Dolphins
Entry updated 4 August 2025. Tagged: Theme.
Dolphins (sometimes conflated with very similar porpoises) have always received special attention from people. The ancient Greeks frequently depicted them as companions to gods (see Gods and Demons), and one of Aesop's fables, "The Ape and the Dolphin", is about a dolphin who rescues a monkey, thinking that it is a boy. Dolphins were also revered in Hindu and Maori culture. In the Renaissance, as dolphins were regularly encountered by global explorers and traders, there were many stories about dolphins rescuing people or guiding sailors through treacherous waters. But a significant event occurred in the 1950s when the multitalented physician John C Lilly (1915-2001) began studying dolphins, attempting to communicate with them and hypothesizing that they might be as Intelligent as humans. His research and writings were widely publicized and led to numerous stories about advanced dolphins, some of them best considered Fantasies even if debatably sf. Sf stories about dolphins generally fall into three categories: unusually intelligent dolphins in the present; dolphins with human intelligence in the future, either due to natural Evolution or artificial means (see Uplift); and similar dolphins in space or on alien worlds.
There was one earlier story featuring intelligent dolphins – Leó Szilárd's "My Trial as a War Criminal" (Fall 1949 University of Chicago Law Review) – in which dolphins take over the world, to everyone's benefit. One work probably inspired by Lilly is Arthur C Clarke's Dolphin Island (1962) in which dolphins save a boy who stowed away on a seafaring vessel before falling overboard and take him to an island where an avuncular Scientist is researching dolphins (see Under the Sea). He succeeds in communicating with the dolphins, discovered to be intelligent, who request humanity's help in dealing with their feared adversaries, the killer whales, who are also intelligent. (Dolphins resurfaced in Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two [1982], wherein the ocean-front home of Heywood Floyd has an inlet for friendly dolphins to visit, one of them given a name by Floyd; Clarke was distressed when told that Peter Hyams's film was omitting the dolphins, and pleased when they were after all retained.) Another novel, Robert Merle's Un animal doué de raison (1967; trans Helen Weaver as The Day of the Dolphin 1969), involves a scientist who teaches dolphins language (see Linguistics), hoping to employ them as spies; the film The Day of the Dolphin (1973) is loosely based on the novel.
In Gordon R Dickson's "Dolphin's Way" (June 1964 Analog), Aliens choose to make contact with Earth's dolphins, not humans. At least four stories describe babies who are raised by dolphins in a manner recalling the ape upbringing of Tarzan: Roy Meyers's Dolphin Boy (1967) and its sequels; Karen Hesse's The Music of Dolphins (1996); one version of Aquaman's origin story, reporting that he was brought up by a dolphin named Pomm, who later became his advisor; and the animated series Tarzan and the Super 7 (1979-1980), featuring an aquatic Superhero, Moray, a woman raised by dolphins. In Margaret St Clair's The Dolphins of Altair (1967), humans and dolphins are both the descendants of aliens who once agreed to live in harmony, but human destruction of the environment prompts some humans and dolphins – who are telepathic (see Psi Powers) – to take action.
Robert Silverberg's "Ishmael in Love" (July 1970 F&SF) is about a dolphin who falls in love with a woman, while a woman falls in love with a dolphin in Ted Mooney's Easy Travel to Other Planets (1981). John Boyd's "The Girl and the Dolphin" (March 1973 Galaxy) centres on a girl who talks to dolphins, while Derek Bickerton's King of the Sea (1979) is a fable about Communication with dolphins. Manú Dornbierer's Memorias de un delfín ["Memories of a Dolphin"] (2009) describes a dolphin with a human brain. In Douglas Adams's The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), intelligent dolphins, realizing that Earth is about to be destroyed, all decide to leave the planet, sending as their final message "So long, and thanks for all the fish". Madeleine L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light (1980) includes a character in telepathic contact with a dolphin, while Ken Grimwood's Into the Deep (1995) involves advanced dolphins who have cut off contact with people, though some seek to renew the relationship. In Peter Macey's Stationary Orbit (1974), purported alien contact turns out to be with one of Earth's dolphins. The Australian television series Dolphin Cove (1989) features a scientist who is attempting to communicate with dolphins and discovers that his daughter has formed a telepathic bond with two dolphins. One of John Vornholt's contribution to James Gurney's Dinotopia series, Dolphin Watch (1997), involves humans interacting with friendly dolphins. Zheng Wenguang's "Haitun zhi Shen"["God of the Dolphins"] (original date and venue unknown) is about scientists trying to interpret the language of dolphins, while in Mark Grumley's Breakthrough (2013) it is discovered that dolphins are intelligent and can communicate with humans. Joe Boudreault's The Dolphin Code (2018) is about a boy who detects a message to humans sent by dolphins through their songs.
