Undersea City

Undersea Trilogy #3

by Frederik Pohl, Jack Williamson, Gino D'Achille (Illustrator)

SEAQUAKE

It was the most dreaded of all undersea phenomena. If strong enough, it would set up chain-reaction pressures that could shatter any dome and cost inestimable lives. But the Krakatoan Dome has been specifically designed to cope with the tremors of its seaquake-prone area. The trouble was, all of a sudden, there were more quakes than any of the experts had counted on...quakes that no one could possibly have forecast because they hadn't come from natural causes.

The Sub-Sea Academy had assigned Cadet Jim Eden to the Krakatoan Dome to find out what was going on, and for very special reasons. First, he was more at home in the underwater world than most anyone else. But, even more important, they sent Jim because his uncle was suspected of being the heinous saboteur!

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

151 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Frederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine IF winning the Hugo for IF three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the final volume of Williamson & Pohl's Undersea trilogy, a series for younger readers from the mid-to-late 1950s. Jim Eden, a young man who attends the Sub-Sea Academy, is assigned to investigate the sea-quakes plaguing the new underwater domed city of Krakatoa, three miles down. There's non-stop intrigue and adventure with his friends and his uncle and some surprising underwater denizens. It's a fine conclusion to the series, though I wish there had been more. The underwater domed cities and the aquatic environments are expertly depicted. The books are near the top of my favorites from both authors. Not all of the best science fiction happens in outer space! The covers by Gino D'Achille are breath-taking and are still among my all-time favorites, too.

[Carlex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three and half stars for this book and for all the trilogy.

I think this one is the best of the trilogy. Manipulating earthquakes in order to gain in stock markets it is an idea very suggestive (for a science fiction reader, of course; and I am only unveiling a bit of the plot). In this short novel the development is more coherent and the pace is good than the previous two books. But remember... Juvenile literature!

I miss there are not more Jim Eden adventures :_(

[Rafeeq O. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson's 1958 Undersea City, the final installment of their Undersea Trilogy, is another decent 3.5- to 4-star piece of young-adult '50s science fiction. Here Jim Eden, nephew of the famed Stewart Eden who invented the electrically powered Edenite molecular armor crucial to this civilization's undersea cities, mining, and travel, is still a cadet in the Sub-Sea Fleet along with his sidekick, Bob Eskow. This time they are joined by fellow cadet Harley Danthorpe, the sneering and exceedingly annoying son of an exceedingly two-dimensional father who is a big businessman and council member of Krakatoa Dome, "one of the newest of the undersea ciites" (1958 Gnome printing, page 12). The ever-needling Danthorpe, claiming to have the "inside drift," predicts that the three cadets will be sent to Krakatoa Dome on a mission so secret that even he doesn't know what it is.

Eskow's "face seem[s] to turn a degree paler" at this (page 12), for this city "south of the famous volcanic island in the Sunda Strait, three miles down" (page), is--for some reason--located "near the great geological fault" (page 13) that caused the catastrophic explosion "back a hundred years and more ago" (page 13). Soon afterward, Jim is called to the Commandant's office to hear of the probable--or is it only possible?--death of his beloved uncle, whose business model has always been to have a fortune one moment and then gamble the entirety the next moment on some great invention for the betterment of humanity. Oh, but there have been some mysterious undersea quakes, in which Stewart Eden, "if he be still alive," is accused of being "somehow involved" (page 24), and--

Well, hopefully the modern reader will be using a more recent reprint rather than the original Gnome printing, because the blurbs on front and back jacket flaps of the 1958 version are incredibly spoilericious. It's hard to imagine why a marketing department would give away plot twist after plot twist the way this does... Suffice it to say now that suspicions arise, danger ensues, just desserts are gotten, and of course at the last minute the good guys win, as they should in a 1950s juvie.

