“Johnny Clinton was sleeping when the hovership raced down the valley, floating along the old turnpike on its cushion of air. [..] To any boy of the twenty.first century, it was a sound of magic, telling of far-off countries and strange cargoes carried in the first ships that could travel with equal ease across land and sea.”

In “Dolphin Island” by Arthur C. Clarke

“Dolphin Island” was one of the very first proper book I read, or tried to read, in English, when I was 10 or 11, in the fifth year of school, and I loved it. My dad had given it to me, because he thought it would make a good first read for a boy who was trying to teach himself English at the time. Until then, I'd only read some of the simplified English books. At the time, our regular school teacher was away on paternity leave, for the arrival of his adopted son, so we had a substitute. There were reading hours in the schedule, when we were expected to bring books from home, and that substitute teacher noticed I was reading an English book. She thought I wasn't actually reading - after all, how could a 10-year old Portuguese-speaking child who's never had an English lesson possibly read a novel in English? -, flatly refused to believe my explanation that I was busy learning English on my own, and nearly confiscated the book. It was an extremely upsetting experience for me, which is why I remember it so well. When my regular teacher arrived back to work shortly afterwards, the substitute told him about the incident, and basically accused me of being a liar in front of him. Luckily, he put her in her place and told her that no, I wasn't lying, and that I was indeed teaching myself English.

But generally, I've found it's a bad idea to re-read books one loved as a child or a young teenager as an adult. On the occasions I've tried it, it mostly was a sore disappointment. With rare exceptions, you get that sinking feeling you must have had really, really bad taste in your youth. It’s not the case with this one. It holds up pretty well. ( )

This is one of the few "juveniles" ie, young adult novels Clarke ever wrote. It's main character is sixteen year-old Johnny Clinton. Lost in the pacific, he is saved by a pod of dolphins who bring him to Dolphin Island, a research station in Australia's Great Barrier Reef. There he becomes involved in their research into dolphin-human communication. I don't find this as memorable as The Deep Range, Clarke's other novel dealing with Earth's ocean--a surprisingly rare setting in science fiction--one thing that makes this short book worth reading. ( )

Stillehavet, ca 2010-2015
Johnny Clinton, 16 år, bor et sted i USA ved hans moster, tante Martha, der lidt modvilligt har taget ham til sig efter at hans forældre døde i en trafikulykke, da han var fire år. Et stort luftskib nødlander og han kigger på det. Faktisk sniger han sig om bord og kommer ufrivilligt med da det letter. Over Stillehavet går det helt galt og han er pludseligt overladt til sig selv og en sammenflikket tømmerflåde. Nogle delfiner redder ham ved at puffe flåden til en lille ø, kaldet Delfinernes Ø. Han kommer i land og bliver passet af øens sygeplejerske Tessie, kaldet to-tons-tessie, da hun ikke er af de mindste. På øen bor der fiskere og forskere og Johnny er havnet ved de sidste. Underdirektøren Dr. Keith er ret klog og giver Johnny lov at blive på øen.
En anden dreng Mick Nauru viser Johnny til rette på øen og de bliver venner. Lederen af forskningsgruppen hedder Dr. Kazan og han har forsket i delfinernes sprog i mange år. Taget være båndteknologi og computere kan de kommunikere nogenlunde med delfinerne.
Johnny bliver gode venner med delfinerne Susie og Sputnik og han lærer at begå sig som dykker på det store koralrev.
Der er krig mellem spækhuggere og delfiner og forskerne vil gerne hjælpe, så de fanger en spækhugger og vha indopererede elektroder giver de dem afsky for at spise delfiner.
Clarke genfortæller historien om Mary Watson, der krydsede mellem to øer i en stor gammel gryde, men han har flyttet historien lidt. Han fletter også en historie ind om en delfinerindring om noget, der lyder som et nedstyrtet rumskib fra for flere tusinde år siden.
Johnny laver et seletøj til delfinerne så de kan trække et surfboard og det kommer til god gavn, da en orkan rammer øen.
Alle medicinske forsyninger og kommunikationsmuligheder ødelægges og Dr. Kazan får lungebetændelse.
Johnny henter hjælp vha delfinerne og en god portion held.
Professoren bliver reddet og Johnny bliver stillet i udsigt at han skal gå på universitetet i Queensland.
Og krigen mellem spækhuggere og delfiner kan måske løses.

