Fluke

Read from Tuesday, June 14th to Friday, June 17th.

Fluke, by Christopher Moore.  I have read a bunch of books by Moore, and I always pleasantly enjoy his crazy, wacky humor.  My dad recommended this book a few years ago, and I finally got around to reading it.  Fluke is over the top, but funny.

Fluke is the story of a team of whale researchers in Hawaii.  Nate is a somewhat famous expert on the humpback whale song, but he is still frustrated by his inability to decipher the true reason for the song.  He is also frustrated by a few failed marriages and his new crush on Amy, the sexy research assistant who is much younger.  Clay, Nate's partner, is a whale photographer that is quite good-natured and optimistic.  There is also Kona, a rastafarian white guy from New Jersey.  He is a pothead, and dense, but ultimately is very loyal and unknowingly perceptive.

Things start getting weird when Nate sees a whale tail that says 'bite me.'  He thinks he is going crazy, and the photo he took disappears.  Then, their research lab is broken into and destroyed, and one of their boats sunk.  The team suspects other characters on the island, like a Navy captain looking for a place to test missiles underwater, and a government stool working to get whaling made legal again.  In the water, Clay gets close enough to take a picture of that strange whale, and then he hears people talking, and then he is knocked unconscious.  Amy dives down very, very deep, holding her breath for a long time, and rescues Clay.

Shortly after, Nate follows this whale, trying to get a good picture.  He goes into the water in order to get the ID, but he is swallowed by the whale!  Here is where you have to suspend reality.  Amy disappears soon thereafter, and Clay finds out she rowed away in the night.  Of course, Clay and Kona are very upset on land, but they soon learn after the funeral, that there is a way to decipher the whale song in a binary code, corresponding to the peaks and troughs of the wavelengths.  They find messages encoded, one mentioning that Nate and Amy are all right.  On land, they set up a rescue mission, buying a boat and crew and finding out more about the underwater signals. 

Nate awakes in the belly of the whale.  There are two other humans there, and though small and cramped, it is like a submarine.  It is piloted by two 'whaley-boys,' creatures that look half-human and half-whale, and tap into the central nervous system of the whale ship and control everything.  The humans, we learn, were both eaten by the whale many years ago, and they love being pilots in the ship.  Nate is transferred over to another whale, this one blue, and speaks with many other human captives.  They are all very grateful for being saved by the whale, and they take Nate to a gigantic subterranean city called 'Goo-ville.'  Everything is controlled by the Goo, which is a giant, living, prehistoric organism that surrounds the city, and is the city.  It adapts to whatever needs the inhabitants have.  Literally, the walls and furniture are alive.  Nate is surprised by Amy, (who has sex with him a lot), and finds out she is originally from the city, and sent above to spy on Nate so he doesn't find out too much about the whale song.  Amy is really the daughter of Amelia Earhart, and people hardly ever age due to the healing power of the Goo.  Nate also meets the Colonel, who is the human leader of the city.  The Colonel is actually an old biologist colleague of Nate who disappeared many years ago. 

The Colonel wanted Nate brought in alive because he wanted help with his plan.  He wants to destroy the Goo completely, hopefully by blowing it up with nuclear bombs.  The Goo has been living underwater for millions of years, and it is highly adaptable through its genes.  It is only recently that it became aware of human activity on the surface because of whaling.  That is when it created the whale ships and the whaley-boys.  According to the Colonel, there is a war about to break out between humans and the Goo, and it is a war between genes and memes.  Humans have mastered the ability to replicate ideas among the population (memes), and the Goo wants to destroy that.  Nate refuses to help, and only wants to escape, but he becomes forcibly held by the city.  The Colonel is executed, and Nate is only spared through help from Amy.  Finally they are rescued by Clay, who arrives just in time.  However, Amy cannot leave the city, she cannot be away from the Goo for a long time.  She will now become leader of the city. Clay and Nate return to Hawaii, and Nate finally learned what the whale song did; it was a prayer for fish and food, and it had the ability to create krill out of regular sea water. 

Like all that Moore writes, this story is fun, interesting, with lots of crude humor.  One of the more memorable parts is when Nate's wife at the time, went on a whaling expedition, but got caught up in a mating, and the male whale though the ship was a female whale, and, well, you get the picture.  After her experience with those gigantic 'creatures,' she became a lesbian.  It is also a fascinating and creative story, and a light-hearted read.  I also recommend Lamb and Fool.  Three and a half out of five stars.