My recent novel Unseen imagines Toronto in 2052, a city run by a super AI called Monitor. However, as AI development is racing ahead, I suspect that what I placed thirty years in the future will arrive much earlier. Such is the danger of near future sci-fi. Here is another example.

In 2013 (as imagined by Arthur C. Clarke in 1963), a teenage orphan, Johnny, is awakened in the middle of the night by a sudden silence on the Transcontinental Thruway near his aunt’s house. Looking out, Johnny sees that a massive cargo hover liner has left the highway and is sitting on the ground nearby. Curious, he slips out of the house to investigate the liner that could travel over land and water. Johnny circumnavigates the beast, noting the buoyancy chambers that would keep it afloat if it landed in the ocean, seeing the ladders that lead to entry ports six meters above.

Curiosity is strong in this youngster. Johnny starts to climb, thinking he might get a look around before the crew throws him out. When he is about half way to the hatch, the motor starts to roar. After freezing for a few seconds, he races up the ladder to a hatch that is fortunately not locked and scrambles inside just as the hover liner lifts off.

This is the opening to Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Dolphin Island. Johnny’s curiosity and willingness to take risks is crucial to the progress of the story, but so are dolphins. When in the South Pacific, the troubled hover liner runs into mechanical difficulty again, it lands on the ocean surface and then sinks. Just in time, Johnny gets out, climbs onto a wooden crate and is rescued by dolphins who push his crate to an island populated by fisher folk and a team of scientists investigating dolphins. Learning dolphin language is one of their main tasks.

While biology and ecology are not what Clarke is known for, his descriptions of the coral reef and the complex life of oceans are vivid and thought provoking. One theme of the story is that dolphins are helping humans in order to gain some protection from orcas. This the scientists learn when they find and communicate with the pod that rescued Johnny.

If you can, find a copy of the book to follow the exploration of dolphin life and orca patterns. It is a worthwhile read. My interest is in the aftermath of a hurricane that hits the island. The diesel generator is pummeled by a fallen tree and the radio communication station is put out of commission.

Today, on an isolated island, there would be both solar and wind generation with substantial battery storage. Given the strength of the storm, a tall turbine might have been tipped over or a blade broken. The anchors of solar panels on the ground could have been disturbed and those on roofs torn off. However, in a hurricane prone area on a coral island that rises only a few meters above ocean level, the anchors of both wind and solar generators would be designed differently than what we see day by day. They would be built to withstand these storms.

Also, I have a vague memory of a technique that generates hydro from waves. These might well be torn from their moorings or sunk, but again I imagine hurricanes would be planned for. Maybe they would be detached and brought to shore during the storm, redeployed when the hurricane passed. I take these gaps in Clarke’s imagined island as a warning: when I am writing sci-fi, I need to stretch my assumptions or I too will fail to see what might be possible. However, when reading sci-fi, I need to forgive the gaps that are not in the interest of the story.

One more blind spot in the story: even in 2013, there would be at least one satellite phone on the island.  Still, this story is not primarily an exploration of technology. And the disaster of the broken radio leads Johnny and two dolphins on a daring journey. And after all, this story is about the relationship of people and this wonderful marine mammal.

There is one other aspect of ocean life that Clarke does not think through: the tide. He announces that the islanders are fortunate that the storm will hit at low tide. Now, I confess that until this week, I thought that high and low tide occur once in 24 hours. But on my visit to Bay of Fundy, I learned that the tide cycle is closer to 12 hours. At the height of the hurricane, the tide would have been high. (Not to mention that with climate change and rising ocean levels, coral islands were in danger even fifteen years ago. But could Clarke have imagined this?) A quote of Arthur C. Clarke about communication satellites, how they will shorten the distance between peoples, bringing the world together, has recently been co-opted by a commercial for a major satellite company. He did imagine some of what we have built even though some of our technology he missed in this story. But the point that Clarke is making in Dolphin Island is worth taking in: humans are not the only intelligent animals who can communicate.