Is the book great? No, but it is pretty good. True, the writing does not always feel as if it had been edited for style quite as tightly as it should have, with repetitions of certain adjectives occurring within lines of each other and whatnot. Now and then characters' reactions are a little stagey, too. And by the end there two instances of, essentially, court martial or even treason offenses--one of which committed for the highest of motives, one committed for the lowest--that are explained away and smoothed over with about one seventh as much care than would have been shown in a YA by Robert A. Heinlein or even Lester Del Rey.

Still, for the genre and for the era, Pohl and Williamson's Undersea City is worth the read even as a standalone. And for anyone who has enjoyed either of the other two novels of the Undersea Trilogy--a trilogy whose novels can, if necessary, be approached out of sequence without harm or confusion--there certainly is no reason to stop before all three are done.

[Sol Santamarina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Pohl. I'm fascinated by Williamson.
Yet I had to struggle to finish this series.
Dont know, the language just doesnt ring true, the story's not bad in itself, but I just didnt feel it was as well developed as it should be.
I has read them years ago, and didnt even remembered them. Japan brought this books to mind. Jum.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 3 out of 5]

review of
Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson's Undersea City
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - October 22, 2017

I've been praising Frederik Pohl for a few yrs now - esp his collaborations w/ C W Kornbluth. As far as I can recall, I've never read anything by Jack Williamson before - although I've seen his name many times.

An interesting thing about Science Fiction is the way that scientific data can be explored, somewhat as background, in an action-packed plot that's designed to keep the reader's interest w/o being too drily didactic. Sometimes the science is more interesting to me than the story or it, at least, gives more substance than the story does. That might be the case here.

I found this to be like a Robert A. Heinlein novel aimed at teens. I'm reminded of Heinlein books like Space Cadet (see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... ). Both bks might appeal to a young adventurous spirit, to imagining the challenges of a possible near future - in Space Cadet the challenges of extraterrestrial travel, in Undersea City the challenges of undersea living for humans. Both try to imagine the possibilities using a somewhat reasonable scientific basis. No doubt the basis is too simple to satisfy real scientific rigor but, HEY!, these are novels, not treatises.

I note that Undersea City's copyright date is 1958 but that its 1st printing is shown as April, 1971. What that signifies might be something already addressed by someone more knowledgeable than me. My primitive interpretation of it is that it was written no later than 1958 but didn't find a publisher until 13 yrs later. Why? Maybe Pohl & Williamson didn't promote it, maybe publishers rejected it. If the latter was the case, as it was, e.g., with Philip K. Dick's non-SF novels, then I find that annoying.

Considering the possible implications of the above paragraph gives me the excuse to laud this day & age in wch rejected writers can fairly easily put their own writing on the internet & let publisher be damned. I direct the interested reader to my own "Censored or Rejected" website: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/s mentality.

I'm reminded of a woman that I had the misfortune to live with in 1995. She was young & pretty & I'm sure that those were her main 'qualifications' for the job she had vetting manuscripts submitted for advice & critique to a company that charged for that service. Imagine, you've written a novel & you want 'professional' opinions about it & advice about how to get it published & your manuscript, after you've paid a few hundred dollars, ends up in the hands of a barely literate young woman who could care less about you or doing her job. Now imagine that your novel's title is "Country Airs" or some such & that your main character is a woman with large breasts. The young woman being paid to read your ms says: "Who cares what the air in the country's like?!" because she's too ignorant to know that "air" can also refer to "melody". So much for the expert opinion. &, then, you had the audacity to have your character's breasts be a focus of attention! Well, that makes you a sexist scumbag. Your manuscript doesn't even get read & you're out 4 or 5 hundred dollars. Of course, you don't know that that's the process, your book just gets some short critique that's very negative, you get discouragement for your buck because the anonymous person you've paid is an exemplary shallow dipshit.

But I digress. The main subject of this novel being the threat that seaquakes provide to underwater cities the reader gets plenty of interpolated tech-talk including this acronym explanation:

"He only said: "It was necessary. But I found no one. I believe the sea-car was struck by boulders thrown up in the eruption and disabled. The locks were open. All the scuba gear was gone."

