Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

by Theodore Sturgeon

The world was afire! From a flaming sky, heat seared Earth's surface and vast forests and mighty cities flared and died. In a few weeks, mankind would be burned from the face of the planet.

There was only one desperate chance—and only one man desperate enough to take it—Nelson, the "Mad Admiral". Defying his government and the nations of the world, Nelson drove the giant atomic submarine Seaview halfway around the globe to a grim rendezvous with Destiny. Unknown monsters of the deep barred his way—foreign warships hunted him—sabotages delayed him—but Nelson bulled and slashed his way through. Then, at the crucial moment, when disaster struck and the world seemed doomed, Admiral Nelson launched his "mad" plan!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

159 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1961

About the author

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) is considered one of the godfathers of contemporary science fiction and dark fantasy. The author of numerous acclaimed short stories and novels, among them the classics More Than Human, Venus Plus X, and To Marry Medusa, Sturgeon also wrote for television and holds among his credits two episodes of the original 1960s Star Trek series, for which he created the Vulcan mating ritual and the expression "Live long and prosper." He is also credited as the inspiration for Kurt Vonnegut's recurring fictional character Kilgore Trout.

Sturgeon is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the International Fantasy Award. In 2000, he was posthumously honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a novelization that Sturgeon was hired to write to adapt the screenplay by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett to book form, so it cannot be judged as or compared to original novels by Sturgeon. Harlan Ellison famously said that the fact that they released the book with Sturgeon's name on it rather than allowing him to use a pseudonym caused him considerable embarrassment in later years, but I don't think there was any reason for that. He was acting as a craftsman hired to do a job, which he did with considerable skill in the time allotted him. (Not that I would ever have argued with Harlan Ellison.) The book was released by Pyramid in 1961 with a very nifty cover painted by Jim Mitchell, and then when the Seaview enjoyed success as a television series, they reprinted it several times with a picture from the television show on the cover featuring the series cast, which was all wrong. The movie starred Walter Pidgeon, Joan Fontaine, Barbara Eden, Peter Lorre, Robert Sterling, Michael Ansara, and Frankie Avalon, so none of the people on the cover of later editions of the book actually appear in the book. It's one of the first novelizations of a science fiction movie and it paved the way for Alan Dean Foster and the many other writers who have practiced the art over the succeeding years. Oh, and it's a pretty good action-packed story, too, with a crazed Admiral Nelson daring the terrors of the deep to save the world. I first read it when the show was still on, and I thought it was really groovy.

[Jimmy Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a screen-to-print book, this was quite the surprise. My copy was unprepossessing - it was the fifth printing of the mass market paperback, with the cover photo from the the series ("Follow the further adventures of Nelson and the Seaview"), rather than the movie.

But the book itself was really well-written. I'm not a big SciFi reader, or I would have known up front that Theodore Sturgeon wrote novels, screenplays and photo novels (including for Star Trek, such as the original pon farr episode), reviews, and short stories. He even ghost wrote an Ellery Queen, which is right up my alley - no wonder I was comfortable with the writing. Far and above the usual screen-to-print story.

The cover of edition mentioned that it was based on the original screenplay, which explains the additional interactions, the greater depth provided in relationships, and the detailed descriptions about the submarine - well over those provided in the movie. (The submarine hull descriptions didn't seem to match the actual submarine in the movie - but I liked the Seaview as written much better).

Most screen-to-print books are either exceptionally basic (i.e., a wee bit bit more than you see from the closed captions once it's broadcast) or tolerable (much like the movies themselves) or, on rare occasion, add value. This one was a definite winner.

[Randy D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea

Since I just finished Ice Station Zebra, a story about a submarine crew that rescued a meteorological data gathering station’s stranded crewmembers, I decided to read another “submarine story”; this one is called Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. This story was written as a novelization of a screen play. Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett wrote the screenplay and noted science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon wrote the novelization. Usually, this is not the sequence of events used in the movie business, but 20th Century Fox wanted a story to coincide with what it hoped would be a blockbuster movie’s premiere; Mr. Sturgeon got the job of “putting the cart before the horse.”

I remember seeing the movie on KPLC in Lake Charles, Louisiana sometime in the mid-seventies; it was one of those Sunday afternoon televised sales promotion events that used an older movie to sell their product; in this case, it was vinyl replacement windows. Anyway, the movie premiered in July of 1961 and starred Walter Pigeon, Peter Lorre, Joan Fontaine, Robert Sterling, and Michael Ansera; it was anything but a blockbuster. Of course, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea eventually made it to the small screen and ran on ABC from September of 1964 to March of 1968. As with any TV show, the first year or so usually has the better episodes; Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea was no exception. With that being said, it was one of my favorite shows; the “monster of the week” format was getting a little old, but who knows what evil lurks on the bottom of the sea? The show’s unique theme music, watching the futuristic Seaview every week, and the fact the show was set just a few years into the future made me a regular viewer.
Anyway, the story written by Theodore Sturgeon opens somewhere in the Arctic Ocean after a rendezvous with an aircraft carrier that delivered three passengers to the U.S.O.S Seaview; Admiral B. J. Crawford, Director of the Bureau of Marine Exploration, Congressman Llewelyn Parker, of the House Office of Management and Budget, and psychiatrist Dr. Susan Hiller was on board to watch the final tests on a privately owned and funded and highly advanced nuclear powered submarine, which was the brainchild of former Admiral Harriman Nelson; Dr. Hiller was there, in her words, “… to observe men under stress, to compare their reactions with men in other vessels differently equipped.” 1 It was Nelson’s desire to transfer the sub to the US Navy as a research vessel after the shakedown cruise. The time frame is twenty years after the USS Nautilus traveled under the polar ice cap in August of 1958.

