The Watch Below

by James White

Doc Radford, the Exec, Wallis, and First Officer Dickson, together with two badly injured and hysterical nurses... all of them stuck in the pitch dark, bleak cold of a hull several fathoms under water.Unkind chance, instead of killing them, had left them with oxygen tanks and stores of food.Somehow they had to find a way to stay sane long enough to make a new home in this strange environment.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Aliens, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

James White was a Northern Irish author of science fiction novellas, short stories and novels. He was born in Belfast and returned there after spending some early years in Canada. He became a fan of science fiction in 1941 and co-wrote two fan magazines, from 1948 to 1953 and 1952 to 1965. Encouraged by other fans, White began publishing short stories in 1953, and his first novel was published in 1957. His best-known novels were the twelve of the Sector General series, the first published in 1962 and the last after his death. White also published nine other novels, two of which were nominated for major awards, unsuccessfully.

White abhorred violence, and medical and other emergencies were the sources of dramatic tension in his stories. The "Sector General" series is regarded as defining the genre of medical science fiction, and as introducing a memorable crew of aliens. Although missing winning the most prestigious honours four times, White gained other awards for specific works and for contributions to science fiction. He was also Guest-of-Honour of several conventions.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty much your standard multi-generation-starship-first-contact-with-aliens novel, except the author decides to turn the starship into a WW II cargo boat, sinks it at the bottom of the ocean, and has the aliens come visit it instead.

I mean, why not? If anything, it kind of improved the formula.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both wise and clever. I don't want to spoil anything for you, even something you learn pretty early on, but let's just say it succeeds at being a lot of different things: a survival story, a first-contact story, two variations on generation-ship stories, and it even feeds my interest in stories about post-apocalyptic rebuilding.

It's dated, and flawed, but still a fascinating read imo. Really gets into theories of sociology and explorations of what it means to be a person.
I am now re-reading Station Eleven and am intrigued by the resemblances....

The mm pb edition I read is not listed here... these old pulps don't always get the respect they deserve and if only I had realized it needed to be entered I would have but too late now... but why hasn't another reader-librarian done so? I mean, more ppl should have read it....

[Jim Mastro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book shortly after it was published in 1966, and it captured my imagination then, so I decided to read it again, 50 years later. I've kept all the books I read as a teenager, almost all of them science fiction and fantasy. The Watch Below is science fiction, and definitely of that era. But it's still a good story, imaginative, with good characters, although it seemed a little rushed at the end. The premise is pretty creative: a group of people trapped in a sunken ship from WWII, who survive several generations and whose descendants are finally rescued by aliens, who themselves were trapped in interstellar ships for generations.

[Sean Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever and interesting right to the last. Very good.

[Gary · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Remember that a 2-star Goodreads rating means, "It was OK.")

At the heart of this book is a quite implausible premise: that group of humans could survive in the hold of sunken ship not merely for days, weeks, or years, but for six or seven generations! A reader certainly has to suspend disbelief. But as this premise--unlikely as it is--is critical to the story, the reader must simply go with the flow.

Still another element troubled me about the story from its early pages. A familiar trope about much science fiction that involves alien contact is that the aliens that are portrayed "aren't alien enough." That struck me about the aliens in The Watch Below from the moment they were introduced. They are aquatic beings, rather than "air-breathers," but emotionally, psychologically, and sociologically, they might as well be humans.

As it happens, however, this ends up being the point of the book, so it self-immunizes itself from that criticism.

So if you're willing to surrender to all the author's premises, the story kinda works.

But even allowing that, the ending is just too pat. A major military machine set in motion like this one is when a final confrontation takes place, is unlikely to be halted as easily as this one is. That's asking for too much disbelief to be suspended.

[Darnoc Leadburger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second non-Sector General James White novel, and I think it convinced me to become a James White completionist; there's this classic, inventive feel to his works that I often find myself resonating with, and *The Watch Below* is no exception. I can't tell you exactly what classic trope it's reinventing because I think it's best revealed slowly over the course the book - not on the logline on the front cover or the synopsis on the back - so I'm just going to warn you that a lot of this review will be spoiler tagged out. I think it'd be worth skipping this review until you've actually read the book, but whether you heed my warnings or not, here are my thoughts on *The Watch Below*.