"And that marked him as a true sea-man too, for no lubber would refer to Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus by its nickname, scuba." - p 12

"The word SCUBA was coined in 1952 by Major Christian Lambertsen who served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps from 1944 to 1946 as a physician. Lambertsen first called the closed circuit rebreather apparatus he had invented "Laru" ( acronym for Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit) but, in 1952, rejected the term "Laru" for "SCUBA" ("Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus") Lambertsen's invention, for which he held several patents registered from 1940 to 1989, was a rebreather and is different from open-circuit diving regulator and diving cylinder assemblies also commonly referred to as scuba.

"Open-circuit-demand scuba is a 1943 invention by the Frenchman Émile Gagnan and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, but in the English language Lambertson's acronym has become common usage and the name Aqua-Lung, (often spelled "aqualung"), coined by Cousteau for use in English-speaking countries, has fallen into secondary use. As with radar, the acronym scuba has become so familiar that it is generally not capitalized and is treated like an ordinary noun. For example, it has been translated into the Welsh language as sqwba." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuba_set

Regarding the Welsh, I like to quote an old Welsh proverb (I'm glad to see that someone's pro-verb, I want to see some scuba action around here - but, hey!, wait!, isn't scuba an adjective there?!):

"["] Cefais fy syfrdanu'n syfrdanol, i weled, yn bellter o sawl milltir, ac yn meddiannu cnetre'r arena, strwythur rhyfeddol, a adeiladwyd yn ôl pob tebyg os jâd werdd. Eto, ei hun, nid darganfyddiad yr adeilad oedd mor syfrdanol i mi; ond daeth y ffaith, a ddaeth bob eiliad yn fwy amlwg, nad oedd y strwythur unig yn amrywio o'r tŷ hwn lle rwy'n byw ynddo, heb fod mewn lliw a'i faint enfawr. ["]" - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

THERE! That's everything you'll ever need to know! You can relax now.. just don't relax toooooo muuuuuccchh or you might start vomiting boulders. Don't you just hate it when that happens?! I broke a Jethro Tull record that way once. I guess I should be glad I didn't make it to the toilet in time because I can't afford to replace my toilet. Vomiting boulders did work to my advantage once though when some blue-boy was pointing a TASER at my SONAR.

Ahem.

The plot hints then thickens.

"Working Model of
Mechanical Ortholytic Excavator
Experimental craft of this type, now under test by the Sub-Sea Fleet, offer the promise of new opportunities to Academy graduates. With it explorations may be made at first hand of the strata beneath the sea bottom."

[..]

"Danthorpe confessed, "Well, all atomic drills generate a lot of heat—and the ortholytic drill cuts faster, but it makes more heat. And the earth's crust is already plenty hot, when you get a few miles down. They've got a terrific refrigeration problem."" - pp 17-18

Have you ever noticed that? Whenever I get an Earth's Crust delivered I won't eat it if the cheese's still bubbling. No sense in burning the roof of my mouth just because I'm so damned hungry.

""Alright you men! Let's get ready to debark!"

"Eskow looked at me and scowled, but I shook my head. Because Danthorpe's name came ahead of our's alphabetically, it had appeared first on the orders—and he had elected to assume that that put him in charge the detail." - p 20

May Alphabeticists be doomed to Lemming Detail, ten hut!

68 pp later:

"Complete data for a really accurate quake forecast would, I believe, require complete information about every crystal—perhaps even every molecule!—in the curst of the earth." [Ok, ok, it really does say "curst" - a lesser writer might've written "wretched"] "You would need to know the temperature and the melting point, the chemical constituents and impurities, the pressure and the shearing strain, the magnetic moment and the electrostatic potential, the radioactivity, the anomaly of gravitation, the natural period of vibration . . . all of those things. And then, having learned them all, you would know only a tiny fraction; for you would have to learn how all of those millions of tiny measurements were changing; whether they were going up or down—how fast—regularly or unevenly. . . ." - p 88

