[melodiousone]

I'm in grad school and looking for any literature I can find that involves ocean science, and it's even better if it's science fiction. Does anyone have anything they can recommend that's either a short story or novel? I have a list going but please help me out!

[psikeyhackr]

The Deep Range is a 1957 Arthur C. Clarke science fiction novel concerning a future sub-mariner who helps farm the seas. The story includes the capture of a sea monster similar to a kraken.

It is based on a short story of the same name that was published in April 1954, in Argosy magazine. The short story was later featured in Tales from Planet Earth and Frederik Pohl's Star Science Fiction No.3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deep_Range

It's been decades since I read it. I don't recall how accurate the oceanographic information is relative to today's. I presume they thought water was wet back then.

I know I liked the story. The Prince of Whales! :D

I'm pretty sure I read this but I remember it less than The Deep Range.

A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
http://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/books/adoor_art/adoor_study.htm

But if it is about an imaginary ocean on another planet I don't know how relevant it would be to your objectives.

psik

[Omphalos]

Solaris is about an ocean on another planet.

Silverberg has one that I've never read. I think it's called The Face of the Waters.

Jerry Pournelle has one or two short stories set in the ocean; minerals have been depeleted on Earth so people sift seawater for metals. One of those stories is in the collection High Justice.

[Ratatoskr]

Peter Watts is a trained marine biologist, and his Rifters trilogy is ocean themed, I think.

[Werthead]

The Ghost from the Grand Banks, also by Clarke, is about an attempt to refloat the Titanic for the 100th anniversary of its sinking in 2012.

David Brin's Startide Rising (the second book, but frankly a far better starting-point than the first, in his Uplift Saga) has a spacecraft crashed at the bottom of the ocean with the crew trying to repair the ship whilst various alien races clash in orbit to see who gets to destroy them first.

There should be more nautical-flavoured SF (squid opera?) out there. The TV series seaQuest DSV was not great, but it did have a solid premise, with population pressures forcing the settling and colonisation of the ocean floor and super-submarines deployed to defend them. The classic 1980s computer game Carrier Command explored the idea of creating artificial island chains by tapping volcanic energy, as did the forgotten 2000 classic Hostile Waters (the story of which was penned by SF author Warren Ellis).

Given the problems inherent in settling and colonising space, more SF about exploiting the oceans would be (arguably) more realistic and welcome.

[Duke Mahoney]

The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor. Granted they are the last two books in Herbert's WorShip series but good reads on their own. Lots of mutated humans and floating islands made out of organic matter. Good stuff.

[owlcroft]

The Kraken Wakes (aka Out of the Deeps) by John Wyndham.

Under Pressure (aka Dragon in the Sea) by Frank Herbert.

[Sparrow]

The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension Factor. Granted they are the last two books in Herbert's WorShip series but good reads on their own. Lots of mutated humans and floating islands made out of organic matter. Good stuff.



Those are the two books I'd recommend also, as both take place on Pandora, a planet that is entirely ocean. It's essentially a science experiment gone amuck.

[Hitmouse]

The Godwhale by TJ Bass
The Drowned World by JG Ballard
The Blue World by Jack Vance

[The Lord of all Things Inane]

Alan Dean Foster, I forget the name. Drat! Ocean World? No, it is the best book in that area that I have ever read. The entire planet is basically a settlement won in a world court, paid to the whales and dolphins, who were found to be more intelligent than anyone ever imagined. So, to make up for screwing them, we give them a planet. All water, and way cool. Monsters, space ships.
CDN