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Under the Sea: The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke
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Under the Sea: The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke
Saddle up, whaleboys!
By Alan Brown
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Published on November 25, 2025
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In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
While Arthur C. Clarke is more widely known for his books set in space, he also had a deep and abiding love for the sea, was an avid diver, and wrote many works that featured life on and under the oceans. Among the best of these is 1957’s The Deep Range.
When I was searching my basement recently for books to review, I found two used copies of The Deep Range, which shows that while I hadn’t read the book yet, I had been intending to for quite some time—long enough for me to buy a copy, forget about it, and then buy another copy. The copy I used for this review is a Signet paperback reprint. While the copyright page states the first paperback edition came out in 1958, the $1.25 cover price would put this edition’s publication date somewhere in the mid-1970s.The uncredited cover painting features two divers who appear to be coming to the aid of a small white submarine caught in the tentacles of a gigantic sea creature.
The book is divided into three parts. The first, “The Apprentice,” follows Walter Franklin as he learns the ropes of being a “whaleboy” (a play on the term “cowboy”). The second part, “The Warden,” follows him as he moves up the ranks and explores the secrets of the deep. And the third, “The Bureaucrat,” follows his career as a senior official, grappling with issues like the morality of using whales as a food source. And that moral dilemma is the biggest element where the book was overtaken by events in the real world. The mid-20th century was a time when scientists were convinced that the population would outgrow available food sources, and speculated that reaping more food from the sea was one way the shortfall could be mitigated. But in our real world, innovations that increased crop yields prevented the worst-case scenarios, and environmental groups were able to turn public sentiment against whaling long before any attempts were made to harvest them for food on a large scale.
There is a flippant comment on the title page, “All the characters in this story are fictitious except the giant Grouper in Chapter Three.” And sure enough, there is an encounter in that chapter that describes the fish in the kind of detail that can only be the result of an eyewitness account. This is not the only place in the narrative where it is clear Clarke is drawing on real-world experiences, as well as real-world enthusiasm. The description of the Whale Bureau training facility on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, for example, is detailed and evocative. This gives the story an energy that is sometimes lacking in Clarke’s other works.
The science and technology Clarke presents, as in all his books, is thoughtfully considered and plausible. He describes plastic air bottles that hold many times what today’s steel bottles can hold—a reminder that in the mid-20th century, newly developed plastic was seen as a miracle material. The whaleboys do most of their work in tiny one- or two-man scoutsubs, speedy little craft equipped with all sorts of devices for herding whales and dealing with undersea threats. The active sonars are many times more powerful than we have at our disposal, which allows the whaleboys to easily navigate the sometimes-murky waters. Whales are also kept in controlled feeding and breeding areas by “fences” of sonar emitters. With our current knowledge of the effects of active sonars on sea mammals, I suspect that devices like this would be maddening to the whales, but that was not something apparent in the time when Clarke was writing the book. He also describes automated atomic powerplants being used on the sea floor to heat the water, and promote the growth of algae and plankton in gigantic fields that are then collected by gigantic floating harvesters. That use of atomic power seems dubious to modern eyes, but nuclear fusion was another technology seen as marvelous in the mid-20th century.
About the Author
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) was an English science fiction writer who spent his final years living in Sri Lanka. He is one of the most influential authors from the formative days of the science fiction genre; with Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov often referred to as science fiction’s Big Three. I have looked at Clarke’s work before in this column, having reviewed A Fall of Moondust, Rendezvous With Rama, and Sands of Mars, and you can find more biographical information in those reviews. And among his many other books were classics like Against the Fall of Night, Childhood’s End, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Fountains of Paradise.
Under the Seas of the Future
The Deep Range portrays a time when humanity has not only expanded into the solar system, but also into and under the seas. Written in 1957, it reflects concerns that humanity would not be able to feed the growing population of the planet unless new food sources were unlocked. The story is one of many nautical stories that appeared in science fiction magazines and novels in the 1950s and 1960s.
Undersea stories have been a part of science fiction since the earliest days of the genre, and you can find an interesting discussion of the subject at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction website in the article Under the Sea. Among the earliest and most influential works is Jules Verne’s 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I haven’t read that book myself, but will never forget the 1954 Disney movie version of that tale, which I saw from the back seat of our family station wagon at a drive-in sometime in the early 1960s. The movie had great sets and special effects, realistic-looking (and scary) monsters, and colorful performances from actors including Kirk Douglas, James Mason, and Peter Lorre. It became the standard by which I judged all future tales of undersea adventures, and indeed, the standard by which I judged action movies in general.
In addition to tales of undersea exploration, tales of undersea warfare have also been a big part of the genre. One that had a profound impact on me (probably because I read it at far too young an age) was Frank Herbert’s 1956 novel Under Pressure (which also appeared under the title The Dragon in the Sea). It was a tense and claustrophobic novel which haunted my nightmares for a long time after I read it. In fact, because of the exotic nature of the setting and the prevalence of technology in the tales, stories of undersea warfare always felt like science fiction to me, even when they were set in the present day. There is a fine line, if indeed there is a line at all, between science fiction and a technothriller like Tom Clancy’s classic The Hunt for Red October.
