What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
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Books where animals like squids, octopuses, or sharks are major themes, like Benchley's work.
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Joseph
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Sep 22, 2015 06:37AM
I always loved Peter Benchley's work, particularly Jaws, Beast, and The Girl of the Sea of Cortez. Can you recommend any other authors or titles that are great animal-themed sea stories like his? I'm not really looking for pirate stories or ship sailing stories, more under the sea than on it. Suggestions can be adult or young adult, any genre. Thanks.
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I just read Meg: Origins. There is a whole series and they are all like Jaws. (Extinct looks to be more of the same by a different author, but I've not read it.)Sphere has a squid, but I can't recall if it was a major theme.
It seems like I should have more on this theme, but that's all I can think of at the moment. I'll let you know if I come up with something else.
Sphere is a book to think about, but there are scenes which are pure horror, imho, not for everyone. Filmed with a few major A-List stars.
Recommend both the book and the movie. In the movie, again, some scenes may be too disturbing. Not too fond of horror, I thought that much was unnecessary and did not really work for me, as a filmed book it is a good adaption, as far as I remember.
Without the horror scenes, would be a book and a movie I could recommend to my mother, but not as it is.
The scene with the squid(s) is the most disturbing, but that may depend on ones personal fears, I thought they where very real and could relate to them (having been slightly burned by squids in the sea a few times long ago). Also the scene was not major for me.
You might like Kraken by China Mieville (fantasy novel about a cult who worship squid... I haven't read it but some of my friends really liked it)For non fiction there's also Leviathan: Or, The Whale
Great minds to think alike. I've read 20,000 Leagues and Kraken. Meg is on my TBR list. Thanks for the recommendations. Please, keep them coming.
Ingo wrote: "Sphere is a book to think about, but there are scenes which are pure horror, imho, not for everyone. "Interesting thoughts, Ingo. Honestly, I think of all of Crichton's work as sci-fi-with-chilling-moments, but you are right that there is a good bit of horror in there. (Of course, the reason I don't think of his stuff as horror is that Jaws scared the jeepers out of me, so I think horror is OK for this topic.) That said, I turned it over in my mind last night and I don't thing Sphere really qualifies. It is all about their discovery and the terror of being trapped together at the bottom of the sea, not the squid. Great read, though.
Joseph, you might give a look at this list for some other possibilities:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
Jaws is on there and there are several others that look like they might be on point.
Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I just read Meg: Origins. There is a whole series and they are all like Jaws. (Extinct looks to be more of the same by a different author, but I've not read it.)[bo..."
I have only read the first book of the Meg series but I am with Amy read it.
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Oh how wonderful! I just made an octopi shelf the other day. I need to take a new look at Clarke's stuff anyway.
I'm a huge fan of sea monster stories, but I am apparently cursed to not enjoy most of the few that actually get published. For whatever reason, many of them just don't work for me even though other people enjoy them just fine. My wife would probably tell you I'm picky, but I prefer to blame it on a presumably magical curse.All that said, here are some I've read and some I haven't. I'll try not to spoil anything, which means these will be fairly generic descriptions.
You mention Benchley, but not White Shark. I assume you're aware of it, but just in case.
Sleeper has a monster very similar in appearance and origin to the one in White Shark, but buried in a time capsule in the Pentagon. Not a great book, but it reads like a decent(ish) B movie, which is about all I ask from this type of story.
I'll second Extinct by Charles Wilson. Good read. I liked it better than the Meg series, which is also worth checking out. Alten also wrote at least one or two non-Meg books that might be worth a look.
The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham is about aliens who are colonizing the oceans and trying to get rid of us pesky humans, but I think it'd tickle your fancy.
Creatures of the Abyss by Murray Leinster is similar to The Kraken Wakes, but there's a sequence that will definitely appeal to you. Also, it's available for free on Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42901
It's a short story, but "He" by Alan Dean Foster is an absolute must-read for anyone looking for this type of story. A native fisherman goes to an American marine biologist and reports that one of their most feared sea demons has been disrupting their ability to fish. The American knows this must be just superstitious nonsense, but decides an expedition out to sea would be a nice change of pace. I can't recommend this story highly enough. Your best bet to find it is to track down Foster's collection With Friends Like These..., which as a bonus has lots of other great stories.
