Description

‘Hypnotic… raises questions of exploration and wonder, of nature and humanity’ New York Times Book Review

‘Exquisite and shocking… just as any exploration of the deep should be’ Helen Scales, author of The Brilliant Abyss

‘[A] rich, strange book’ China Mieville, author of The City & the City

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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

‘The life work of an explorer-scientist becomes a thing of rich poetry’ Helen Gordon, author of Notes from Deep Time
‘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
‘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

Publisher Review

'Brad Fox knows that the descent into the deep meant a sea-change not just in science, but in aesthetics, philosophy, the sense of what it is to be human. All have been changed, become rich and strange, as this rich, strange book shows so beautifully' - China Mieville, author of 'The City in the City' and 'Perdido Street Station' 'A work of vaulting ambition, wonder, and peerless technique, with startling ideas and insights on every page, The Bathysphere Book is an exhilarating read and one of the best things I've read in years. Its reckoning with ecology - its refusal to ignore the legions of animal life humanity is tangled up in - is shiveringly exciting, important, and new.' - Martin MacInnes, author of In Ascension and Infinite Ground 'A breathtaking book, full of suspense, revelation, and beauty. Masterful!' - Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus 'Brad Fox blends excursions into science, history, colour theory, sea exploration and language to weave together a genre-defying book about oceans that is imbued with intelligence, curiosity and wonder.' - Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender 'Brad Fox has created a brilliant work of literary art-at once almanac and seance, wonder-cabinet and hallucinogen. The vigor, pluck, and compression of his language turn a linear chronicle into a time-bending, gem-laden constellation, with surprising flashes of wit, gossip, and melodrama' - Wayne Koestenbaum, author of 'Ultramarine' and 'The Cheerful Scapegoat'