Books reading recommendations Five SF Stories Featuring the Sudden Formation of New and Exciting Bodies of Water Sorry if you’re a fan of boring old dry land… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on October 28, 2025 Photo by dirk von loen-wagner [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by dirk von loen-wagner [via Unsplash] Something hard to miss when looking at maps of the ancient Earth are the many proglacial lakes, marine transgressions, epicontinental seas, and the like, waters that are now gone. The once glorious Western Inland Sea has been replaced by boring expanses of dry land, the Champlain Sea and Lake Agassiz are nowhere to be seen, and even the humble Pannonian Sea has vanished. This is a tremendous pity. Not only do seas offer fishing, affordable transportation, and climate mitigation, it is universally agreed amongst the maritime tourist boards that great bodies of water are far more interesting to look at than tedious landscapes. I’ve written letters to my MPP and MP suggesting that Canada consider such steps as necessary to recreate, if not the Western Inland Sea, then at least Lake Agassiz. The silence has been deafening. Happily, science fiction authors have been more cooperative in this matter, as the five vintage works listed below will demonstrate. Deluge by S. Fowler Wright (1928) An extraterrestrial observer might have observed (and dismissed as trivial) a tectonic convulsion that rearranged land and sea on Earth. Global seas flooded regions from the North American plains to India and China. Millions died. Civilization was swept away. Martin Webster survives. Although saddened by the loss of his wife Helen and their children in the flood, Martin wastes no time replacing Helen with Claire before founding a new, simpler, far superior way of life. This new simplicity is greatly complicated when Martin discovers that Helen and the children are not dead at all. How to reconcile the two Mrs. Websters? Modern readers should note that Wright was a man of firm opinions forthrightly presented, as Wright’s incredibly defensive introduction to the second edition of his self-published bestseller makes clear1. Readers should also be aware that I enjoy understatement. “Shifting Seas” by Stanley G. Weinbaum (1937) Gyro pilot Ted Welling is surveying the route for the proposed Nicaragua canal when geology renders the project moot. The Ring of Fire erupts. Half of Panama, seven-eighths of Nicaragua, and all of Costa Rica vanish beneath the waves. No need for a canal now! Neither the United States of America or Europe are much concerned about the sudden deaths of a million and half Central Americans. The sudden loss of the Gulf Stream is another matter. Without the Gulf Stream, Europe will cool, forcing millions to flee. If war is to be avoided, the Gulf Stream must be recreated. But how? Like the Wright novel, this tale is very much of its time. Regarding the megadeaths, the text observes: “After all, the bulk of the deaths had been among the natives, and it was a sort of remote tragedy, like the perishing of so many Chinese.” Hard to believe that Weinbaum is describing Americans, whose solicitous regard for other peoples has been so widely discussed of late. The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham (1953) Across the planet, meteors plummet earthward. Or rather, seaward. The meteors show a curious affinity for the ocean, in particular its deepest regions. This is because the meteors are not natural objects but the landing craft of aliens for whom only the crushing depths of the sea offer a tolerable habitat. At first, there seems to be no reason that aliens and humans could not ignore each other. However, the secondary effects of the aliens’ efforts to forge cozy new homes, combined with human paranoia, ensures escalating conflict between the aliens and the hopelessly outmatched humans. The final phase? Melting ice caps and inexorably rising sea levels. Even with the ice caps gone, the oceans should only rise about sixty metres. This wouldn’t be so bad if only water-loving humans didn’t cluster along rivers, lakes, seas, and—most importantly—oceans. About a billion-and-quarter humans live within ten vertical metres of the ocean. Sixty is larger than ten. The Great Nebraska Sea by Allan Danzig (1963) Scarcely have geologists begun to grasp the full extent of the Kiowa Fault than America receives a memorable demonstration of the fault’s length. As quakes rattle the south, millions flee northward, to what they assume is safety. Then lands extending from the Gulf of Mexico to North Dakota suddenly subside. Fourteen million people perish as the Gulf of Mexico rushes into the depression. In the short term, this is an appalling tragedy. By 2073, the era in which the account’s narrator lives, the disaster is ancient history, whereas the many benefits of the Great Nebraska Sea are an immediate reality. Guess which aspect most shapes the narrator’s perspective? It isn’t such an odd idea that people of the future might see a present-day catastrophe as beneficial in the long run. After all, we’re all beneficiaries of past calamities. Without the K/T mass extinction, humanity would not exist! However, it is at least a little odd that this story borders on the comedic. Operation Time Search by Andre Norton (1967) Researchers Hargreaves and Fordham invented a cunning device that was intended to transfer images across time. The fact that it could also displace physical objects from one era to another was a tremendous surprise to Hargreaves and Fordham… but not nearly as astonishing as it was to Ray Osborne, transported from 1980 Ohio to… well, Ray is not sure. Ray finds himself in a world divided between virtuous Mu and malevolent Atlantis. Vast swaths of North and South America are underwater, balanced by two continents—Mu in the Pacific and Atlantis in the Atlantic—that are unfamiliar to Ray. Clearly, Ray must side with Mu. Too bad he is a prisoner of Atlantis. It’s not really clear if Ray was transported to the past or a past or some other alternative. What is clear is that as a result of his temporal adventures, Mu and Atlantis suddenly manifest in 1980. They don’t appear to displace continental volumes of water, which is for the best, but I wonder what consequences followed their appearance? The benefits of new and exciting inland seas and the like being so obvious, it’s no surprise SFF abounds with examples. The ones above are hardly the only ones I could have used. If I’ve overlooked your favourite, feel free to mention it in comments below.[end-mark] Wright’s novel was popular enough to warrant adaptation to film. The 1933 adaptation takes some liberties with the source material, including moving the action from the English Midlands to the US. However, the special effects depicting New York City’s utter destruction were striking enough that clips were reused in S.O.S. Tidal Wave (1939), Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc. (1941), and King of the Rocket Men (1949). ︎The post Five SF Stories Featuring the Sudden Formation of New and Exciting Bodies of Water appeared first on Reactor.