The Deep Range - Arthur C. Clarke

In the silence of space no-one can hear you scream. Was that Franklin’s problem? Had he screamed? Could it be that he knew what it was like not to be heard?

If that was the case why on earth…and he is back on earth…would he choose a second career that took him to what might be thought of as “inner” space. Not the vast silent deeps of the space, but those of the oceans, just as vast, just as silent, just as deadly?

Arthur ...
...about star wars, or colonising the planets beyond our ken and meeting strange new beings. There are enough strange new beings on this planet to keep us busy for a while yet.

This was something that Clarke recognised and treasured and in this 1968 story tried to give prominence to. The story is set in 21st century, which probably seemed a long way away at the time, man has suffered and starved for reasons not explained. This is a Clarke ... more

In the silence of space no-one can hear you scream. Was that Franklin’s problem? Had he screamed? Could it be that he knew what it was like not to be heard?

If that was the case why on earth…and he is back on earth…would he choose a second career that took him to what might be thought of as “inner” space. Not the vast silent deeps of the space, but those of the oceans, just as vast, just as silent, just as deadly?

Arthur C Clarke is synonymous with Science Fiction, and is probably avoided by many who would enjoy his work for that very reason. Sci-Fi isn’t all about star wars, or colonising the planets beyond our ken and meeting strange new beings. There are enough strange new beings on this planet to keep us busy for a while yet.

This was something that Clarke recognised and treasured and in this 1968 story tried to give prominence to. The story is set in 21st century, which probably seemed a long way away at the time, man has suffered and starved for reasons not explained. This is a Clarke technique. He keeps his stories sharp and short, by giving you just enough of a backdrop for context, without feeling the need to bog you down in years of history. This isn’t an epic, it’s one man’s tale. You’re in his time, you get all you need to know.

What you need to know is that, following the shortages, man has returned to the oceans…not by evolution, but by technology. He has learned how to grow the kelp, and farm the sea creatures… No. Don’t think Salmon. Think Whale!

This is where how quest of the oceans finally brings us. The oceans are fenced, and their majestic creatures bow to our command, their migrations monitored to the point of controlled… This is what the Wardens do. They farm whales.

Of course, they also risk their lives to do it. Technology has advanced, but ocean pressures are still beyond the survivability of man, and technology advances only at the rate that it does… a few leaps here and there…but this is Sci-Fi not fantasy. The laws of physics still apply.

Don Burley is a warden. A bit of a maverick, but an expert and much respected in the field. He is given a special mission: the training of Walter Franklyn. Quickly. He doesn’t know why. Franklyn meanwhile comes over as slightly paranoid. He’s certainly under the eye of the medics, but also of the higher bureaucrats. This is either a man with a mission, or one with a history. Or both.

Deep Range is Franklyn’s story. It takes us through three periods of his life: Apprentice – Warden – Bureaucrat. During the years that entails Clarke shows us the development of man’s path (as it would logically follow) once the deep ranges had been established and also the development of one man’s path (as his mindset would and would not alter) once he’d become part of that system.

The story follows a number of specific episodes: training missions, suicide attempts, poaching expeditions, searches for the giant squid and the mythical sea serpent. For those feeling the need to draw analogies with Moby Dick, Clarke saves you the bother and has one of his main characters read direct from the novel. Franklyn had never had much truck with it. Me neither. Deep Range is much more believable.

Franklyn is a complicated man, with complications to contend with. He is pragmatic, ambitious, determined but he also has an ethical core, and that is important for the story, as much in reading it in 2007 as was presumably so 1968.

In the preface to the 1988 edition, Clarke acknowledges that he ‘borrowed’ the idea of whale ranching from Jacques Cousteau…but also underlines that he was trying to make an ecological point: i.e. that it was not necessarily a sound idea. By 1988 ‘saving the whale’ was almost a short-hand for saving the planet, & Clarke “would like to think that in some small way The Deep Range helped bring these changes about”.

I can’t speak for that…I was somewhere between 6 and 16 years old at the time…and not totally clued up. What I can say from a perspective of several years later is that the story loses none of its impact.

The characters are as engaging and real as ever. We are still tantalised by what exactly happened to Franklyn that brought him to the World Food Programme (and why do the authorities feel a responsibility towards him). We still warm to him, as he thaws out.

The ethics have not altered.

The science has. We now know that colonies on Mars are not just a long way off, they are actually very improbable. We know that no earthling is ever likely to swim in the seas of Venus. Our colonies and new seas will be much much further away, if we ever figure out how to get there. But the impact that colonisation might have on the generations bred and born in them, and their ability to return to the home planet…that rings true.

The closer-to-home science is closer-to-the-mark. Clarke’s predictions of what might lie beneath the waves and how we might go about discovering it is not too far adrift from reality.

But if the adventure tale isn’t enough to hold you, and the science doesn’t intrigue you…read it anyway. Read it for the awesomely beautiful descriptions of the world not just beneath the waves, but so far beneath the waves that light does not reach, and those who could shine light choose to do so out of the visible spectrum….and to listen…and to see in other media.

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It’s a short book…full of crises and mysteries and action…yet it gives pause for thought.

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Published in paperback (1988) by Gollancz Science Fiction
ISBN 0575077115
Cover price £6.99
pp 224

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© Lesley Mason
hiker@Ciao
30.4.07 

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