Then again, if you lived in Pittsburgh, you cd just say: "It's going to rain" & you'd probably be right. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? If so, why are you doing that? Are you my servant? This was a predictable novel, the boy gets the girl but then they get arrested for public indecency.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What red-blooded youth--or adult, for that matter--could possibly read Books 1 & 2 of Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson's UNDERSEA TRILOGY and not want to immediately proceed on to Book #3? Not I, that's for sure! In Book #1, "Undersea Quest" (1954), our narrator, 18-year-old Jim Eden, a cadet at the U.S. Sub-Sea Academy, had gotten into major-league trouble with a gaggle of crooks and goons in the suboceanic domed city of Thetis, before rescuing his Uncle Stewart from the bottom of the 35,000-foot Eden Trench. In Book #2, "Undersea Fleet" (1956), Eden, four of his fellow cadets, and Gideon Park (Stewart's African-American right-hand man) had gone far beneath the waves to rescue a half-crazed scientist from a besieging horde of living Plesiosaurs and amphibian men, in a sci-fi tale that had bordered close to fantasy. Those two opening books had been as charming, readable and exciting as can be, both for the younger readers who were their target audience and for any adults fortunate enough to try them. Who, then, could have believed that the authors would not only deliver one more Jim Eden adventure two years later, but one that would turn out to be the most suspenseful and nerve racking of the entire series? But that is precisely what Pohl & Williamson managed to do in Book #3, "Undersea City."

"Undersea City" was originally released in 1958. As was the case with its predecessors, that first edition was a Gnome Press hardcover, this time with some charming artwork on the dust jacket by the great Wally Wood. The novel would later be reprinted in paperback form by Ballantine/Del Rey in 1971, '77 and '83; internationally, it would be published in Germany under the title "Alarm in der Tiefsee," or "Alarm in the Deep Sea" (1961 and '79), in Mexico under the title "Ciudad Submarina," or "Underwater City" ('68), and in the U.K. (also in '68). But the book's most recent incarnation, I believe, was courtesy of the American publisher Baen in '92; an edition that gathers the entire trilogy together in one compact, 501-page paperback. That's the one that this reader was happy to find somewhere in my travels, and it makes for handy, one-stop shopping for prospective readers today!

In this Book #3, we find the trilogy's quartet of main characters united once again: Jim Eden, our narrator, and currently an upperclassman at the Academy in Bermuda; his closest friend and roommate, Bob Eskow; Uncle Stewart, the genius inventor whose creation of the electromagnetic Edenite shield allowed hemisphere-domed cities to be built on the ocean floor, ships and cars to travel at previously undreamed-of depths, and an entire manufacturing, farming and mining economy to flourish far beneath the waves; and Gideon Park, a first-rate technician and an unflappably cool companion to have beside one in a pinch. Several months following the events of Book #2, Jim tells us, he, Bob and another cadet, Harley Danthorpe, were given a special assignment by their commandant. They were to report to the newly constructed Krakatoa Dome, in the Sunda Strait, to undergo training in the field of maritime seismology; specifically, the science of predicting when large quakes might be occurring in one of the most seismically active areas of the world. Before leaving, Jim received a visit from one Jonah Tidesley, aka Dr. Tide (almost as cool a name as Book #2's Dr. Craken!), a Jesuit priest who also happened to be one of the world's foremost vulcanologists and seismologists. Dr. Tide relayed his suspicions that someone had lately begun to set off artificially created quakes in the area, and even worse news, that Stewart Eden’s wrecked and abandoned sea-car had recently been found on the ocean bottom, near one of those quake zones. Could Stewart be now deceased, or even responsible for the man-made tremors?

