The novel “Ocean on Top” by Hal Clement was published for the first time serialized in the magazine “Galaxy” in 1967 and in 1973 as a book.
When three Power Board agents disappear in the same area of the Pacific Ocean within a few months, it becomes impossible to believe that these are just unfortunate accidents. The fact that it all started with the investigation of an energy leak makes the disappearances even more suspicious.
The President chooses a new agent to solve the mystery. While investigating in the ocean, the agent ends up in the midst of a storm that causes his boat to sink. When his emergency tank approaches the ocean floor, he discovers to his surprise a decidedly artificial lighting system. His surprise increases when he discovers that there are people living at the bottom of the ocean.
Hal Clement became famous above all for stories in which really exotic aliens appeared in which, at the same time, he tried to maintain a scientific likelihood thus obtaining a high level of realism. The bottom of the oceans is in some ways an alien environment for humans and certainly, no one is expected to live there. The presence of an underwater community sets the stage for a type of adventure that is rarely explored.
The name of the protagonist is never mentioned in the course of the story. He tells in the first person the investigation he carries out after the disappearance of three agents of the Power Board. That’s an institution of crucial importance in that future because resources are scarce and must be rationed. For this reason, the detection of an energy leak in the Pacific Ocean deserves investigation and the disappearance of three agents makes it a priority.
Actually, Hal Clement doesn’t say much about that future society, just describing some characteristics related to the need to ration energy to allow the entire world population to survive. The author started his career in the 1940s and followed the length standards of that era for a long time. “Ocean on Top” is a novel that was initially published in a magazine respecting those standards, with little room for the construction of that future world. For this reason, the story focuses on the discovery and subsequent exploration of the underwater community.
After the beginning in which the protagonist tells about his discovery of the underwater community, the plot is mainly about what he learns about how it can work. Other stories imagined underwater communities with habitats filled with air but Hal Clement imagines one in which humans live in water, or at least that’s the protagonist’s first impression. The descriptions of the problems that the inhabitants of the abyss have to face and the solutions they adopted are the strong points of the novel.
“Ocean on Top” is not an action novel. The protagonist discovers what happened to the missing agents but the underwater community remains at the center of the story. There are various surprises but the sense of wonder is given by the progressive discovery of the result of the expansion of humanity in a frontier that is so close and at the same time very distant due to its environmental conditions. It’s cerebral science fiction of which Hal Clement was a master and if you like it you can still enjoy this novel.
