The Dragon in the Sea (1955)

Herbert, of course, is a science fiction writer famous for Dune and its sequels, an epic tale of an extreme environment where its people wear special suits to preserve and reclaim every bit of water. The oceans of our Earth are also extreme environments, one few science fiction authors have mined, despite it being about as forbidding and unknown a place for exploration as the moon. Before this, the only such novels I'd read in the genre were by Arthur C. Clarke, such as his novel Deep Range. The New York Times review compared it to tales of the sea by C.S. Forester and Herman Wouk. This does have a feel more of a book like Clancy's The Hunt for Red October than Clarke's The Deep Range.

This was first published in 1955 under the title Dragon in the Sea (an allusion to the "Book of Revelations") and it is science fiction, dealing with a near future (for us now an alternate future) where oil is running out in the midst of a war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Small four-man "subtugs" have been stealing into the East to steal oil--but now they've been disappearing, sleeper agents are suspected, and crew are going insane. So Lt. John Ramsey of BuPsych is sent aboard one of the subtugs, replacing a member of the crew who had gone insane to find out what's causing the problems. Thus the title given to other editions of the book, including mine, "Under Pressure." It's a good book, well worth reading--better than the later Dune sequels, even if not as far as I'm concerned as memorable and groundbreaking as the first in that series. ( )

an amazingly written book. being that the main character is a psychologist it sounds like herbert must've studied human habits for months to be able to make this book as good as it is. ( )

Everyone know Frank Herbert as the author of [b:Dune|234225|Dune (Dune Chronicles #1)|Frank Herbert|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172968533s/234225.jpg|3634639] but a lot of people don't know that he wrote a number of other excellent novels. [b:The Dragon in the Sea|89552|The Dragon Revenant (Deverry, Book 4)|Katharine Kerr|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171161877s/89552.jpg|2135974] is a science-fiction submarine-battle psychological thriller. It was written in the 1950s and for the most part it stands the test of time. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the modern submarine-battle thrillers like Das Boot and The Hunt for Red October owe it a debt. It's not just a battle story, it's also a compelling depiction of the ways men function in conditions of pressure and uncertainty. Psychology geeks who know a little Freud and Jung will probably get more enjoyment out of this book. Some of the psych theories might seem a little silly and dated now.The audio version is narrated by Scott Brick. I think he overacts some of the narration, and he gets the accent of one of the crewmembers wrong, but overall he does a good job. ( )

Ten years before Frank Herbert launched himself into the SF stratosphere with Dune, he published his first novel, The Dragon In The Sea (1955), a debut good enough to garner him an International Fantasy Award. Despite the accolades, future publishers saw fit to rename and desecrate the title of the novel, calling it both Under Pressure and 21st Century Sub. The latter concocted title, much rarer in circulation than the former, has become a minor collectible among hardcore Herbert or SF enthusiasts. While I've never been a hardcore SF fan, I have been hardcorely obsessed with Frank Herbert since I was a tot, and so spent low double digits of dollars one day to obtain a much-less-than-in-mint condition, cheap looking piece of crap with a Scotch-taped spine holding it together, not to mention its creases and tears and yellowed pages, copy of a book I already had two other copies of, only the two other copies, of course, were titled Under Pressure and The Dragon In The Sea. I wouldn't make a big deal over this renaming debacle except the phrase, "the dragon in the sea," ties into the plot of the novel as Frank Herbert intended it to, while the phrases, "under pressure" -- ubiquitous descriptor for any crew aboard any U.S. nuclear sub in Soviet waters -- and "21st century sub," do not.

Herbert made a career out of inserting individuals into some of the most brutal and inhospitable environments imaginable. In The Dosadi Experiment (1977), he placed billions on an experimental planet about the size of Rhode Island, or thereabouts, in order to comment on the consequences of overpopulation; while in The Jesus Incident (co-authored with Bill Ransom, 1979), sequel to the hard science of Destination: Void (1966), the latter written concurrently as Clarke's 2001, A Space Odyssey (1968), we see the horrifying results of an exploratory spacecraft, mutiny'd by a rogue computer intent not on the flight crew's destruction, but "WorShip". The computer, cousin to the iconic HAL, apparently, but not quite as murderous, though a tad more megalomaniacal with its God complex, decides nevertheless to deposit its helpless crew in another inescapably bizarre and barren environment (the bleak, depressing setting for The Jesus Incident) dominated by brain sucking, slug-like creatures (has the collective effect of computers sucked our brains dry to the point that we "WorShip" technology's "genius," perhaps Herbert was prognosticating in his icky, though imaginative, social commentary?) and other nefarious brain-imbibing creatures intent on gaining access to mankind's innards through one disgusting orifice or another. Things get so bad for the crew on land in The Jesus Incident that half of the population eventually migrates underwater, evolving in The Lazarus Effect (1983), the second book in Herbert's Pandora Trilogy.)