William C Anderson's novels Penelope (1963) and Penelope, the Damp Detective (1974) are about the eponymous talking female dolphin. While the Videogame Dolphin (1983) features a dolphin trying to escape from a giant squid, a better known dolphin game is Ecco the Dolphin (1992), wherein a heroic dolphin, searching for his missing pod, confronts aliens, visits the sunken city of Atlantis, and engages in Time Travel; this game spawned four sequels (1994; 1995; 1995; 2000). In the universe of Pokémon, one of the many Pokémon, the aquatic Palafin, resembles a dolphin. And two films (1963, 1996) and two series (1964-1967, 1995-2000), all named Flipper, involve the preternaturally intelligent pet dolphin of a young man; there was also a sequel to the first film, Flipper's New Adventure (1964). An Australian animated series with the same story line, Flipper and Lopaka (1999-2005), included fantastic elements. (There are many otherwise realistic novels and films featuring dolphins that seem more intelligent than actual dolphins, but it is difficult to regard them as sf stories. Flipper is mentioned here as a representative example.)
Moving into the future, the series SeaQuest DSV (1993-1996), renamed SeaQuest 2032 for its final season, involved the adventures of the crew members of an advanced submarine in 2018 (later 2032) who are assisted by an intelligent dolphin named Darwin. In William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" (May 1981 Omni), filmed as Johnny Mnemonic (1995), a dolphin named Jones is employed to unlock the secrets in the titular courier's brain. Alexander Jablokov's A Deeper Sea (1992) involves a future scientist who transforms dolphins into militarized Cyborgs; they eventually travel into space. (Dolphins as weapons also figure in Joe Poyer's Operation Malacca [1968]). Polly Holyoke's The Neptune Project (2013; vt The Neptune Conspiracy 2014) and its sequels are about a young woman in a Dystopian future (who has been Genetically Engineered to live in water) and her intelligent dolphin friends, with whom she communicates telepathically. In Mark Wandrey's Black and White (2019), aliens visiting Earth in the future discover that whales and dolphins have a complex language. The complicated future of Tricia Sullivan's Lethe (1995) includes a young woman adapting to oceanic life who bonds with psychic dolphins. David Brin's Startide Rising (1983) and its sequels depict a future Earth that has Uplifted chimpanzees (see Apes as Human) and dolphins to be intelligent, and several dolphins serve on the crew of a starship. A dolphin also serves on Halo Jones's spaceship in Alan Moore's Comic The Ballad of Halo Jones (July 1984-April 1986 2000 AD), with another later appearing as the Terran Minister for Peace and shown as morally superior to humanity. A crew of dolphins headed by a sperm whale runs a watery spaceship in Hideyuki Furuhashi's authorized addition to E E Smith's Lensman saga, Samurai Lensman (2001). And in the distant future of Brian W Aldiss's The Long Afternoon of Earth (February-December 1961 F&SF; fixup 1962; exp vt Hothouse 1962) evolved dolphins called sodals are now the smartest creatures on a dying Earth.
On other worlds, the dolphin Bastard John is a villainous aquatic police officer in China Miéville's The Scar (2002), and people search for a green dolphin to add to the Oz zoo in March Laumer's The Green Dolphin of Oz (1978). Intelligent, telepathic dolphins are part of Larry Niven's Known Space universe, and similar "space dolphins," also telepathic and capable of traveling through space, were first encountered by members of the Justice League of America and have returned several times in DC Comics. Three stories have Earth's dolphins migrating to other worlds: in Alan Dean Foster's Cachalot (1980), all of Earth's cetaceans, including dolphins, gained greater intelligence before they were transported to a water world; in Nicholas Stuart Gray's The Wardens of the Weir (1978), dolphins have been transported to a faraway planet to escape the harmful effects of people; and Anne McCaffrey's Pern tales Dragonsdawn (1988), "The Dolphins' Bell" (in The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall coll 1993), and The Dolphins of Pern (1994) describe the dolphins who were brought to the planet Pern and can talk to people. In David Mason's The Deep Gods (1973), humans and dolphins live in harmony on an alien world. Judy Mays's Meri (2018) and related novels involve "dols" (dolphins) on an alien planet who have left their world in Spaceships. Somewhat intelligent dolphins are found on the water world Maui-Covenant in Dan Simmons's Hyperion (1989).
Sf dolphin stories that do not fit into these categories include Lloyd Abbey's The Last Whales (1989), in which ordinary whales and dolphins are surviving in the oceans of a world beset with Disaster, and Torsten Krol's The Dolphin People (2006), wherein some Germans seek to persuade Amazonian natives that they are the descendants of dolphins. In Terry Pratchett's Alternate History Nation (2009), natives on a Pacific island believe – apparently, correctly – that human bodies thrown into the sea turn into dolphins; Prince also wrote a song, "Dolphin" (released on The Gold Experience, 1995), imagining that he will be Reincarnated as a dolphin. Theodore Sturgeon's "Accidentally on Porpoise" (in The Ultimate Egoist, Volume I: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, coll 1995) is the confusing story of a sailor washed overboard who imagines that he has turned into a porpoise before he is rescued. Steve Walker's Radio play "The Dolphinarium" (1 January 1996 Radio 4) involves an effort to exterminate dolphins in order to turn people into Automata. There is also a superhero named Dolphin, a girl given aquatic powers by aliens, though she was rebooted as a citizen of Atlantis.
It is surprising that writers almost unanimously express admiration and affection for dolphins of all kinds even though humans rarely have personal interactions with them, unlike other animals usually depicted sympathetically such as Cats and Dogs. Perhaps it is because they are perceived correctly as benign, altruistic animals, although the evolutionary accident of their having faces that seem to be smiling, and their charming performances in aquatic shows, may also be part of the explanation. [GW]
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