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First serialized as Under Pressure, Frank Herbert's debut novel is as impressive as the author's later and more lauded Dune.
Frank Herbert's debut novel was serialized in Astounding in four parts from November 1955 as Under Pressure, but became better known as The Dragon in the Sea. According to the cover blurb for the 1974 NEL paperback edition, it fought Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and William Golding's Lord of the Flies to a standstill for the 1957 International Fantasy Award, but this is unconfirmed on the web. This short, elegant novel is elegantly simple, and as it progresses, is as claustrophobic as its serial title would suggest. After years of stalemate, the Allies and the Eastern Powers have reached an uneasy stalemate; but the Allies' war machine is burning fuel at an unsustainable rate, and in desperation, they have resorted to siphoning fuel from submarine oil fields in the EP's territory below the Arctic ice-cap. "The EP's know they're losing oil. They know how, but can't...be sure of where or when." The admiral's voice grew louder. "Our detection system is superior. Our silencer planes --" Dr. Oberhausen's brittle voice interrupted him. "Everything we have is superior except our ability to keep them from sinking us." Of the previous twenty missions, the Allies have lost twenty vessels. Time is running out for them, so Ensign John Ramsey, a psychologist/electronics expert par excellence is assigned to the subtug USS Fenian Ram. He is to replace the previous electronics officer, who suffered a psychotic blow-up. The Fenian Ram must run silent and deep; they are on their own in enemy territory, and Ramsey finds himself in a cauldron of tension. There are only four men serving as crew on the Fenian Ram. Ramsey is sure that of the other three men, one is a traitor. Two of the other three suspect that Ramsey is the traitor, rather than confront the fact that their assessment of their colleagues with whom they have served for years may be wrong. Several things are particularly impressive about The Dragon in the Sea. Written as it was at the height of the Cold War, Herbert gives the enemy a generic enough name that it can cover almost any Asiatic alliance, which means that it does not date; he was clever enough to spot that Arctic oil fields would become an issue twenty years before OPEC held the Western world to ransom after the Yom Kippur War and made oil consumption an issue; his knowledge of submariner terminology is impressively convincing, and finally his characterization is taut and intense. The Dragon in the Sea is an unjustly overlooked classic -- in its own quiet way it is at least as impressive as the author's later and much more lauded Dune.
The copyright of the article The Dragon In The Sea in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish The Dragon In The Sea in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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