Science Fiction Under the Sea

When Harry Bates and the Clayton chain created Astounding Stories of Super-Science in 1930 they did not have the technophilic drive of Hugo Gernsback or the literary pretenses of John W. Campbell pushing them. The Pulp was simply adventure-Science Fiction for readers who wanted a fast-paced tale with a girl and a few chills thrown in. This egalitarian approach may not have won over the would-be-inventor or the burgeoning SF connoisseur but it did free up the writers to use any and all settings for their tales, as long as they were adventurous in flavor. It was not required of them to produce endless future/possible gadgets nor to remain scientifically exact. It just had to be fun.

Clayton Astounding stories tended to take place in three different locations: in outer space, on a remote earth-like asteroid or some other rock, and lastly, on Earth. Of the stories that took place on Earth, most began in a scientist’s lab before some new threat came to Earth to conquer the human race. There was a small percentage that did not follow that formula. These took adventurers to remote places: the frozen Arctic, the Jungles of Africa and Asia, and my favorite, under the sea. It is in this last group that Harry Bates and Desmond W. hall wrote two stories under the pseudonym of H. G. Winter:

“Seed of the Arctic Ice” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1932) has Kenneth Torrence, a whaler, captured by a race of human who have evolved into seal-like creatures called blubber-men. In captivity, Torrence finds another captive, Chan Beddoes. Torrence wants to talk his way out while the mad Beddoes is all for violence. Both men escape, but on Torrence makes it back to the ship.

“Under Arctic Ice” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, January 1933) has the rescued Torrence put in a mental asylum. When a sub called the Peary disappears, Kenneth escapes, travels to Alaska to rescue the sailors from the blubber-men. The seal men have surrounded the sub and are breaking in. Torrence sets off an explosion outside the sub, stunning the seal men and allowing the sub to escape.

The inspiration for these stories is pretty easy to identify. Jules Verne’s Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (published in English in 1872) sets up most of the scaffolding necessary for the underwater tales to take place. In that famous novel, two Frenchman and a Canadian are taken hostage by the eccentric and possibly insane Captain Nemo, and go with him across 20,000 leagues of ocean. (They do not dive the 20,000 leagues as some are ought to think.) But they do some pretty amazing things, including fight sperm whales, use diving equipment, visit sunken Atlantis and find the South Pole (which Verne incorrectly surmises it to be accessible by sea). In the end, Nemo and his sub sink mysteriously into the depths (though Nemo will appear again in The Mysterious Island (1874).

Other tales of aquatic SF that may have inspired these Pulpsters include tales by H. G. Wells, that other granddad of SF: “In the Abyss” (1896) where men in a diving bell discover an underwater race (and becomes mistaken for their equivalent of an angel), and even more important, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Maracott Deep” (The Strand Magazine, October 1927-February 1928) where a group of brave scientists dive to the sunken world of Atlantis. Doyle, of course, uses the dichotomy of the Atlanteans to explore his ideas about spiritualism, and adds to the mysticism of the tale. The under-the-sea stories of this volume were written only a few years after Doyle’s tale. It should be no surprise that Astounding found room for a few tales set under the sea.

Even earlier than the H. G. Winter stories, Bates published Paul Ernst’s “Marooned Under the Sea” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, September 1930). This novella has a group of humans captured by evil under water killers, who have to fight their way home.

“The Mystery of Planet Deep” by George A. Dye appeared in Wonder Stories, August 1933. A mysterious light from the depths draw a team down into the ocean in a diving bell. The world of breathable air and the ancient spaceship they find are only the beginning for humankind. James Cameron’s The Abyss owes something to this tale of aliens in the sea.

F. Orlin Tremaine took over Astounding after Bates and he did not neglect sea stories. “Davy Jones’s Ambassador” by Raymond Z. Gallun (Astounding Stories, December 1935) has a scientist captured by a race of ocean dwellers and his plight to gain his freedom. Unlike Ernst’s daring-do, Gallun uses a softer approach to victory.

Science Fiction and adventure tales about the ocean did not end in 1935. Dennis Wheatley would have a bestseller in 1936 with They Found Atlantis. John Wyndham, who began writing for Gernsback’s Wonder Stories, would use aquatic aliens in The Kraken Wakes (1953). Jack Williamson and Fred Pohl did The Undersea Trilogy (1954-1958). Andre Norton created octo-sapiens for her Sea Siege (1957).

Arthur C. Clarke, before he became so well associated with space, wrote several seminal works about the ocean: Coast of Coral (1956), Boy Beneath the Sea (1958), and The Indian Ocean Adventure (1961) based on his diving experience as well as SF like The Deep Range (1957) and Dolphin Island (1963). The illustrations here were in “People of the Sea” in Worlds of Tomorrow (April–June1963) the two-part serial version of Dolphin Island.

Frank Herbert’s first novel was Dragon in the Sea (Astounding Science Fiction November, December 1955, January 1956) (aka Under Pressure) which presents H. G. Winter’s scenario of a sub under the Arctic ice with deeper psychological meaning (and no seal men). Herbert’s novel is about sailors cracking under the stress of the job and is only marginally Science Fiction. Frank Herbert would write about humans mutating into sea dwellers in The Lazarus Effect (1983) with Bill Ransom.

Movies/Television gave us Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (a 1961 film, then a TV show from 1964-1968) and Seaquest DSV (1993-1996). Good movies included The Abyss (1989) by James Cameron. Michael Crichton brought us full circle in Sphere (1987) (which was made into a film in 1998). More recent books include Clive Cussler’s Atlantis Found (1990) and James Rollins’ Deep Fathom (2001) and Ice Hunt (2003).