The Deep Range by Arthur C Clarke essentially transports the Old West undersea, with the equivalent of cowboys in submarines herding whales. There's one sequence where we find out that undersea predators can get a lot bigger than a mountain lion.
Below by Ryan Lockwood would definitely qualify and was a decent read. Global warming and other changes to the ocean has caused heretofore unfamiliar animals to come closer to shore and the surface, and they're hungry. He has another, What Lurks Beneath, that I haven't read but also looks like your cup of tea. They both have very similar plot descriptions, but I'm assuming different monsters. Who knows?
I never read Warrener's Beastie: A Novel of the Deep but I've heard good things. I believe it's more of a literary novel, though, and I'm not sure if the monster is an important part of the story or just a metaphor, or what.
The Swarm is basically about the entire ocean declaring war on humanity. Might not have enough true monsters for your taste, but I thought it was interesting.
Camouflage was a good read, but is definitely more about life on land than sea monsters. Take a look at the description, at least.
Dark Gold is about a young man who gets pulled into a quest to recover treasure from a shipwreck that is protected by a murderous creature. The focus is more on the people than the monster, though.
Dark Life by Kat Falls and its sequel Rip Tide are more about the challenges of living underwater than about monsters, but the second one at least has some nasty marine crocodiles. And they're fantastic books in their own right, so I like to recommend them every chance I get.
The Predators by Mark Washburn is listed here on Goodreads, but I can't get the stupid add book/author to admit it exists. It's an absolutely ridiculous book with an awesome premise - they capture the largest Kodiak bear in the world, and the largest great white shark in the world, and force them to fight to the death in a giant sloping pool on pay per view. Needless to say, PETA would not approve, and honestly neither did I. The bear and shark were by far the most sympathetic characters in the book, but the story didn't spend nearly enough time with them. It was mostly about two supposedly sympathetic people who became involved in the production, which was going to be filmed in a tiny banana republic because no civilized country would allow it. And I'm going to go ahead and spoil things, because this book pissed me off. The fight starts out interesting when we finally get to it, juxtaposing the bloodlust of the human crowd with the somehow much cleaner bloodlust of the animals themselves. The bear and shark go back and forth a few times in well-described fight scenes, and then all hell breaks loose when the island's rebels use this distraction to stage a revolution. When the smoke clears, both the bear and shark are dead and there's no way to tell if they killed each other or were killed by the human fighting. There was probably supposed to be some important message in that, but I sure couldn't find it. Seriously, screw this book, don't even think about trying to find it.
Whew. I've been waiting thirty years to get that off my chest.
But now I'm done. I know I'm forgetting multiple books, including one with a killer ray that learns to fly that is hovering just out of reach of my memory. If I remember any others, I'll post again.
Wow, Peter, that is great. I added a few of those to my own Mt. St. TBR.Here is another listopia, Joseph.
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6...
Peter and Amy, thanks! That's quite a list of books, and the only ones on it I've read so far are those two great books by Kat Falls and regarding Benchley, yeah, I've ready everything he wrote. Thanks again.
I loved the Meg series. I'll also second Below which I liked quite a bit.I've read What Lurks Beneath and once you've read below by the same author there isn't much difference between the two books. But yeah different monsters.
The Beast is my favorite sea horror movie!
Kid Vs. Squid (which exactly describes the plot)by Greg Van Eekhout is more middle grade than YA, but I enjoyed it. Kid vs. Squid
Glad my list was of some service, and always happy to find fellow sea-monster fans. I did remember the book I was forgetting - Natural Selection by Dave Freedman. The premise is a bit ridiculous - even more ridiculous than the usual "Well, these monsters have been around forever but we've just never seen them before, so go with it" - but it's a decent read.