Udmærket ungdomsbog. ( )

Die Delphininsel von Arthur C Clarke ist die Geschichte über das Heranreifen eines 16jährigen Jungen zu einem 17jährigen Mann.

Johnny ist ein Waise, der bei seiner Tante untergekommen ist und sich dort nie wirklich eingelebt hat. Als sich dann die Möglichkeit bietet, als blinder Passagier auf eine Transportmöglichkeit aufzuspringen, lässt er sich dies nicht entgehen. Aufgrund variierender Umstände landet er schließlich als Schiffbrüchiger auf der besagten Delphininsel, zu der ihn die Meeressäuger auf seinem Floß geschoben habe. Er freundet sich dort mit den Insulanern und Wissenschaftlern an, die die Delfine erforschen. Er lebt sich ein, lernt, und findet im Prinzip die Heimat und Adoptivfamilie, die er seit dem Tod seiner Eltern vermisst. Natürlich geschieht dann noch einiges, was ihn Erfahrungen sammeln lässt und schließlich auch das kathartische Ereignis, welches ihn von der Kindheit abgrenzt und zum Mann macht.

Insgesamt ist der Roman sehr flüssig geschrieben und lässt sich recht zügig lesen. Einzig seine Vorhersehbarkeit ist ein Manko, allerdings liegt das eher im Genre als der Handlung begründet. Es ist halt eine Geschichte für Jugendliche über einen Ihresgleichen, der sich im Leben nicht so recht zurecht und erst noch seinen Weg findet.

Obgleich die Handlung ungefähr jetzt, einige Jahre nach der Jahrtausendwende, spielt, merkt man ihr zwar ihr Alter an, allerdings halten sich die grotesken Fehleinschätzungen über die - damals beschriebene - Zukunft in Grenzen. Manches lässt einen schmunzeln und ein anderes Mal erstaunt man, wie treffend der Autor die Zukunft, die unsere Gegenwart ist, eingeschätzt hat. Im großen und ganzen ist der Science-Fiction-Rahmen des Buches aber nicht mehr als schmückendes Beiwerk.

Das deutsche Umschlagbild ist daher nur als fehlleitend zu bezeichnen.

This YA novel was first published in 1963, and was set around fifty years in its then-future. Nearly fifty years on, it has aged remarkably well. Right on the first page, I was taken back to the sensawunda I had when I first read this book as a young teenager around thirty years ago -- not least because in the first paragraph Clarke beautifully evokes the sense of wonder his teenage protagonist feels at the sight of an international cargo vessel and the daydreams it inspires about the places it has seen.

When sixteen-year-old Johnny Clinton finds that the giant hovercraft has made an emergency landing near his home, his curiosity leads him to sneak aboard for a look around, and leaves him trapped as an accidental stowaway when it lifts off again unexpectedly. The orphaned Johnny's not too upset at the idea of being carried away from the home he's reluctantly offered by his widowed aunt, so he doesn't come out of hiding until the craft crash-lands in the Pacific Ocean. The crew have abandoned ship, and Johnny is left with nothing but a packing crate and his own clothing to keep him afloat and sheltered -- until a pod of dolphins find him and and save his life by pushing his makeshift raft the hundred miles to the nearest land.

That land is Dolphin Island, an island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef which is home to a research station studying dolphins. The station tracks down where Johnny came from before he's even released from the infirmary, but he's offered the chance to stay, an offer he's quick to accept. He rapidly builds a new life for himself, one that mixes ongoing formal education with involvement in the scientific work on communicating with the dolphins. There's more than a little adventure as well.

This is an excellent short novel, with an engaging protagonist, an interesting story, and some superb world-building. Clarke drew on his own experience of skin-diving on the Great Barrier Reef to paint a wonderful word picture of the Reef and its marine life. Clarke's extrapolation of technology hasn't suffered too badly as reality caught up with it -- it's different to what really happened, but not so much so that it jars. And glory be, the story hasn't been visited by the Sexism Fairy. There's a distinct absence of female characters, but not in a way that says that women shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about difficult things like science. Definitely one for my keeper collection. ( )