But Herbert got his sensational start being really cruel to his characters beginning with The Dragon In The Sea. Herbert drops his first poor characters into another man-made Hell: The claustrophic confines of a nuclear submarine. He sequesters four men into what amounts to a tubular tomb; into some, uh, "highly pressurized" (see where those brilliant publishers got the idea of renaming the book, Under Pressure - it's a pun - get it?!) stressful scenarios. The U.S. sub's mission: dive into enemy Russian waters both for precious oil, in global dwindling supply, and to find out what happened to the previous twenty subs that went missing without so much as an SOS. Sabotage and/or espionage are suspected, but there's no concrete evidence of either. Enter The Federal Bureau of Psychology for naval consultation. The FBP advises the navy generals that expert psychologist, John Ramsay, go on the next nuclear sub's mission for oil, and work as a regular submarine crew member while covertly putting his psychological expertise to work in the hopes he'll be able to fathom, with his honed skills of behavioral observation and analysis, who or what is hijacking these missions -- and why. Could there, in fact, be a traitor - a sly saboteur - on board; and, if so, is the captain? It couldn't be Ramsay himself could it? Is the U.S. Gov't involved in the destruction of its own nuclear subs? That would be a conspiratorial curveball! Is it one of the other two crew members? But which, assuming it is?

Complicating matters, the Russians, those Cold War Commies, aren't exactly thrilled seeing a U.S. nuclear submarine appear out of nowhere on their sonar. It's their oil, damnit, not those ugly and greedy Americans! And they've the right to protect it at any cost. Could it be that maybe there are no traitors on board the U.S. nuclear sub, that maybe the Russians are simply impeccable at protecting their waters off Soviet shores, and that they've torpedoed or otherwise sunk (a new weaponry?) all previous U.S. subs, thus eliminating every titanium scrap and bolt of evidence? But if so, wouldn't there be ungodly amounts of radiation in the sea, since these are nuclear subs we're talking about, right? Have the Russians invented a new type of weaponry designed to destroy U.S. nuclear subs while simultaneously containing the release of radiation and thereby eradicating any scrap of radioactive evidence? Could be.

Could be too that Herbert will pull a believable bunny out of his plot's hat, while making his prescient political statement about the world's over-dependency on oil, fictionally forecasted over half-a-century ago. Herbert's uninspired prose didn't win him the International Fantasy Award or even the Hugo and Nebula, for that matter, later in his career; it was his ideas, his universe-building, and environmental and political forecasts which triumphed over the pedestrian, wheat-and-chaff pulp, of the majority of his SF peers.

That the world today, on several fronts, is engaged in an ongoing, neverending war (of one sort or another) over earth's most precious commodity and resource (not its people, oh no, not that) but its oil, testifies to Herbert's prognosticating genius; his seemingly innate, uncanny ability, to act as Prophet and SF Sage in an age when science fiction had virtually no respect as having anything pertinent, let alone subtly political, to say. And he did so while also entertaining the hell out of us with his superior imagination and ideas contained in his, granted, ho-hum (but not terrible) writing style. Herbert's no Proust (ya think!?) when it comes to style -- and Herbert gets abused big time compared to his fellow, largely "styleless" SF authors - wrongly, in my opinion. I'll take Herbert over PKD any day. Though, Herbert, conversely, has been, I would say, a type of Proustian SF prodigy when it comes to forecasting the depletion of our natural resources and the effects such depletion would ultimately cause the earth in terms of socio-politico-economics (not to mention environmentally and even religiously too). Only John Brunner, among Herbert's era of science-fictionists, in his most popular works - Stand On Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up, forecasted the future more accurately. Don't read The Dragon In The Sea, or any of Herbert's books just for the writing (you'll probably be disappointed if you do); instead, read Herbert for his visionary, innovative ideas, and see how much of what he wrote about in the 50s and 60s - gazing deep into his multifaceted, speculative crystal ball -- has already come true. ( )

Very good book. The Bureau of Psychology taking over the Bureau of Security which is projected here at the end of the book, finds fulfillment in The Whipping Star (1970)/ Dosadi Experiment (1977) series. Also the Herbert book, Destination Void (1956, 1978) transposes the theme of extraordinary excitement transforming human nature into a spaceship setting.