Startide Rising by David Brin is about sentient dolphins in the future. Startide RisingAnd for YA, a steampunk novel (first in a trilogy) Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. It's about a flying cyborg whale during World War I in an alternate universe. It's really good. Leviathan
And a really good (middle grade) novel is Whales on Stilts by M.T. Anderson which is about exactly that. Whales on Stilts (first in a series)
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Kirkus:
"Heavy-breathing arctic adventure from the Dino De Laurentiis school of supermonsters. A gigantic killer whale, specially bred at a marine facility in Oregon, escapes to the open sea. He's 39 feet long and weighs seven tons, enormously larger than the normal killer whale, and has been trained since calfhood to attack certain humans and ships. When he mistakenly swallows an American and is fired upon by his former beloved trainers, the confused monster abandons civilization and takes over a large pack of killers. Meanwhile, Kate Warren, an honors graduate of Oxford who is following in her father's footsteps as a researcher in marine biology, joins Dad on an arctic expedition. But as they wing north to set up camp, their plane goes down and crashes onto an ice floe. Seven of the team escape and manage to rescue some camping equipment before the plane catches fire and blows up. The explosion loosens the floe from its mooring and away they float on the melting ice. Old rivalries from the past emerge, but their threat of violence is overwhelmed first by an attacking polar bear and then by the killer whales. The other whales pick up some of their leader's madness toward humans, and they begin battering the thin floe to pieces. Then a pack of 200 walruses invade the weak ice, trying to escape the frenzied whales--and slaughter erupts everywhere. At last we are down to three scientists versus the killer and his mate. . . . A whirlwind of gore, twirled competently enough to please the carnage-in-the-wilderness crowd."
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The Dolphins' Bell Set in the same world as the above book, but is in the semi-mythical past and was, I think written afterwards. At any rate, I haven't read it, so don't really know when it was written. But I did read the previously listed one.
I think you can enjoy these 2 even if you haven't read any of the rest of the books set on this world (and there are a LOT of them, but they are kind of clustered in smaller sub-series) but who knows--you might find a new series to read. :o)
Natural Selection If you're looking for something like Jaws, I think this will tickle your fancy. Giant carnivorous Rays.
Pressure by Brian Keene has been on my to-read list for a while. It's about a free diver and a marine biologist who team up to try and figure out the cause of an ecological catastrophe on the ocean floor, and end up getting more than they bargained for. It's been described as "Jaws" meets "Alien." :)
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"a killer sea-blob. For the biomenace at hand is a form of plankton that moves in organized masses held together by mucus. It dissolves everything it touches and emits the equivalent of nerve gas into the atmosphere. Naturally, the pestiferous Pfesteria, as it is called, arose unnaturally, as the result of a biological warfare experiment flushed down the drain by the yarn's hero's former father-in-law."
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"Two years after his wife's death, oceanographer and former navy SEAL, Atticus Young, attempts to reconcile with his rebellious daughter, Giona, by taking her on the scuba dive of a lifetime--swimming with a pod of peaceful humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine. But the beauty of the sea belies a terror from the deep--a horrific creature as immense as it is ancient. There is no blood, no scream, no fight. Giona is swallowed whole by the massive jaws....." (from the cover)
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"After an undersea lab conducting research on a rare jellyfish known as the blue medusa mysteriously disappears and a bathysphere harboring Joe Zavala is attacked by an underwater vehicle and left helpless on the sea floor, Kurt Austin puts the NUMA team on the case."
There's a great short story called The Quest for Black Claveringi by Patricia Highsmith about a scientist traveling to a remote island in search of giant snails. Parts of it take place in the water, and despite what sounds like a silly premise it's quite tense.
What's the Name of That Book???
Books mentioned in this topic
Children of Ruin (other topics)The Maracot Deep (other topics)
Carcharodon (other topics)
The Thing about Great White Sharks: And Other Stories (other topics)
The House of Rust (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jeffrey Konvitz (other topics)Brian Keene (other topics)
Arthur C. Clarke (other topics)
Peter Benchley (other topics)
