Undersea City: There’s no place like dome

Undersea City by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

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…