THE DEEP RANGE

The price precludes this being listed as science fiction, so let's call it science fiction de luxe. But I for one found it the first F I could read with complete absorption. Here is a Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea of the future, without a villain, to be sure, unless one could classify the giant monsters of the deep in that category. It is a story of a space man transferred to another medium- the undersea world off the coral reef; of a world which depends on the vast herds of whales for their meat, on the plancton meadows for their vegetables; on men trained to keep the balance. It is exciting adventure in what is still an eerie unknown world. Arthur Clarke is known for space stories- for the non-fiction The Coast of Coral and knows whereof he writes. At the end he injects a conservation-vegetarian angle which takes a bit away from the straight adventure aspects.