Really, it's a rubbish title. As Clarke's titles go, this describes very little of what the book holds- 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous With Rama, they both encapsulate the story within them, the concept. With The Deep Range, Clarke misses most of what happens, and doesn't bookend the story inside; that, though, is probably because for once he isnt writing a high-concept populated by machinery masquerading as character. For once, he manages a story, with emotions, fleshed-out characters, not just ciphers and types used to illustrate the alienness of the story's focus.
The Deep Range follows Walter Franklin across three parts, The Apprentice, The Warden and The Bureaucrat, introduced to us in the first few chapters as a bizarre stranger taken under the wing of veteran submariner Don Burley to train as a sub pilot. We follow Franklin as he passes his training with exceptional speed and suspicious familiarity with the concept and controls of the equipment used at the whale and algae/ plankton farms and sanctuaries, deals with a 'mysterious past' deftly handled and bearing an unexpected horro, as he builds relationships, rises through the ranks, and faces the nature of the sea with all its beasts and awesome creatures, nemeses and faithful mysteries.
As it's Arthur C. Clarke from the 50s there are still a few traces of typical Encounters of Strange fare, with the presence of a near-future extra-terrestrially sprawling mankind. This rears its head a little with the revelations of Franklin's past, his earth-bound status and his odd-affinity with the idea of the crushing vacuum of the deep sea, but not in any unforgivable way or without skill. Clarke here takes the high-concept and uses it as occasional backdrop to a human-factor tale of beginning again.
The idea of a love story, that obligatory lynch-pin of sci-fi perhaps more than most genres, also seems to smack a little of 50ssciencefictionwriteritis. Indra, the particular object of Franklin's affections and desires, is the usual mix of alluring, young and pretty to the point of nubile, with hints of what the author thinks make them interesting, edgy and dangerous. A marine biologist whose speciality, as Franklin finds out when he bumps into her for the first time, is gutting sharks to look at their digestion, Indra is a perfect storm of sci-fi wrtiers' romantic interests initially. As the story goes on though her presence, albeit more and more infrequent, diversifies and grows nuanced. Almost, but not quite, enough to undo her 'Maria' status in the first few chapters as the mystery man allures and stays distant, damaged.
As you'd expect with Clarke, there are dangers and losses, peril and alien hazards as commonplace, drawing the plot on interestingly and tensely- because with more real characters, the situations actually mean something. Much more than the deadlines for survival in Rama or the disobedient HAL in 2001, the consequences of which have little meaning for the reader save the deletion of two-dimensional astronauts fulfilling roles of efficiency, not of character.
Also as you'd expect, as a book about the sea, whales and creatures beyond the largest aquatic mammalian life, there are more than a few nods and references to Moby Dick, as well as the meta-references with almost everyone in the book having read Melville's tale, quoting it and understanding their jobs because of it. I wouldn't make such fuss about this inclusion except for the fact that with the more fleshed-out characters and a much broader world outside of its concept, allowing such mentions as classic texts like Moby Dick, it becomes a fuller, better read than many of the more purely idea-driven Clarke works that surround The Deep Range.
The dedication at the front of the book reads 'To Mike, who led me to the sea.' I've no idea who this Mike is, but as the sea turned out such a grounded story and truly speculative science fiction concept based on actual science and projects in both our and Clarke's eras, I'd like to thank him too.
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