As the sub was underway, a wide screen TV was playing a live news broadcast of the Seaview’s  story. Lee Crane was thinking of what he referred to as “The Day of the Brag”; he hated the fact that the Seaview was paraded on a world stage, which undoubtedly did nothing but feed Nelson’s over inflated ego … and deflate his. I will venture to guess Crane’s thoughts will play a crucial role in the story’s plot.

The main characters in Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea are Admiral Harriman Nelson, Captain Lee Crane, Dr. Susan Hiller, the visiting psychiatrist, and Miguel Alverez, the rescued man on the ice cap. Admiral Nelson was a somewhat conceited but brilliant scientist and retired four-star admiral. His captain, Lee Crane, was the typical “All American Boy” who made good and had an ego just as big as the admiral's. Dr. Hiller and Alverez each play a crucial role in the story, which is revealed in Chapter 18. As the sub was cruising to the polar ice cap with an underwater crossing of the North Pole in a day or so, Nelson conducts his guests on a guided tour of his submarine, bragging on his creation as he went along.

Everything is fairly normal until the global catastrophe, the primary conflict in the story makes its entrance in Chapter 2. The Seaview, cruising at 500 feet below the ice, hits a submerged iceberg that was somewhere it shouldn’t have been … on the bottom of the sea. When the Seaview surfaced in what should have been solid ice, a global catastrophe was in full swing; we are told the water temperature is a tepid 77 degrees. Commander Chip Morton remarked, “the sky is on fire.” Mr. Sturgeon paints a superb picture of the Arctic sky … “In a broad arc across the sky, a glaring, flaming band of light lay. It trembled, coruscated, rimmed itself shiveringly with tatters of light, yellow, orange, flickers of blue coming and going. Somehow, its most terrifying feature was its silence; a thing like that, by rights, should have roared and crackled, but it did not.” 2  And, the story proceeds from there.

After three days of non-stop brainstorming, Admiral Nelson determines what is causing the massive global warming … it is what the scientists of our day and time continuously warn us about … the destruction of the ozone layer in our atmosphere. This deadly phenomenon is one of four conflicts Sturgeon weaves into his excellent science fiction story. The catastrophic destruction of our Earth’s life-giving atmosphere is the catalyst that sparks these secondary conflicts, which involve the four main characters, each in their own way. I won’t go into the “nuts and bolts” of the character’s personalities, as that will undoubtedly spoil this excellent story, but will offer a brief explanation, courtesy of Google’s Gemini, who was more than glad to offer his assistance at sifting through some “pretty deep stuff.”

Sturgeon uses the global crisis as a catalyst that exposed the characters' professional facades and exposed their core moral and psychological flaws to the greatest degree. For example, the global crisis takes Captain Crane's already high sense of duty and turns it into a crippling, yet motivating, pathological guilt. With regards to Admiral Nelson, the catastrophe does not create his obsession, it justifies it and pushes it to an extreme. Two other characters have their flaws, which are brought to the limelight by the global crisis. Miguel Alverez, the man rescued on the ice pack, is driven by a form of religious brainwashing or zealotry, who sees the catastrophe as God's Will, and Dr. Hiller's devotion to Dr. Zucco acts as his psychological proxy. She constantly critiques Nelson's sanity, not out of objective clinical judgment, but because she is pre-committed to the belief that Nelson is wrong and Dr. Zucco is right. In this sense, Dr. Hiller is "brainwashed" by personal affection and professional loyalty to Dr. Zucco, making her scientific observations suspect. Alvarez, who later revealed he is a scientist, completely breaks down after the catastrophe, interpreting it as a direct act of Divine Will ... he reasons God is punishing mankind for its hubris. Therefore, simply stated, Sturgeon's overall theme of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea is, when a scientific or global crisis hits, the real drama unfolds in the unstable psychological landscapes of the people attempting to solve it. Their true nature's are often put on display during such a crisis.3

Sturgeon also uses a “boatload” of philosophical and theological concepts and religious overtones in his novelization of the movie script, but it was quite necessary because he couldn’t “flesh out” the story any other way; there are only so many words one can write about the “sky being on fire.” So, Sturgeon, a master of his craft turned what was a run-of-the-mill disaster, end-of-the-world, science fiction story into a rather interesting one involving these four secondary conflicts; he expertly made the characters and their psychological problems the crux of the story, thus making the story rather interesting. So, in this case, we can say, “the book was better than the movie.”

