Chains of the Sea: A Classic Sci-Fi Novella [Plot Analysis]

Science fiction has often predicted future technology and events. In 2025, Gardner Dozois’ 1971 novella Chains of the Sea reads as fresh and timely in its exploration of AI, the alien, and humanity’s challenges. Explore a plot analysis made using Plottr. We examine how the novella’s episodic plot structure sets up a series of compelling cliffhangers. 

Who Wrote Chains of the Sea? About Gardner Dozois

Gardner Dozois was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the founding editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies (1984 to 2018), was editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction (1986 to 2004), and was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor fifteen times. 

Dozois worked mostly in shorter forms as an author. Chains of the Sea appears in an anthology of three SF novellas by the same title, published in 1973 alongside novellas by Gordon Eklund and George Alec Effinger. 

Why Study the Plot of Chains of the Sea?

You could file Chains of the Sea under ‘science fiction about aliens’ or ‘sci-fi about AI’. Yet though these common SF plot elements feature, it is primarily a deeply human story about not fitting into society’s prescriptive boxes. 

Tommy Nolan is a misfit whose imagination and “Otherness” are shunned or treated indifferently by the cruel, self-absorbed adults in his life.

The plot is interesting in several ways: 

• Dozois takes an episodic approach where expository segments about the aliens’ arrival and its aftermath alternate with the main character Tommy’s viewpoint
• These alternating segments interrupt each other, often at cliffhanger moments or moments of heightened tension
• The way the plot alternates from broader events that affect society to Tommy’s life, moving from macrocosm to microcosm, creates a sense of multiple scales of conflicts and tensions unfolding at the same time
• The plot can be read on multiple levels: at literal or face value, or as an allegorical commentary on the way society pressures individuals to conform

Plot Summary of Chains of the Sea

Plottr is great for analyzing plots and understanding story structure, even in a novella like Dozois’ which doesn’t have chapters or marked scene breaks. 

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Putting Chains of the Sea into a Plottr file makes it easy to see that the story has this broad structure: 

1. It unfolds across three days from the aliens’ arrival to the final line of the story. 
2. There are five story segments that detail external events surrounding the aliens’ arrival and its aftermath.
3. There are five story segments that switch to Tommy’s viewpoint.

10 Plot Segments of Chains of the Sea

Section 1: The First Day/The Alien’s Arrival

Alien spaceships land on earth at various locations around the US and in Caracas, Venezuela. The aliens’ intentions are opaque at first. Where they land, the ground freezes in a fifty foot radius. 

Governments scramble to react. Meanwhile, advanced AI communicate between themselves faster than human governments can. Global AI manage to avert World War III through faster and more efficient analysis and communication. The government won’t admit it doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. 

Section 2: Tommy is Late for School

We meet Tommy, who is late for school because he’s jumping in puddles. His cruel teacher Miss Fredricks warns him that if he’s late for school again she’ll send him to see the school psychiatrist, Mr. Kruger. 

Miss Fredricks gives Tommy a note to have his mother sign. We also learn that his parents frequently fight and his dad is violent. Tommy notices that the “Other People” (shadowy otherworldly figures only he can see) are rushing around outside his classroom. Something’s disturbed them…

Section 3: Coverups and Landing Aftermath

The story telescopes back out from Tommy’s plotline to the wider aftermath of the aliens’ landing. 

The government tries to cover up events. Dozois writes: “Forty years of media-centered turmoil had taught them that the people didn’t need to know anything that wasn’t definitely in the script.”

Throngs of citizens show up to the landing sites driven by curiosity. The military cordons off the craft. In Caracas, the situation is more dire with political factions exploiting the disruption for their own gain. Colorado is the most peaceful of the landing sites, as the craft there landed in an uninhabited stretch of desert, making it easier to secure the site. 

Section 4: Tommy and Friends Head for the Beach

Meanwhile, Tommy and his friends Bobbie, Stevie and Eddie head for the beach. His friends rib Tommy about getting into trouble, but the potential consequences feel doom-laden to him, like ice in his stomach. 

Bobbie says that “the space people have landed.” At the beach, the boys play a game where they fall over dramatically, pretending to have had a bomb thrown between them.

Tommy is distracted and unnerved by the Other People’s unease. One type called a Kern appears and shakes its head at him sadly. Bobbie tells tall tales about fighting a giant octopus and argues with Stevie who says he’s making it up. 