Nautical adventures have long been a staple on television, with notable shows like Flipper, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and seaQuest DSV. Doctor Who has also visited the undersea world in a few adventures. Even viewers who turn their nose up at tales of aliens and other planets are willing to accept adventures set in areas of our own planet that are as yet unexplored.
Dolphins were featured in many science fiction stories, as their intelligence has long fascinated humans. These books included Clarke’s own 1963 juvenile novel Dolphin Island (a book I’m pretty sure I checked out of the local library back when I was in grade school).
And there have been more than a few undersea stories that are set under the seas of other planets. These include the seas that supposedly covered the surface of Venus, and seas on other worlds, such as in David Brin’s classic tale Startide Rising, where human and dolphin crewmembers work together to survive when stranded on a faraway planet, besieged by alien races determined to destroy them.
The Deep Range
The main viewpoint character in the first part of the book is Don Burley, a seasoned whaleboy. Unlike the cowboys of the past century, whaleboys are civil servants, as the harvesting of whales is performed by the Whale Bureau, a minor part of a benign but stodgy worldwide bureaucracy that guides humanity. But the whaleboys are a colorful and adventurous bunch, and Don’s rescue of a whale and her calf from an attacking shark opens the book with an exciting action sequence.
Don is then tasked with attending the training academy and becoming the personal guide for Walter Franklin, someone his superiors have brought in from another profession who they think will do well as a warden (or what more romantic people call a whaleboy). Don finds Walter to be withdrawn, and quickly decides he must be the survivor of some sort of trauma. He thinks Walter is a spacer, but then doubts that when he observes that Walter is afraid of flying. Walter reads the classic Moby-Dick, which is jokingly called the “bible” of the Whale Bureau. The training process gives Clarke a good opportunity to show the world of whale farming, and the equipment and submarines used in this activity, without drowning the reader in a sea of exposition. Don and Walter have some interesting adventures, and Walter proves to be an adept student, and actually proves more proficient than Don in scientific and technical matters. In the meantime, Walter meets graduate student Indra Langenburg, and the two form a mutual attraction. But a date with her triggers an episode of post-traumatic stress, and Walter must overcome the fears of his past. (I won’t go into more detail on that, because the unfurling of his mysterious past is an important part of the first section of the book.)
The second part of the book jumps forward to a time when Walter is now a qualified warden and peer of Don, and the primary viewpoint character shifts from Don to Walter. Indra and Walter are now married, and mirroring the conventions of the 1950s, she has put her career on hold to raise children. Don and Walter are involved in an effort to find and capture a giant squid that has been preying upon the domesticated whales, an elusive creature they nickname “Percy.” That pursuit brings back memories of passages from Moby-Dick, and challenges them to the limits of their abilities. Then they try, but fail, to track down an even more elusive creature they nickname a “sea serpent,” which lurks in the deepest recesses of the ocean. The technological challenges of these projects are fascinating, and I found these passages among the most interesting parts of the book.
The third and final part of the book follows Walter’s efforts as head of the Whale Bureau, dealing with bureaucratic infighting with plankton harvesters who argue their crops offer more calories with less cost than whale herding. And he is involved in a fascinating project to train orcas to herd other whales, which proponents compare to mankind’s retraining of wolves to be herding dogs. But then a Buddhist leader launches a campaign to end the slaughtering of whales, which Don initially opposes, until he realizes that he and the other wardens agree with the idea (and Clarke provocatively argues that Buddhism will eventually become even more influential than Christianity or Islam). The hearings on this proposal are interrupted when an undersea accident traps some influential leaders under a collapsed structure. This pulls Walter away from the hearings, and not wanting to delegate a risky task, he personally dives to rescue them. This gives Clarke a chance to end the book with not just a bureaucratic struggle, but also with an exciting action sequence.
While reading, I found the shift in tone between the sections a bit jarring, but by the end, I saw how the structure allowed Clarke to tell a story with a grand scope, as he explored his future world from the deck plates all the way up to the highest echelons of government. The idea of the whaleboys, and the technology they use in their work, was fascinating to me.
Final Thoughts
I’m glad I finally got around to finding my copies of The Deep Range and reading the book. The prose is a bit stiff, as it is in all of Clarke’s works, but the characters are solid, and the scientific and sociological speculation is fascinating, even in those areas where the real world has diverged from the future Clarke imagined. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in oceanic exploration as a solid and satisfying adventure story. And now it’s your turn to chime in: I’d love to hear your thoughts on The Deep Range, and would like to hear of other favorites stories that concern future adventures beneath the seas.[end-mark]
The post Under the Sea: <i>The Deep Range</i> by Arthur C. Clarke appeared first on Reactor.
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