Sturgeon’s Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea was quite a surprise, as I had seen the movie and was a fan of the TV show, but had never read the book. Sturgeon was obviously the right author to “flesh out” the story; I learned from AI that he emphasized the human elements in his science fiction stories, which made most of his contributions to this genre, “classics.” Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea is certainly one of those and is worthy of its five-star rating. 

And we learn of Admiral Nelson’s theory why the sky on fire was occurring, and more importantly, we learn his method to alleviate the catastrophic phenomenon did, in fact, work. Our ozone layer is still with us but is in danger of destruction, this time for real. I’ve said for several years that there’s something definitely to this global warming phenomenon; it seems like it’s getting hotter every summer. Hopefully, there will be an “Admiral Nelson” waiting in the wings if we ever need him.

So, five stars for Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, as it was a well written story. It contained a   sufficient amount of action, coupled with the usual submarine drama, which is necessary for any submarine story to be worth its salt. And, last but not least, the proverbial sea monster makes it’s cameo appearance in Chapter 18.  *****

1. Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, Ch.1, p.9
2. Ibid, Ch.2, p. 40
3. Google Gemini; a summary of several questions I asked my “research assistant.”

[Tim Deforest · Rating 3 out of 5]

What happens when you take a science fiction movie with an absurd, completely unscientific premise and then ask a top-notch science fiction author to write the novelization?

Sadly, it doesn't end well. In an attempt to give the premise (the Van Allen Belt has caught fire and only a missile fired into it at an exact time and place can save the world) some sort of scientific validity, he provides pages of dialogue to explain how it happened. Then, to give the mostly 2-dimensional characters of the film more realistic characters, he writes pages more of dialogue to flesh out their personalities and motivations. All this slows the pacing of the novel and causes it to plod along when it should race along.

To be fair, Sturgeon does a good job in building up suspense regarding who is sabotaging the submarine as it tries to accomplish its mission, and provides the person responsible with a clearer motivation than we get in the film. Also, he gives a really neat new character twist to the apparently fanatical civilian that the submarine rescued early on in the story--very different from the movie, but much more satisfying.

Also, when the sub's crew plugs into an underwater phone cable, the conversation they have with a mostly insane telephone operator who is seeing the world deteriorate around her is very, very creepy.

All this doesn't change the fact that the novel is simply too slowly paced. Sturgeon might have been better off with simply embracing the silliness of the movie and going for fast-paced action. The movie, after all, was directed by Irwin Allen, who never allowed story logic or characterization to get in the way of spectacle. The novelization should have embraced that.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

(FYI I tend to only review one book per series, unless I want to change my scoring by 0.50 or more of a star. -- I tend not to read reviews until after I read a book, so I go in with an open mind.)

I'm finally going through my tv, film etc. tie in library owned book list, to add more older basic reviews. If I liked a book enough to keep then they are at the least a 3 star.

I'm only adding one book per author and I'm not going to re-read every book to be more accurate, not when I have 1000s of new to me authors to try (I can't say no to free books....)

First time read the author's work?: Yes

Will you be reading more?: Yes

Would you recommend?: Yes


------------
How I rate Stars: 5* = I loved (must read all I can find by the author)
4* = I really enjoyed (got to read all the series and try other books by the author).
3* = I enjoyed (I will continue to read the series)
or
3* = Good book just not my thing (I realised I don't like the genre or picked up a kids book to review in error.)

All of the above scores means I would recommend them!
-
2* = it was okay (I might give the next book in the series a try, to see if that was better IMHO.)
1* = Disliked

Note: adding these basic 'reviews' after finding out that some people see the stars differently than I do - hoping this clarifies how I feel about the book. :-)

[Michael P.]

I wondered how this book differed from the film that preceded it and the TV series that followed it. By page 40, exactly a quarter of the way through the book by page count, I was bored enough to stop caring and to stop reading.

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A SciFi thriller, based on the screen play for the movie. Fast paced amid a race to save the world.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not as good as the movie or the series but I wish there were more Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea books. I would read them all.

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://gnomeship.blogspot.com/2020/0...

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

How to put this. It's the worst book I've read by a very good writer. Sturgeon was a master of the short story, but this movie novelization didn't work in any way. The story as it was given to him -- fire starts in the Van Allen radiation belts that heats the atmosphere to something like 160 degrees -- was enormously stupid and something that would have even stretched believability in the days of scientificiton in the 20s. But where Sturgeon could maybe have world with that, he didn't. Very few of the characters are interesting in more than a passing way, and there's too much of that wise Old Man captain stuff that Heinlein used a lot. There are some interesting stylistic touches (the effect of "he said get your behind out here (but he didn't say behind") which are kind of fun but get tiresome too. Still, I finished it.

[Ed Wyrd · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've seen the original "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" with Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lorre, and Barbara Eden, then you already know the story. Still worth reading however, because... Theodore Sturgeon.