Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

by Christopher Moore

Overview

Just why do humpback whales sing? That's the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.

Trouble is, Nate's beginning to wonder if he hasn't spent just a little too much time in the sun. 'Cause no one else on his team saw a thing — not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (né Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot — and his research facility is trashed — Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.

By turns witty, irreverent, fascinating, puzzling, and surprising, Fluke is Christopher Moore at his outrageous best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060566685
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/15/2004
Series:	Harper Perennial
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	88,739
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Christopher Moore is the author of thirteen previous novels, including Lamb, The Stupidest Angel, Fool, Sacré Bleu, and A Dirty Job. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Hometown:

Hawaii and San Francisco, California

Date of Birth:

August 5, 1958

Place of Birth:

Toledo, Ohio

Website:

http://www.chrismoore.com

Read an Excerpt

Fluke

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By Christopher Moore

HarperLargePrint

Copyright © 2007 Christopher Moore
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061252976

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Chapter One

Big and Wet.
Next Question?

Amy called the whale punkin.

He was fifty feet long, wider than a city bus, and weighed eighty thousand pounds. One well-placed slap of his great tail would reduce the boat to fiberglass splinters and its occupants to red stains drifting in the blue Hawaiian waters. Amy leaned over the side of the boat and lowered the hydrophone down on the whale. "Good morning, punkin," she said.

Nathan Quinn shook his head and tried not to upchuck from the cuteness of it, of her, while surreptitiously sneaking a look at her bottom and feeling a little sleazy about it. Science can be complex. Nate was a scientist. Amy was a scientist, too, but she looked fantastic in a pair of khaki hiking shorts, scientifically speaking.

Below, the whale sang on, the boat vibrated with each note. The stainless rail at the bow began to buzz. Nate could feel the deeper notes resonate in his rib cage. The whale was into a section of the song they called the "green" themes, a long series of whoops that sounded like an ambulance driving through pudding. A less trained listener might have thought that the whale was rejoicing, celebrating, shouting howdy to the world to let everyone and everything know that he was alive and feeling good, butNate was a trained listener, perhaps the most trained listener in the world, and to his expert ears the whale was saying -- Well, he had no idea what in the hell the whale was saying, did he? That's why they were out there floating in that sapphire channel off Maui in a small speedboat, sloshing their breakfasts around at seven in the morning: No one knew why the humpbacks sang. Nate had been listening to them, observing them, photographing them, and poking them with sticks for twenty-five years, and he still had no idea why, exactly, they sang.

"He's into his ribbits," Amy said, identifying a section of the whale's song that usually came right before the animal was about to surface. The scientific term for this noise was "ribbits" because that's what they sounded like. Science can be simple.

Nate peeked over the side and looked at the whale that was suspended head down in the water about fifty feet below them. His flukes and pectoral fins were white and described a crystal-blue chevron in the deep blue water. So still was the great beast that he might have been floating in space, the last beacon of some long-dead space-traveling race -- except that he was making croaky noises that would have sounded more appropriate coming out of a two-inch tree frog than the archaic remnant of a superrace. Nate smiled. He liked ribbits. The whale flicked his tail once and shot out of Nate's field of vision.

"He's coming up," Nate said.

Amy tore off her headphones and picked up the motorized Nikon with the three-hundred-millimeter lens. Nate quickly pulled up the hydrophone, allowing the wet cord to spool into a coil at his feet, then turned to the console and started the engine.

Then they waited.

There was a blast of air from behind them and they both spun around to see the column of water vapor hanging in the air, but it was far, perhaps three hundred meters behind them -- too far away to be their whale. That was the problem with the channel between Maui and Lanai where they worked: There were so many whales that you often had a hard time distinguishing the one you were studying from the hundreds of others. The abundance of animals was a both a blessing and a curse.

"That our guy?" Amy asked. All the singers were guys. As far as they knew anyway. The DNA tests had proven that.

"Nope."

There was another blow to their left, this one much closer. Nate could see the white flukes or blades of his tail under the water, even from a hundred meters away. Amy hit the stop button on her watch. Nate pushed the throttle forward and they were off. Amy braced a knee against the console to steady herself, keeping the camera pointed toward the whale as the boat bounced along. He would blow three, maybe four times, then fluke and dive. Amy had to be ready when the whale dove to get a clear shot of his flukes so he could be identified and cataloged. When they were within thirty yards of the whale, Nate backed the throttle down and held them in position. The whale blew again, and they were close enough to catch some of the mist. There was none of the dead fish and massive morning-mouth smell that they would have encountered in Alaska. Humpbacks didn't feed while they were in Hawaii.