Filled with worry and confusion, Jim and the two other cadets reported to Fleet Lt. Tsuya at Krakatoa Dome’s Station K...10,000 feet beneath the ocean floor. Jim and Bob immediately got to work, while the obnoxious Harley had gone on and on about how his father, "Barnacle Ben" Danthorpe, was the richest businessman in Krakatoa Dome. And that was actually really saying something, in a city with a population of 750,000, resting three miles beneath the surface. In very short order, however, things began to get very strange. A deep-sea geosonde--capable of sending information from many miles below the Earth's crust--was stolen by an unknown party. Bob Eskow started to act mysteriously, going AWOL and meeting clandestinely with an aged Chinese gentleman. A completely unpredicted minor quake--that Eskow somehow knew was coming--shook the city, contrary to all the laws of seismology; a quake that netted the missing Uncle Stewart a tremendous windfall in the stock market. Ordered by Lt. Tsuya to begin keeping tabs on his best friend, Jim tailed Eskow into the bowels of the city, and in a deserted drainage tunnel, espied his good chum, along with Gideon, in possession of a MOLE (that is, a Manned Ortholytic Excavator...kind of like a submarine that can burrow through solid rock) that they were loading with hydrogen-bomb triggers! But even the appalling knowledge that his closest friends were engaged in illegal and highly dangerous operations soon palled when it was realized that a Force 12 earthquake was now predicted to hit right beneath the Krakatoa Dome...one that would surely shatter the dome's Edenite shield and allow 15,000 feet of water to crush it like the proverbial eggshell! And when Danthorpe, Sr. and the rest of the city council scoffed at Station K's predictions, it surely seemed that 3/4 of a million Krakatoa dwellers were soon to be meeting their subsea demises....

Again, it cannot be stressed enough that although these three books were ostensibly written for younger readers, they yet exert a very strong appeal for adults, as well. Typical for the series, "Undersea City" does not talk down to its readers and remains consistently levelheaded and intelligent throughout. The authors' choice of vocabulary is certainly adult; would you expect to find words such as "radiosonde," "octant," "isogeotherm," "isogal," "isentropic," "milligal" and "sallyman" in a book solely intended for teens? Heck, I had to break out the ol' Merriam-Webster's myself for those...not to mention get on my Google machine to find out who Simon Lake and Hamilcar Barca were! Once again, we have an UNDERSEA entry that is compulsively readable, and with cliff-hanging chapters that carry us irresistibly on. But for the first time, we are given some inkling as to the time period in which these three books take place. That hint comes when Danthorpe, Jr. mentions that the great Krakatoa eruption had occurred "hundreds of years and more ago"; since that historic blowup transpired in 1883, that would give us a date of 2083 as a minimum estimate, right? As for the futuristic touches to be found in this book (other than the MOLE, geosondes, and the underwater city themselves), the authors give us, for the first time, "electrostatic pacifiers" that smooth out the ocean waves so planes can make an easy landing, as well as "hush mouthpieces" on phones that prevent others from overhearing a conversation. But oh, those MOLEs, both small (around two feet long) and large (big enough to accommodate a crew of five), for burrowing miles into the Earth! What a terrific conceit!

Thinking back on the events of this Book #3, it strikes me that there are not quite as many action set pieces to be had as compared to Books 1 and 2. Rather, the focus here is on long-drawn-out suspense; a tension that builds to the snapping point. This is easily the most suspenseful outing of the trilogy; indeed, the last third of the book, as our heroes race against the clock to avert disaster, is absolutely thrilling. Still, there are a fair number of memorable sequences to be had, nevertheless. Among them: that initial Force 4 quake, a gentle reminder of what might be coming; Jim's discovery of Bob and Gideon's activities after tracking them through a labyrinth of drainage tunnels; Lt. Tsuya's desperate presentation before the unheeding city council (Jor-El of the planet Krypton dealt with no greater disbelievers in the face of imminent catastrophe!); the series of tremors that rock the Krakatoa Dome before the Force 12 monster quake hits; and the plight of Jim and some of his compadres as they burrow through the Earth in a dying MOLE, in a desperate bid to stave off disaster. Again, some truly wonderful material for a Hollywood summer blockbuster here, if done well and by a respectful team!

