The Bathysphere Book

A wondrously poetic, richly researched deep dive into the luminous world of the deep sea, and the life of the maverick explorer William Beebe who was the first person to visit it

'[A] rich, strange book' China Miéville, author of The City & the City'A breathtaking book, full of suspense, revelation, and beauty' Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus'An exhilarating read… shiveringly exciting, important, and new' Martin MacInnes, author of In Ascension'The life work of an explorer-scientist becomes a thing of rich poetry' Helen Gordon, author of Notes from Deep Time

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11 June, 1930. On a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, a curious steel ball is lowered 3000 feet into the sea. Crumpled up inside, gazing through three-inch thick quartz windows, sits the famed zoologist William Beebe. With uncontrollable excitement, he watches as bizarre, never-before-seen creatures flit out of the inky blackness, illuminated by explosions of bioluminescence. He is the first person to witness this alien world.

Beebe's dives take place against the backdrop of a transforming and paradoxical America, home to ground-breaking scientists, eccentric adventurers, and eugenicist billionaires. Yet under the ocean's crushing pressure, scientific expectations disintegrate; the colour spectrum shatters into new dimensions; outlandish organisms thrive where no one expected them.

The Bathysphere Book blends research, storytelling, and poetic experiments, traveling through entangled histories of scientific discovery into the bottomless magic of the deep unknown.

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Further praise for The Bathysphere Book

'An impressionistic work of art depicting one of the greatest moments of discovery in human history… tantalizing glimpses of deep-sea life' Edith Widder, author of Below the Edge of Darkness: Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea

'A genre-deying book about oceans that is imbued with intelligence, curiosity and wonder' Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender

'A brilliant work of literary art… a time-bending, gem-laden constellation' Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Ultramarine