Thalassa is also the watery planet on which Arthur C. Clarke's The Songs of Distant Earth is based. The planet is a vast ocean with only three small islands on which settlers have been seeded by ships sent out by a doomed Earth. The three islands have a silly rivalry, nothing serious. It sort of resembles that of Norway and Sweden, or the United States and Canada, in that they crack jokes about each other and pretend to hate each other but are essentially friends.