This book consists of two parallel narratives; the first is about the survivors from the *Gulf Trader*, an oil tanker that the Allies hope will make a good anti-U-boat vessel in World War II which gets sunk in battle. The five crew members trapped aboard - two younger men, two younger women, and one older doctor - find themselves alive and able to keep living within the reinforced hull even though it's on the ocean floor. The second narrative is about an alien colonization ship which is leading a whole fleet of starships carrying frozen survivors of a water-dwelling sentient species whose homeworld has been devastated. The ship is set to have two captains, and when the second is woken up from cryosleep to verify the ship's sturdiness before sending everyone else back to sleep, he finds that the ship's doctor has discovered that being woken from cryogenic suspension degrades one's mental abilities and that the crew won't be able to wake themselves up for scheduled maintenance without turning themselves into vegetables, dooming their repopulation mission. Thankfully, the captain has a bright idea: turn the ship into a generation ship with him and the doctor reproducing and trying to pass down all the necessary skills to their descendants. While that's happening, the crew of the *Gulf Trader* finds out how to wire together a generator and lights and grow plants to help them breath in the belly of the sinking ship and, eventually, start reproducing. The doctor isn't thrilled about this part - he believes that delivering children is dangerous - but he also doesn't feel he can stop his crewmates from having sex without causing violent personality issues. Hence, he has no choice but to let them start cranking out babies and to prepare one of them as his future replacement...

I did find myself skimming over a lot of the earlier *Gulf Trader* stuff - how they got their physical resources and whatnot - but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention The Game, an activity in which the crew members try to remember things about their past lives such as personal experiences or novels that they enjoyed when they were younger. The Game hones their memories and gets passed down to their children, who also show strong memories. Their children start pairing off too, and as we get close to the end of the book, we see our original crewmembers die and the later generations end up both inbred and distant from each other. Things aren't much better on the alien ship, where we get to track different generations before they eventually end up inbred and angry with each other too. One group even leaves the main ship and goes to live on one of the "food ships" where they lived alone with meat animals until their rivals boarded and killed them. The other captain is unfrozen when they get close to their target and is saddened to discover it's already inhabited - it is Earth, we find out - but still directs the ships to land in Earth's seas. The humans don't like this - it looks like an invasion, after all - and shots are fired until a couple aliens make contact with the *Gulf Trader*'s inhabitants and protect them after the humans destroy the sunken vessel since they think it's used as an alien base. The survivors are able to tell the humans about how nice the aliens can be, and peace talks follow. It's too sudden of an ending, but something to the effect had to happen, and it was as charming as White ever is.

The whole book is just as much charming as it unrealistic, which is kind of funny since most of the human thread of the story isn't even science fiction since it's only speculative in terms of using existing technology to survive (is speculative survival a genre?). I suppose this is kind of a knock on the book, but it never really bothered me as I read it. It still doesn't bother me now; but it might bother you since, in all honesty, it's pretty outlandish. But the trope towards which it turns - the generation ship - isn't outlandish at all, and I really like how the generational narrative unfolds throughout the story. I'm always a fan of generational stories, and even though I would've liked to see the later stages of the microcivilization explored a bit more, it was still a respectable look at cultural and genetic decay that sometimes gets lost throughout these kind of stories, especially older, campier ones. But the real triumph in this sequence of events is just how well it lines up with the alien ship's experiences with genetic decay and generational separation; it's both engaging, thought-provoking, and unique. Algis Budrys called *The Watch Below* the first book to improve upon the generation ship theme since *Orphans of the Sky*, which is probably an overly bold statement, but it's pretty clear to see why he said that after reading the book. I can't recall reading anything quite like this (contemporary books like *Children of Time* have a similar structure but can't hit it home the same way this does), and that's a good thing. One of the only poor things about this is how whenever the perspective switched from the alien ship to the *Gulf Trader*, I got a bit disappointed because I thought that what the aliens were up to was always more interesting than the humans. That's the classic fault of parallel narratives, and while I can't be too upset because I liked almost everything else about how the plots intertwined, it is a valid knock against the book.

