The Undersea Trilogy

Undersea Trilogy #1-3

by Frederik Pohl, Jack Williamson

The story takes place in and around the underwater dome city called Marinia. The hero of the stories is cadet Jim Eden of the Sub-Sea Academy.

Genres: Science Fiction, Collections

501 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 1993

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

[Caprice Hokstad]

The date on this is misleading because the original copyright was 1954, '56, and '58. And by golly, I LIKE old books! Yes, there are some silly sci-fi mispredictions. We have deep sea technology to put "sea-cars", scuba divers, and even whole cities at unheard-of depths, but no advances in communications at all. No cell phones. No Internet. Not even simple answering machines on the land lines. I mean, sheesh, there should have been Dick Tracy wrist phones or something!

I'm not sure why the authors made the main characters cadets in the Sub Sea Fleet. There was no YA genre in 1954. It made a little bit of sense in the first book, but I cannot imagine why the second and third books were not set after graduation. The third book, especially, seemed very far fetched to involve cadets instead of commissioned officers.

And there are practically NO women in any of these books, even outside of the military settings (all three books end up in civilian settings for most of the action, kind of like Harry Potter starting in the muggle world, but the bulk of the story is at Hogwarts). Book 2 has a "sea-girl" who is an alternately-evolved human with gills. She has very few spoken lines, but since she breathes water, that makes sense. She does get some action and indeed saves the lives of the protagonists twice. Still, she's a very minor character.

Yet, for all that I could find "wrong", those points didn't bother me. The first two books were more like Hardy Boys adventures than save-the-world epics. The third book has a bit higher stakes, with an entire undersea city in jeopardy. But even when the stakes are high, they are all written with an outlook of adventure.

These books are HOPEFUL sci-fi with a "sensawonder" that I love in fiction. Maybe because I have been reading far too many dystopian plots lately, but this was a breath of fresh air. A mystery and a treasure hunt set in an exciting future I would WANT to live in rather than horrific apocalypse and dreary, oppressive aftermath. But by the absence of such books published recently, I am guessing that this sort of thing is out of style. Of course. I love it, so it must be unpopular. Arrgh.

I would give "Undersea Quest" (book 1) 4.8 stars. Book 2, "Undersea Fleet" would get about 4.4. The third book "Undersea City" is about 3.7, mainly for stretching my ability to suspend disbelief a bit too much and using prolonged silence between characters who were supposedly extremely close friends and family as a crutch to prop up the suspense. Still liked it, just not as much as the other two.

These books are all short: 160 pages, 180 pages, and 160 pages respectively. And those are small, mass market (pocket paperback) sized pages. All three books are only 500 total pages. I am sorry to be finished.

[Zak]

This is an omnibus edition of the undersea trilogy, and it was extremely lackluster. If I had gotten these as individual books, I wouldn’t have finished them, but since it was an omnibus I did complete it, but I was sorely disappointed. I wanted cool submarine sci-fi, but there was no oceanographic science in these books, it was more like space opera under water, in fact there was a point where they even described a sub base as might as well having been in space, and the whole book read that way. There’s a ton of military training stuff which lost me a lot of interest, that may have been a big problem, because I really don’t enjoy military institution tropes. The descriptive language was sorely lacking, though that may have been due to the first person pov, but there was zero atmosphere and style to hook into which made me quite disappointed. I’d really love to read some GOOD submarine sci-fi. Meh city, 2/5.

[Devin Coryell]

What a fun read!

[Bruno Silva]

Histórias sub-aquáticas demasiado infantis para o meu gosto. O interesse perde-se passado o primeiro livro.

[Studio Dongo]

Formulaic and hastily constructed.