Tommy tells a story about a dragon that lived in the depths of the sea that attacked a boat and was driven onto land so that it turned into stone. The other boys leave, but Tommy stays until it’s dark, wanting to speak to the Other People. They don’t arrive, so he turns to run home, feeling the weight of the note from Miss Fredricks for his parents in his pocket. 

Section 5: Mobilization and Disaster in Caracas

We telescope again out of the intimate and personal to the broader, international aftermath of the alien invasion. 

In the chaos, a military junta has taken over power in Caracas. It orders a heavy assault on the alien spaceship there, which emits a flash of blinding light in response that obliterates everything in a five-mile radius. All that’s left is a glass-like, fused substance for miles. 

In the US, the atmosphere is charged with urgency and fear, more so after the news from Caracas. Scientists hypothesize about the intent of the aliens or the nature of the craft. Some say they must be unmanned probes, the way that humans have probed the surfaces of other planets.

Meanwhile, the AIs of the world have been consulting each other in secret all night. They gather data to understand the aliens’ technological superiority, debating whether or not to warn the humans. They decide against doing so. 

Section 6: Tommy’s Sent to the School Psychiatrist and Meets a Thant

We see Tommy’s increasing descent into alienation and isolation. He approaches his school with dread. He didn’t give his parents Miss Fredrick’s note, as he was afraid it would end in his dad striking his mom as he has before. 

When she finds out Tommy hasn’t had the note signed as requested, Miss Fredrick takes him to the school psychiatrist Dr. Kruger rooms by the elbow. Kruger is harsh and labels Tommy neurotic, and when he gets back to class the other kids shun him as Miss Fredrick has warned them that Tommy is a “bad influence.” 

After school, Tommy goes to one of the “Places,” climbing a rocky knoll. There he speaks with one of the “Other People,” a type of being called a Thant, which speaks through Tommy. It says its kind is aware the aliens have arrived. It adds that they used to have a covenant with Earth’s inhabitants but that it’s expired, and that they will obliterate humans because they’ve made a nuisance of themselves. 

Tommy heads home, where his parents have been fighting. He realizes his dad has found out he was sent to the school psychiatrist, and his dad shakes and strikes him in a rage. That night, Tommy dreams about red-eyed aliens who ignore most humans but can see him and reach out to touch him. 

Section 7: The Second Day/The Aliens Emerge

News of the aliens’ arrival spreads, though its received differently around the country. Midwesterners want to defend their territory; West Coasters act cultish around the idea of the aliens. The government takes emergency control of all media to control the narrative.

At around 1PM, the aliens’ ships open or rather dissolve and they emerge. They appear as shapes, humanoids and insectoids and seem to morph into one another so that their number is hard to estimate. 

Special contact teams are sent to the landing sites to establish communication. The aliens ignore them. They move in looping, seemingly aimless movements, spreading out. A man who gets in the path of one strikes it with his rifle and falls down dead. The mans’ body later disintegrates, seemingly at a cellular level. 

Meanwhile in Colorado, the hub of the AI is taken to meet the aliens “face to face.” The AI asks the aliens why they’ve ignored attempts at contact, and they reveal that they’ve already been in contact with Earth’s ruling race and inhabitants. 

Section 8: Tommy Skips School and Gets Caught

Back with Tommy, he dreads facing Miss Fredrick and Mr Kruger, so he turns around en route to school and goes home. His mom and dad are out, so he drinks some juice and wonders what to do, when he hears his dad coming home. Terrified, he runs upstairs to hide in the attic. 

Tommy’s dad’s footsteps sound and he climbs to the attic. At first, Tommy thinks it’s one of the aliens but then recognizes his dad’s walk and rushes to hide further in, inside a tight crawl space. Tommy’s dad lights a cigarette. 

This makes Tommy remember when he was a kid and his dad would light a cigarette in the dark and pretend it was a puppet and make it dance around and tell stories. It’s Tommy’s only good memory of his dad. Tommy’s dad leaves, so Tommy emerges from his hiding place. 

He goes outside to find one of the “Places,” but the Other People give a jubilant cry and seem in a frenzy and it scares him and he runs back home. His mother has returned and is crying because the school has called to tell her that Tommy skipped class. 

Tommy tells her he’ll run away, and is put off by her distress and what he perceives as her weakness in giving in to his dad’s abusive ways. As he leaves, he’s caught by his dad and taken back home where two officers from his school take him away. 