James White's characters are satisfactory. They're never too deep or involved in compelling personal arguments (even if the situations they found themselves in were), but they also don't act unrealistically. They do some quirky things that could become memes if the book was more popular - for example, the *Gulf Trader* crew measuring time based on the womens' period cycles - but I think if you make it to that point and are still enjoying yourself, you'll be able to live with the book's campiness. James White's prose is a little better than the other standalone effort I've read from him - *Second Ending*, published in 1961 and later paired with Samuel R. Delaney's debut novel in the Ace Double line, five years before *The Watch Below* was released - and never physically alienated me like some of his Sector General prose had the tendency to do. It's not really beautiful, but it's also never blocky or thriller-esque, so who am I to complain about a readable work?

One quick note on the book's packaging: I did find *The Watch Below* to have some "Invisible Man" syndrome. A blurb on the cover spoiled the last few pages, and it really changed how I read the book - I don't think it's feasible to ask you not to read a blurb on the very cover of the book you'll be holding in your hands for hours, but there's a fair warning for you. I don't think it really hampered by enjoyment of the book, but Hell, it was a bit annoying.

Most of the reviews I've seen for this book (sans Goodreads reviews, which aren't as credible as specific sources who you find intelligent and engaging) have been pretty positive, and it's easy to see why; it's inventive and engaging and I really want to give it four stars. But between the difficulty of swallowing some of the *Gulf Trader* stuff and how fast the ending went by and the lack of characters or prose making a noticeable impact on me... I think I have to give *The Watch Below* a hearty 7.5/10 even though I have enjoyed discussing (or in this review's case, rambling) about it. I'll definitely pick up more James White whenever I find them (whether that's *All Judgement Fled*, which is supposed to reinvent a different SF trope, or the third Sector General omnibus, or *Federation World*, which I bought a few months ago) and try to become a subject matter expert on his work. Hopefully you can read some of his novels and get in the spirit of it with me, and *The Watch Below* ain't a bad place to start... thanks for reading, and I'll talk to you next time. Bye for now.

[Emily Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will say that this book has a great concept. A tale of two generational ships: One a refugee alien ship headed for Earth's oceans where the multi generations are a necessity against problems of hypersleep; the other, a WWII tanker that was trapped under water for over a century with humans that tend to do human things. Definitely intriguing.

And yet it was rather underwhelming. I read it in one sitting in under an hour and finished thinking it was less fast-paced than it was merely brief when I would have loved some further delving into the words of these ships. After the initial issues are discovered, the rest of the novel just becomes an outline of later generations.

Not that there weren't good ideas. The humans set up The Game where they initially try to recall as many details of various events as they can that involves to become the basis of their culture with an extremely wide oral tradition and descendants with amazing memories. Hair is cut and used for warmth and bedding. Gardens are built to clean the air.

But for a novel that promised a first contact, it's not something that really becomes important to the very end, and it's not that exciting.

I do want to like it more than I did, but I would have loved a more complex and longer exploration of a cool idea.

[Matt Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange book indeed. It requires a significant suspension of disbelief to go along with the premise of generations of humans surviving in a sunken ship; it wouldn't work as described. But since I'm to accept the interstellar fleet of alien fugitives, why not?

The juxtaposition of the two groups as their trajectories come together is a good one, and the subcultures that arise among the survivors are fascinating. This is a neat little book that goes deeper into sociology and epistemology than most first-contact novels. Not as dated as it could be.

[Bjorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favourite White, but a fascinating concept; The Martian on the ocean floor, kind of. Some of the character work feels a bit dated, and as in All Judgment Fled I kind of wish he'd given himself 20 more pages to relax a bit into the story. But I do really like his optimism here. We could use a bit more of that.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

"James White, famous for his Sector General series, spins a disturbing tale of two isolated and decaying societies — one alien, one human. Without doubt the work demands a certain suspension of disbelief. The isolated human society half [...]"