The whale fluked and Amy fired off two quick frames with the Nikon.

"Good boy," Amy said to the whale. She hit the lap timer button on her watch.

Nate cut the engine and the speedboat settled into the gentle swell. He threw the hydrophone overboard, then hit the record button on the recorder that was bungee-corded to the console. Amy set the camera on the seat in front of the console, then snatched their notebook out of a waterproof pouch.

"He's right on sixteen minutes," Amy said, checking the time and recording it in the notebook. She wrote the time and the frame numbers of the film she had just shot. Nate read her the footage number off the recorder, then the longitude and latitude from the portable GPS (global positioning system) device. She put down the notebook, and they listened. They weren't right on top of the whale as they had been before, but they could hear him singing through the recorder's speaker. Nate put on the headphones and sat back to listen.

That's how field research was. Moments of frantic activity followed by long periods of waiting ...

Continues...

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Excerpted from Fluke by Christopher Moore Copyright © 2007 by Christopher Moore. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Part 1	The Song	1
Part 2	Jonah's People	117
Part 3	The Source	203
	Author's Notes	313
	Acknowledgments	319

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Biologist Nate Quinn is obsessed with one question: Why do humpback whales sing? All his research in the waters off Maui revolves around his quest to find the answer. He's got help: His loyal partner, photographer Clay Demodocus; his attractive new research assistant, Amy Earhart; Kona, a wanna-be Rastafarian with a knack for intuitive leaps of scientific thinking (even while stoned); a dotty old benefactress; and a ragtag cast of deep-sea divers, fellow scientists, an ex-wife and her girlfriend.

Everything's going swimmingly for Quinn until he spots the strangest thing. Is he losing it, or did he see the words "Bite Me" on a whale's tail? He snaps a picture, but when the film comes back the crucial frame is missing. Quinn gets even more confused when his benefactress, Elizabeth, tells him she got a phone call from a whale, who'd like a hot pastrami and Swiss on rye. Huh?

One afternoon, while trying again to get the "Bite Me" on film, Quinn is swallowed by the "Bite Me" whale, which isn't really a whale at all, but a whale-like ship piloted by humanoid whale-creature (whaley boys) and occupied by thousands of other humans.

While his friends mourn his death, Quinn is spirited from one whale ship to another, and finally to "Gooville," where much is revealed to Quinn. Inextricably imbedded in the science he's so doggedly pursued his whole career, Quinn finds magic. Eventually, he returns to life on top of the sea, instead of beneath it, but nothing ever looks quite the same again.

Topics for Discussion

1. Is the thrill of discovery what motivates scientists to stick to their work, day after day?


2. Sexuality is a prominenttheme in the book. Did you find the sexuality of the whaley boys offensive? Funny? Do you think it's a commentary on traditional human sexual mores?


3. The author has a very distinct writing style, especially when it comes to dialogue and his characters' tendency for flip banter, even in the midst of serious conversations and situations. Do you find this treatment distracting, or humorous?


4. Did this book make you think? What are some of the questions it raised for you?


5. Did this book make you laugh? Is the author's unique sense of humor one that you can appreciate? Do you like Moore's writing style?


6. Do you think Moore is delivering an effective message about conservation? Has this book inspired you to change your actions? Or was a concern for the environment one of the things that drew you to the book in the first place?


7. What do you know about male-female roles in other animal populations? Are human gender roles in line with those of our fellow creatures? And are societal changes in the last several decades something we can attribute to evolution?

About the author

Christopher Moore is the author of Fluke, Lamb, Practical Demonkeeping, Coyote Blue, Bloodsucking Fiends, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove.

