Den här scenen från Ursula K. Le Guins Himmelens svarv är en bra match:
Ch. 9:
The crowd bumped around the pair, some stopping to watch, others pressing on toward the Palace of Sport. “This is a Citizen’s Arrest, passersby please take notice!” the tall man was saying in a piercing, nervous tenor. “This man, Harvey T. Gonno, is ill with an incurable malignant abdominal cancer but has concealed his whereabouts from the authorities and continues to live with his wife. My name is Ernest Ringo Marin, of 2624287 South West Eastwood Drive, Sunny Slopes Subdivision, Greater Portland. Are there ten witnesses?” One of the witnesses helped hold the feebly struggling criminal, while Ernest Ringo Marin counted heads. Orr escaped, pushing head-down through the crowd, before Marin administered euthanasia with the hypodermic gun worn by all adult citizens who had earned their Civic Responsibility Certificate. He himself wore one. It was a legal obligation.
Huvudpersonen rör sig inte genom världar, utan snarare redigerar han världen när han drömmer. Men det finns frekventa havslivsanalogier, särskilt havssköldpaddor och maneter.
Ch. 1 (öppnande stycken):
Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.
What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?
Det är en ganska kort roman som första gången publicerades 1971.