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A man discovers the planet's destiny in the ocean's depths in this near-future novel by one of the twentieth century's greatest science fiction authors.
In the very near future, humanity has fully harnessed the sea's immense potential, employing advanced sonar technology to control and harvest untold resources for human consumption. It is a world where gigantic whale herds are tended by submariners and vast plankton farms stave off the threat of hunger.
Former space engineer Walter Franklin has been assigned to a submarine patrol. Initially indifferent to his new station, if not bored by his daily routines, Walter soon becomes fascinated by the sea's mysteries. The more his explorations deepen, the more he comes to understand man's true place in nature??and the unique role he will soon play in humanity's future.
A lasting testament to Arthur C. Clarke's prescient and powerful imagination, The Deep Range is a classic work of science fiction that remains deeply relevant to our times.… (more)
JulesJones: Clarke wrote two excellent novels about near-future scientific work with cetaceans. The Deep Range is aimed at an adult audience and considers a future where whales are farmed for meat; Dolphin Island is a young adult novel about work on communicating with dolphins. The themes are related but distinct, but in both Clarke drew on scientific fact and his own experience of diving to create a believable near-future world.… (more)
Typically for Clarke, a complex, humane, and wistful novel. Seasoned spaceman Walter Franklin suffers from extreme astrophobia after a space walk gone awry. He’s reassigned to the Bureau of Whales, which manages the world’s oceans (and ranches the world’s whales) in order to feed humankind. The adjustment and reintegration period is somewhat difficult. During his training, after suffering a psychotic break, Franklin attempts suicide (via a doomed excursion in a minisub), but eventually he recovers. His first family stays on Mars, meaning their paths will not cross again, since his children developed in low gravity conditions and cannot return to Earth, while Franklin’s phobia ensures he must remain terrestrially bound: “To his son, he willingly bequeathed the shoreless seas of space. For himself, the oceans of this world were sufficient.” Much of the novel involves the Bureau’s hunt for a giant squid nicknamed Percy, as well as Franklin’s parallel fascination with an ever-elusive ocean cryptid (possibly some kind of sea serpent), which he never manages to capture or even properly confirm. One suspects this hauntological metaphor is central to the text: the beguiling presence/absence of something living, mysterious, and strange, the very irresolution of which in no small way produces and sustains its appeal. Make what you will of the fatal consequences (for Franklin’s closest friend) of searching after this spectral macguffin. At what cost, the hunting of a snark? By the end of his career, Franklin has become Director of the Bureau of Whales, and the novel changes its focus from accommodating oneself to earthly conditions (however ironically displaced in Franklin’s fundamentally thalassic orientation) to interrogating animal rights in relation to humanity’s Gattungswesen. On the one hand, this seemingly abrupt shift reminds one of the theological dialogues about abortion that emerge in the latter part of A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959). On the other hand, Clarke’s concern regarding the moral standing of the human species (especially when viewed from the putative outside) is perennial in his work: “Within a century or so, we will literally be going outside the solar system. Sooner or later we will meet types of intelligent life much higher than our own, yet in forms completely alien. And when that time comes, the treatment man receives from his superiors may well depend upon the way he has behaved toward the other creatures of his own world.”