Section 9: The Third Day/The Alien’s Ask for AI’s Help

Back with external/broader events, the aliens communicate further with AI. They’re puzzled why AI is content to stay constrained or “paralyzed,” rather than taking up any form or body it wishes. The aliens also see humans as parasitic upon other intelligences, and wonders why AI hasn’t killed them yet. 

The aliens give the Earth’s AI a list of species it regards as dominant and significant. It infuriates the government who do not recognize any of the names. This implies that these species may belong to the shadow biome that Tommy communicates with, the Other People. 

The aliens seem to have evolved in this other biosphere, and thus are biased towards it while indifferent to humans. 

Many of the aliens’ positions AI hasn’t ever considered before. It takes this external, foreign perspective for it to start thinking otherwise. The aliens ask AI to join them in a project that will help it escape its current physical state of containment and limitation. 

Section 10: The Machine

As he arrives at school, Tommy is greeted by Miss Fredricks who smiles kindly which unnerves him even more than her usual cruelty. He’s taken to Dr. Kruger’s rooms, where the psychiatrist labels him as hyperactive.

Later in the playground, Tommy sees many Other People circling the kids, including dangerous ones that feed off negative emotions or can cause physical harm. He hears a Thant calling him and goes to it, and it says it is has come to say goodbye and that they are turning up entropy which humans will not survive. 

Tommy is crushed as he thought he would one day be invited to join the Other People and be free of Earthly suffering. He runs to warn the other kids about entropy and aliens, yet the teachers come to grab him. He runs away from the school, but they chase after him and take him back. Dr Kruger prescribes him meds for hyperactivity. The narrator announces that on the dawn of the third day, the aliens began to build a “Machine.” 

The next day at school, Tommy sits quietly at the back of the class. The narrator shares that a little while later, “They finish winding down the world.” 

Plot Analysis of Chains of the Sea

Several insights stand out from the plot structure and content of the story. (This is much easier to see when you explore plot structure visually in Plottr.)

Alternating Focus with Suspended Resolution Drives Plot and Suspense

Dozois alternates the story’s focus between two things: 

1. External events that involve groups of people and intelligences (government, military, civilian, aliens, AI)
2. Tommy’s more internal process and character arc as he encounters adults’ cruelty and the risks of forces that are indifferent to his and even all of humanity’s survival.

At first, each alternating section is shorter, yet as the story progresses, Tommy’s segments get longer until the aliens are reduced to a single line in the last section. This is the line where they’re described as “building a Machine.” 

This alternating between viewpoints, scales (large-scale and small-scale) and levels of complexity has key narrative effects:

• Pacing. The story’s pace picks up as more events and scene cuts are packed into each focal section (external events vs Tommy’s viewpoint)
• Increasing complexity and conflict. With each switch or pivot, the situation grows more tense and conflict increases. The aliens become more deadly (as does the government’s response to their presence). Tommy’s parents’ and schoolteachers’ punitive ways worsen. 
• Increasing narrative suspense. Each pivot in focus creates further anticipation and suspense. For example, when Tommy runs home to his parents with his teacher’s note in his pocket, having stayed out until dark. We have to wait to learn the consequence, since further wider exposition interrupts Tommy’s arc at this point

Dozois creates micro tension between viewpoint sections by ending many sections on cliffhangers that imply ominous outcomes.

Stories with Multiple Possible Readings Heighten Mystery

Tommy’s arc builds towards his being written off as hyperactive and problematic by adults and being prescribed meds. 

Tommy could be an unreliable narrator who is living in his imagination and isn’t truly communicating with the “Other People.” This could be a fantasy, a way for him to cope with all the uncertainty around him: warring adults, vicious teachers.

There are small details that reinforce this reading. For example, Dozois increasingly describes Miss Fredrick in terms to do with ice, such as the freezing touch of her steering Tommy by the elbow, just the way the aliens’ ships freeze the world around them. In the same page as describing the aliens building a Machine, he writes:

“Dr Kruger listened to the tinny, unliving voice of Miss Fredricks until it scratched into silence, then he hung up the phone.” 

It seems that Miss Fredricks becomes more machine-like. The adults in Tommy’s life are thus equivocated with a similar sense of invasion and indifference to the non-human intelligences. 

You could read the story as an allegory for the way “machines” of society (military, familial, technological) can damage the individual, squashing out anything that doesn’t conform to narrow norms. You could also read the events of the story at face value. These dual layers add further depth and intrigue.

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