The novel “The Wind Whales of Ishmael” by Philip J. Farmer was published for the first time in 1971.

Ishmael is the only survivor of the whaler Pequod but fate seems to mock him because he gets sucked into a space-time crack that takes him to a place that seems totally alien to him. There are humans while the oceans seem to have vanished, resulting in ships and animals floating in the air.

The red sun is one of the clues that Ishmael ended up in the distant future. He meets Namalee, a woman who is herself a castaway and teaches him her people’s language and customs. He discovers that the few humans still living on Earth are divided into cities at war with each other. He ends up involved in an adventure full of dangers of various kinds to help Namalee recover the sacred idols stolen from her city.