Arthur C. Clarkes' book The Deep Range, from the mid 1950's, is another optimistic science-fiction look at Earth's future. Set about 200 years in the future, Clarke sees a unified Earth, sovereign nations being done away with about a century prior to the time this book is set in. The premise is that hunger has been eliminated by a unified world effort of developing the oceans into "fields" of plankton, nurturing herds of whales (as well as other aquatic species) similar to how land based ranches have nurtured cattle. Whales are the main nutrient used to feed mankind as well as using all their parts (blubber, ground bones, etc.). Following the protagonist, Walter Franklin, as he switches his career from being an astronaut to a sea warden, we are brought into the future. We follow his training and though his eyes we learn of how and why the oceans/seas have been cultivated. In the first half of the book, he is guided by Don Burley who begins as his instructor becomes his peer and finally a close family friend - Walter's children call him "Uncle". Through their adventures we learn the beauty and hazards of working the seas. As time goes on we see the warm affinity the men feel towards the beautiful whales they care for. The second half of the book (spoilers) after the death of Don, we follow Walter as he has become a world administrator of the aquatic farms he has cared for over the years. In the second half, we also begin to learn of a push by a world Buddhist leader to lead mankind away from the eating of flesh into vegetarianism. In this section we learn of the darker side of Watler's world. The slaughtering of the sea animals, focusing on the whales. This is a beautiful and optimistic book that probably won't ever happen in real life. I am enjoying my sojourn into the past/future as I read Clarke's early writings. There is a gentleness to his writing during his early period. I highly recommend reading this. Ok... so I do get a kick out of something I find in books like this. The role of women is nearly non-existent. All the scientists and wardens and astronauts are men. In this book he meets a doctoral candidate, Indra, who he marries. By all accounts of her description, she is a driven and brilliant scientist... but get married and becomes a housewife whose job is to keep a comfortable home, raise the children, and support her husband! LOL ( )
It is very sad that the Ocean (which by words of some number guys takes up 72% of Earth surface) receives so little in the department of sci-fi literature. Yes, many stories includes Ocean as a background or even "ground", many uses it as a scenery, some even try to make it alien life from. But how many takes Ocean as a system "environmenthuman"? I'm not talking about scientific papers or longwinded dreams of "what if?", I'm talking about stories where author actually explores situation when person changes ocean and ocean changes person in return.
There is soooo much literature about space exploration, space wars, space romance, space culture clashes... I would really liked to see more like this in the waves of most dangerous and most mesmerizing thing on earth some people having just a hundred meters from their doors right now. ( )
Way back in High School I was able to take a class in Science Fiction. It didn't live up to my expectations, mainly because my expectations were to get graded for simply reading stories, not for quizzes, papers, or any of those other requirements that the teacher tacked onto the class. I did, however, get a nifty little book of science fiction tales, one of which was a short story called "The Deep Range". It was far from my favorite, being essentially a cowboy story with the cows being replaced by whales. Yet, the name stuck in my head after many re-readings of the collection. I had also heard at some point that Mr. Clarke had expanded the short story to novel length. Anyway, at the last library sale, I was perusing the science fiction paperbacks and found this very novel. I bought it, brought it home, and have finally read it. Mr. Clarke has expanded it beyond the cowboy tale, exploring how the oceans might be converted to agriculture. Being slightly more mature, I appreciate his work more than I did in my youth. However, my enjoyment of the book came less from his story and more from his 1950s view of the future. The Deep Range presents a 21st Century where mankind is calmly farming the oceans and peacefully feeding the world. There's no hint of global warming, pollution, or endangered species. Whales are calmly raised and slaughtered, orcas and other predators simply killed when they pose a threat. Also amusing are how little a graduate student wrestles whether to continue her research or pursue an MRS, and how all the world's religions except Buddhism have declined in the face of scientific knowledge. ("And the Mohammedan faith... had suffered additional loss of prestige when the rising Star of David had outshone the pale crescent of the Prophet.") So I guess if you're more of a history buff than a futurist, I'd have to recommend that you check it out. --J. ( )
A man discovers the planet's destiny in the ocean's depths in this near-future novel by one of the twentieth century's greatest science fiction authors.
In the very near future, humanity has fully harnessed the sea's immense potential, employing advanced sonar technology to control and harvest untold resources for human consumption. It is a world where gigantic whale herds are tended by submariners and vast plankton farms stave off the threat of hunger.
Former space engineer Walter Franklin has been assigned to a submarine patrol. Initially indifferent to his new station, if not bored by his daily routines, Walter soon becomes fascinated by the sea's mysteries. The more his explorations deepen, the more he comes to understand man's true place in nature??and the unique role he will soon play in humanity's future.
A lasting testament to Arthur C. Clarke's prescient and powerful imagination, The Deep Range is a classic work of science fiction that remains deeply relevant to our times.