[Peter Andersson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Retroactive review: This was my favorite pulp sci-fi book when I was young - read it several times - it has that "sense of wonder" (in spades) that sci-fi fandom used to praise back then. Highly recommended for YA. Would probably make for a great television series too.

[Sherri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a Goodreads review about this book a few years ago and immediately set out to find a copy. It took a while. As a fan of dystopian / apocalypse / alternative history fiction, I found this book captivating. It unfolded in a way I could not have imagined.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Survivors of a World War II torpedoing build a civilization in their sunken freighter. Generations later their descendants encounter a water-breathing alien species in search of a new home.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Has its slow moments but quite original and fascinating.

[Cindy Tomamichel]

This is a great read, you bond with the characters even through the generations. You would hope humans could behave like this in this situation. An odd and unique book.

[Hotspur · Rating 3 out of 5]

An exceptionally odd premise for a novel-- a cargo ship is torpedoed in World War II, and goes down to the bottom with a small nucleus of survivors, male and female. They are not killed; instead they survive, and manage to live the rest of their lives out on the bottom of the sea floor, existing on the food supplies stored in the hold and water reclaimed from condensation. They even have children and grandchildren. This story is superimposed over the tale of the migration of a species of aquatic aliens who have created an armada to escape the destruction of their home planet. Something goes wrong with their grand scheme and they land on earth-- to live in our oceans. Communications between the semi-aqueous aliens and humans seems quite problematic; until they discover the small group of tanker survivors on the sea floor. So far, White is far more skillful in depicting aliens than humans, but the writing is still quite good for all of that.

[Devero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un buon romanzo.
L'ambientazione è quella di un cargo durante la seconda guerra mondiale, che viene affondato ma per via dei tank ermetici che porta, ha 5 superstiti.
5 persone vive a una ventina di metri dalla superficie dell'acqua, che si ingegnano per sopravvivere grazie al carico, e lo fanno per decenni, fino ad avere figli e nipoti e pronipoti.
Nel frattempo nello spazio una civiltà aliena sfugge dalla fine del suo mondo acquatico diretta sulla Terra, che non sanno abitata da esseri di superficie, e dopo un viaggio multigenerazionale dove al maggior parte di loro viaggia ibernata, raggiungono il nostro pianeta.
Non è un capolavoro, ma resta una bella storia, con lieto fine, intelligente e ben scritta.

[Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two groups, 2 different species, are stranded in deadly surroundings. A tiny group of humans is captured in a sunk tanker in the Pacific Ocean. An alien species sends out a fleet of colony ships from its dying world. Both groups contrive ways to survive for generations, until they converge.

James White's 189 pages cover the generations of both groups, so obviously there is a lot of overview. The environment of the human group has so little potential that most of the activity of each person's life is mental and not made to live for the reader. It's the concepts that are interesting here, not the storytelling.

[Valerie]

None of the editions shown is the one I have.

There're some concepts that're passed off by sleight of hand--for example, why would Unthans produce only female children if they didn't get meat?

To me, the most important part of this story is the mental disciplines the inverted castaways develop to deal with isolation and enforced inactivity. It's this storytelling education that enables them to communicate with the Unthan refugees, and avert an interstellar war; yet the original impetus was simply coming up with ways to deal with boredom and fear.

[Ruskoley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, let's say this is a 3.75 star novel. I don't know that it is *quite* a 4-star. The middle of this novel bogs down a bit, which seems odd since it is under 200 pages total. The ending turns out a bit more positively than I would expect (a sign of my generation? the contemporary societal expectations?). Overall, an interesting scenario presented with competent writing. Even though the plot will make you smirk a bit in disbelief, the fun juxtapositions of generation ships is worthwhile.

[Shanna_redwind · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a really odd story. If you are willing to suspend your belief (from a sky-hook) it is an interesting examination of how a group of people would develop a society in complete isolation and a difficult environment.

[Sundry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Liked this when I first read it, but when I tried to reread it in 2006, I couldn't get through it.

[Shadowmaat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wretched, wretched, wretched

[Isabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

People survive for generations in a sunken submarine, creating
a unique society.

[Canavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

✭✭✭

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

1983 grade C

[Marko]

I have the german edition: Gefangene des Meeres