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The Jonah Kit
Ian Watson
Gollancz Collectors Edition paperback, 221 pages, £9.99
Review by Steven Blake (2002) 

Originally published in 1975, this is another entry in Gollancz’s bewildering SF and fantasy reissue series. They have three of them. The SF and Fantasy Masterworks are named clearly enough, though we’re not sure why some of the SF Masterworks are hardback and some not. But this SF Collectors’ Edition stuff is dubious. Is this ‛collector’ in the sense of ‛completist’? Or are these books so good that each one is especially collectable, beyond the status of a mere Masterwork? I can’t work out which set of books is meant to be more important or better, why we should use one over the other. And really there are so many that they are just reissues. Cheaply made and dressed up as larger sized paperbacks so that Gollancz can charge more for the few hundred (?) copies they expect to sell, in an attempt to squeeze extra value out of books they already have the rights to? The cover is cheap too, just a picture of a whale. It looks like clip art.

So onto the novel, then, which was Ian Watson’s second. (Or the second published. The Jonah Kit may not be Watson’s second book at all, he’s published so many.)

We begin with a whale swimming about under the sea. The whale wants to see the sky and swims to the surface to take in the view. Can whales actually see the sky? Do whales have a concept of sky? Had it not been for the stupid spoiler on the back cover I would have feared a talking animal book. The plot point here is that the whale is fond of the sky, and has vague memories of hot whale sex outside, at night. And also of life inside a submarine. Fortunately Watson dots about, and we visit a Russian project that’s investigating methods of exploiting the oceans, economically as well as for the usual militaristic reasons. (Back in 1975 this may not have been written about much, for all I know.) Down in Japan there’s a missing boy who seems to think he’s an astronaut. And in Mexico a mad scientist type has stumbled onto some real universe-shaking stuff.

The SF ideas are excellent. The story’s good and ultimately about communication, about people talking to each other – in 1975 the Cold War was still going. The characterisation’s good too, but while The Jonah Kit is very well-written in some ways it feels too long. The first half drags slightly. Or maybe I was just upset by the inclusion of a whale. 

One word of caution. Don’t look at the back cover. I know The Jonah Kit has been published before, but why has the back cover text been written with the assumption that you’ve read the book before? I hadn’t. The back cover blows the suspense. Had I not been sent this to review, after reading the cover I probably wouldn’t have read the book at all. That shouldn’t be taken to mean that The Jonah Kit is rubbish, but it is written a bit like a thriller and it does rely on you not knowing the ending.

Only the third Ian Watson book I’ve read, but I’ll be reading more.