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Το βιβλίο "Οι παράξενες Θάλασσες" (Deep Range) ακολουθεί την καριέρα του πρώην αστροναύτη Walter Franklin στην Υπηρεσία Θαλάσσης, ανεβαίνοντας από ασκούμενο, Διευθυντή του Γραφείου Φαλαινών. Ένα ατύχημα κατά την διάρκεια διαστημικού ταξειδιού είχε αφήσει τον Φράνκλιν να επιπλέει στο διάστημα, εκτός επαφής και απομονωμένος για μεγάλο χρονικό διάστημα. Η προκύπτουσα σοβαρή ακροφοβία (που ονομάζεται αστροφοβία από τον Clarke) τον καθιστά ανίκανο να λειτουργήσει ως αστροναύτης και τον απομόνωσε για πάντα από την οικογένειά του στον Άρη. Αναγκάζεται να γυρίσει στη θάλασσα για μια τελική προσπάθεια αποκατάστασης.
Η Διεύθυνση είναι ένας οργανισμός που βασίζεται στη θάλασσα στα μέσα του 21ου αιώνα και είναι υπεύθυνος για τη διατροφή ενός μεγάλου μέρους του πληθυσμού της Γης μέσω της καλλιέργειας και της συγκομιδής του πλαγκτόν, καθώς και της βοσκής και της σφαγής των φαλαινών. Το Γραφείο Φαλαινών απασχολεί φύλακες οι οποίοι βόσκουν τις αγέλες φαλαινών και τους προστατεύουν από αρπακτικά όρκα και καρχαρίες.
Η αφήγηση χωρίζεται σε τρεις ενότητες.
Το μέρος Ι καλύπτει την εκπαίδευση και την προσαρμογή του Franklin στο νέο του περιβάλλον. Κατά τη διάρκεια της νέας του ζωής γίνεται στενός φίλος του μέντορά του και συναντά τη νέα του σύζυγο. Η επανεμφάνιση της αστροφοβίας του προκαλεί προβλήματα και κάνει απόπειρα αυτοκτονίας. Μια απροσδόκητη διάσωση πείθει τον Φράνκλιν να δεσμευτεί πλήρως στη νέα του ζωή.
Το Μέρος ΙΙ περιγράφει τις εμπειρίες του Φράνκλιν ως βετεράνος φύλακας από το πιο τετριμένο έως το πιο εξωτικό. Ασυνήθιστα υψηλή καταστροφή σπέρματος φάλαινας σε έναν συγκεκριμένο θαλάσσιο τομέα οδηγούν στε ένα τεράστιο γιγαντιαίο καλαμάρι, που ονομάζεται Percy. Ο Φράνκλιν είναι επιφορτισμένος με την εύρεση και σύλληψη του Πέρσι. Μια παρόμοια προσπάθεια αργότερα να συλλάβει το άγνωστο Μέγα Θαλάσσιο Ερπετό εξελίσσεται τραγικά.
Στο Μέρος ΙΙΙ ο Φράνκλιν είναι υπεύθυνος ως Διευθυντής του Γραφείου Φαλαινών. Μέσα στις καθημερινές διοικητικές και επιστημονικές προκλήσεις, το Προεδρείο αντιμετωπίζει απειλή για την ίδια του την ύπαρξη. Ένας βουδιστής μοναχός κάνει μια αξιόπιστη και αποτελεσματική εκστρατεία για να σταματήσει την κατανάλωση φαλαινών, παρόλο που αντιπροσωπεύει το ένα όγδοο του παγκόσμιου εφοδιασμού τροφίμων. Καθώς ο Φράνκλιν αγωνίζεται να αντιμετωπίσει την εκστρατεία, βρίσκει τον εαυτό του αναπόφευκτα να μεταστρέφεται με την άποψη του μοναχού. Μια υποθαλάσσια καταστροφή δίνει στον Φράνκλιν την τελευταία του ευκαιρία να επισκεφτεί τα βάθη που έχει αγαπήσει.
Στο τελευταίο κεφάλαιο ο Φράνκλιν και η σύζυγός του παρακολουθούν τη γλυκόπικρη αναχώρηση του γιου τους στη Διαστημική Υπηρεσία και την επανένωση με την πρώην οικογένειά του στον Άρη: Στον γιο του, κληροδότησε πρόθυμα τις άχρωμες θάλασσες του διαστήματος. Για τον εαυτό του, οι ωκεανοί αυτού του κόσμου ήταν αρκετοί. [Wikipedia, translation from English]
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