For the rest of it, "Undersea City" also gives the reader the most detailed examination yet of one of these domed metropolises residing on the ocean floor. We are thus given a look at the business section here, the upper-class and middle-class residential sections, the restaurant and amusement areas, the warehouse district and so on. Krakatoa Dome is a unique city in that it is connected to a 1,000-foot-long, X-shaped landing stage on the ocean's surface by a three-mile-long magnetic elevator; the domed metropolises we'd seen so far had no such "umbilical-cord" connection to the outside. This Book #3 might also be the most claustrophobic of the bunch, and Station K, sitting two miles beneath Krakatoa Dome (which, again, already rests three miles beneath the ocean's surface), will surely make you appreciate your own workplace all the more. Cold, damp, constantly oozing seawater from its walls of stone, and with no Edenite shield protecting it, it becomes even more uncomfortable an area when things start going downhill, as you might well imagine! Astute readers might see parallels between the father-and-son team of Hallan and Brand Sperry from Book #1 and the Danthorpes here, the difference being that while Hallam Sperry was very much a villain in that first outing, Barnacle Ben is more of a shortsighted, greedy businessman. Both men do wind up getting their just deserts, however, just as their two obnoxious kids eventually see the error of their ways.

I have very few nitpicking complaints to make regarding the authors' very fine work here. Oh, I suppose it's kind of easy to suss out what's going on as the story proceeds, and some of the big reveals are telegraphed a bit too blatantly. Still, it sure is fun watching the authors as they put Jim & Co. through their paces! Happily, there are no "oopsie moments"/authorial mistakes to be had, other than the fact that we're at first told that the acronym "MOLE" stands for "Mechanical Ortholytic Excavator" (sounds like something Tom Swift, Jr. might have invented, doesn't it?), and later on, for "Manned Ortholytic Excavator." But since that first acronym referred to the two-foot-long model, and the second to the full-size model, I am certainly willing to let that matter slide. In essence, "Undersea City" brings the curtain down on a wonderful trilogy of books, and I am sure that most readers will wind up wishing that Pohl & Williamson could have given us more...say, Jim's adventures after graduating from the Academy and entering Star Fleet--I mean, the Sub-Sea Fleet--itself. Oh, what might have been! Still, the experience of collaborating must have been a pleasant one for the two future sci-fi Grand Masters, as just five years later they embarked on a completely new trinity of books, the STARCHILD TRILOGY. And that is where this reader will be heading next. Stay tuned....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of sci-fi adventure stories....)

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the second book but still an entertaining read. 3/5 stars.

[Aaron Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

These was light hearted and fun to read. Writers like Kim Stanley Robinson owe a great debt to these adventures as do film makers like James Cameron. I really love the anachronisms that exist in books like these (you could probably write a proper science fiction story on that premise alone) While we find ourselves 10 miles below the ocean surface and then another 5 miles down into the crust with ships sheathed in molecule thick armor to resist the great pressures, the backdrop is still populated with pencils, phone books and the like. I hung out with Fred Pohl once at a convention and really wanted to pick his brain. He was very old and very gracious about it. He was like," sure, come on, you can ask me anything you want but just outside the convention center, I really want to smoke a cigarette!"

[Kenneth Flusche · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living Under the Sea. Good Old fasion SF mixing possible science with an adventure and trying to find a way to prevent Global Atomic War and a peaceful use for existing atomic bombs. Deffently written in the late 50's.

[Jim Razinha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wouldn’t do to not read the third book. And it’s the weakest. The characters continue to overact (as written) even for a target audience that outgrew the books by the time this third was published.

[Gilu Anca · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine. Doesn't overstay its welcome, and has some genuinely interesting concepts and neat locations.

[Jüri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lugesin seda peaaegu veerand sajandit tagasi mingis venekeelses ajakirjas.
Tegu on prajalt lameda poistekaga, millest suurt midagi meelde ei jäänud ning mida ma pole tahtnud isegi (originaalis) üle lugeda... rääkimata triloogia kahe esimese osa lugemisest.

[colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

read 06.27.84

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

1979 grade C+

Series book U2