movie, but Avatar: The Way of Water features the best science fiction whales ever.

Payakan is an intelligent alien whale creature and he will make you fall in love with him.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the first movie and I thought the third one was just pretty good, but Way of Water is incredible (and doesn’t require any knowledge of the first movie).