I find any conversation about dolphins and science fiction that neglects David Brin's "Startide Rising" [1] to be criminally negligent. It was even published in the Cold War (1983). Such a wonderful book if you haven't read it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startide_Rising

Ditto Larry Niven's "World of Ptavvs". Written in our Cold War, set within a future Cold War between Earth and Belt and a final act that is actually described as pure Dolphin.

And completely agree on Startide Rising. The first time I saw Dolphins in the wild I was could not help but think of ST's beautiful haiku-like Dolphin poetry

And the Greatwinter Trilogy by Sean Mcmullen. How can you go wrong with librarians, cetaceans, and massively parallel organic computing.

This is the 2nd of a series of 3 articles:

Part 1: https://wearethemutants.com/2018/07/03/days-of-the-dolphin-c...

Part 2: https://wearethemutants.com/2018/07/18/days-of-the-dolphin-c...

Part 3: https://wearethemutants.com/2018/07/19/days-of-the-dolphin-c...