The Dragon in the Sea

In the endless war between East and West, oil has become the ultimate prize. Nuclear-powered subtugs brave enemy waters to tap into hidden oil reserves beneath the East's continental shelf. But the last twenty missions have never returned. Have sleeper agents infiltrated the elite submarine service, or are the crews simply cracking under the pressure?

Psychologist John Ramsay has gone undercover aboard a Hell Diver subtug. His mission is to covertly observe the remainder of the four-man crew and find the traitor among them. Sabotage and suspicion soon plague the mission, as Ramsay discovers that the stress of fighting a war a mile and a half under the ocean exposes every weakness in a man. Hunted relentlessly by the enemy, the four men show more find themselves isolated in a claustrophobic undersea prison, struggling for survival against the elements and themselves. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Last night I finished reading Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert (1956). Dragon in the Sea is quite a departure from Dune. It's more akin to The Santaroga Barrier (my favorite Herbert book) in Herbert starts with a few ordinary events and then turns them into psychological dramas. For this book, he goes one step further and leaves off the chapter divisions to create a literary claustrophobia to match the claustrophobic conditions of the submarine. Some of the psychobabble to explain the captain's behavior was a bit silly but I'll forgive it for the otherwise enjoyable thriller with science fiction trappings.

I felt torn with what rating to give this book. Personally, it was not my cuppa. This subgenre is not really my favorite kind of genre (whether it happens in science fiction or regular fiction) but it would not be fair of me to hold that against the author. It's a relatively short read at about 210 pages in a pocket paperback.

This story was published in 1956 but is set in, at the earliest, the 2020s, perhaps 2030s. (the 2010s and early 2020s are mentioned) so it always feels a tad weird for me to read old science fiction that was set in the future, but by the time I read the book, that future has already happened. (which holds true for a lot of old sci fi at this point, haha)

The world needs oil and countries fight one another for it and show more are trying to steal it from each other by using these submarines (subtugs) for undersea drilling, sneaking into areas of the ocean that do not legally belong to them (and yes, other countries will defend these areas, which is one of the issues the crew in this book has to deal with)

However, the main point of this story is not the oil or the events surrounding that, but the psychology of the crew on the ship and how they handle the pressure. (The title of this book has multiple meanings)

Not my cuppa, but still an interesting read. show less

Set during a protracted war between the West and East, it follows a young psychologist sent on a covert nuclear submarine to hunt down a suspected enemy spy.

The West is critically short on oil. To survive, they use advanced nuclear submarines, subtugs, to secretly siphon oil from underwater deposits located in enemy territory. Twenty subtugs have already gone missing. It's suspected that an enemy sleeper agent or the sheer madness of the deep-sea mission is sabotaging the missions.

Ramsey, an electronics expert and BuPsych, Bureau of Psychology, operative, is planted as the electronics officer on the subtug Ram with two secret directives: figure out what happened to the missing crews and identify the saboteur among the four-man show more crew.

Because Ramsey’s true profession is kept secret, he is forced to evaluate the mental stability of his crewmates while simultaneously enduring their suspicion that he is the spy. As the Ram navigates miles deep under the ocean, the isolation, intense confinement, and constant threat of enemy detection push the crew’s minds to the absolute brink. show less

Ramsey is a military psychoanalyst assigned to the Fenian Ram, a small submarine tasked with the dangerous job of surreptitiously extracting oil from enemy territory. He's been assigned to determine why so many submariners have been having breakdowns. Much of the novel involves tedious, jargonistic descriptions of submarine operations; the characters are largely cut-outs and mouthpieces. Ramsey finds his answer: "The breakdowns are a rejection of birth by men who have unconsciously retreated into the world of prebirth." Early, somewhat thin Herbertian reflections on: military affairs, the use-value of religion, and sanity in relation to variable environments ("[Sanity is] 'The ability to swim [...] That means the sane person has to show more understand currents, has to know what's required in different waters"). show less

I rated this 3 🌟 for the author's ability to convey the crackling tension in that little submarine, despite the reader's zero knowledge of subs and anything to do with them.

It's advanced years into the war with the Eastern Powers. The British Isles have been blown off the map."We" have used up so much of the Earth's oil that we're now resigned to sneaking it out of the Eastern Powers' Arctic reservoirs in mile-long "slugs" filled and towed behind mini-subs. But the subs keep getting caught and destroyed by the EPs, and crews keep going psychotic. The Bureau of Psychology has a plan...