Editorial Reviews

For all his paranoia-fueled plotting, which escalates to the level of a threat to virtually everything on the planet, Mr. Moore takes his whales seriously. His Author's Notes at the end of the book address conservation issues and suggest ways the reader can help. — Janet Maslin

The New York Times

Moore is probably the funniest writer of comic fantasy novels working today. — Paul Di Filippo

The Washington Post

From Jonah to Pinocchio, men have dreamed of stowing away alive in the bellies of whales. Nate Quinn experiences this doubtful honor in Moore's outrageous new novel (after Lamb). Nate studies whales, operating a small research unit in Lahaina in Maui along with Clay Demodocus, a famous undersea photographer, and two seasonal hires: Amy Earheart, supposedly a grad student from Woods Hole Institute, and Kona, a dreadlocked Hawaiian stoner. When Nate spots a humpback whale with "Bite Me" tattooed on a tail fluke, mysterious disasters start to strike. Then Nate, out with Amy, is swallowed by the tattooed humpback. Technically, this is impossible, nature having created narrow throats for humpback whales, but the tattooed one is a living ship, a simulacrum of a humpback run by a crew of humans and "whaley boys"-human/ whale cross breeds. Nate learns that they were designed by the Goo. (The Goo is a giant, intelligent organism that evolved undersea billions of years ago and has lately been spying on humans with fleets of false whales.) The whale ships dock in Gooville, an underwater city populated by supposedly drowned humans and horny whaley boys on shore leave. The place is run by the "Colonel," Nate's old teacher, "Growl" Ryder. Nate runs into Amy and helps foil the Colonel's mad plan to destroy the Goo. Meanwhile, Clay and Kona plan to come to Nate's rescue. Moore is endlessly inventive in his description of the rubbery, watery world of Goo, and his characters are perfectly calibrated, part credible human beings and part clever caricatures. This cetacean picaresque is no fluke-it is a sure winner. (June) Forecast: Moore's wacky fantasia may not be for everyone, but Morrow is ensuring that it reach the maximum number of readers possible, with a 16-city author tour and a major ad/promo campaign. Cult classic? Could be. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Ever since introducing us to a salt-munching genie a decade ago (Practical Demonkeeping), Moore has been a little offplumb. Here, in the second part of Fluke, he presents an organic, macrobiotic cosmos called "Goo," located some 600 feet below ocean surface off the coast of Chile, populated by "whaley-boys" (don't ask), historical personages and researchers captured when they start to figure out the "meaning" of whale song. In Part 1, we meet some such researchers who meet with one calamity after another until their leader is captured by a "whale-ship" (looks like a whale, acts like a whale, isn't a whale) when he starts to crack code and is taken to "Gootown," where he finds a long-believed-dead former professor changed into the megalomaniac "Colonel" who believes the world headed for a war of Genes (the "Goo") and Memes (the rest of us) and wants his Goo fiefdom destroyed. World-saving (two worlds, really) is in order. Sound complicated? Yes, but this is still one funny sociopolitical-scientific-cultural fable. For most popular collections.-Robert E. Brown, Minoa Lib., NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The culture of cetacean research is cheerfully lampooned in this antic seventh novel from the Tom Robbins/Douglas Adams-like author of Lamb (2002) and other gag-filled romps. The setting is the coast of Maui, where marine biologist Nathan Quinn, his associate Clay Demodocus, and lissome research assistant Amy Earhart are studying the "songs" of humpback whales. The tone is breezy, and the plot quickly fishtails into agreeable absurdity. Rude invective is detected on the thrashing flukes of a frequently sighted specimen. "Old Broad" resident Elizabeth Robinson claims to communicate with whales (one requests a pastrami-on-rye sandwich). "Ersatz Hawaiian" boathand "Kona" is jailed (after Quinn's office is vandalized), and narrowly escapes the amorous attentions of a gigantic Samoan detainee. So it goes. Clay and Amy become disconnected from their boat during a dive and are feared lost. Nathan is "eaten by a giant whale ship," reluctantly bonds with a super-race of piscatorial mutants, meets "the mysterious overlord of an undersea city," and eventually learns-from a radically transformed old acquaintance-what all the singing is really about. Few readers will be surprised to learn that all this is (rather stagily) thematically related to the integrity of the ecosystem and the punishments nature is storing up for humans who have slaughtered whales and otherwise traduced the natural order. Moore is far from at his best when thus veering into sermon mode, but he's a facile, entertaining writer, and has infectious fun hacking away at such targets as Canadian hockey violence, "whale huggers," the US Navy's shortsighted appropriation of oceanic resources for covert tests and experiments, cetaceansexual peccadilloes, supertankers, and a whole lot more. Smooth as a pi-a colada, and just about as substantial. Still: let Moore be Moore, and he will show you a good time. Agent: Nicholas Ellison/Nicholas Ellison Agency. Author tour

Kirkus Reviews