Description

‘Holds up a mirror to a pioneering explorer of the deep seas’ Financial Times

‘Exquisite . . . full of fascinating technology, novel marine discoveries – and unusual scientists’ New Scientist

‘An exhilarating read and one of the best things I’ve read in years’ Martin MacInnes

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11 June, 1930. On a ship floating near Nonsuch Island, a curious steel ball is lowered 3,000 feet into the sea. Crumpled inside, the famed zoologist William Beebe gazes out of the thick quartz windows, watching luminous marine life and never-before-seen creatures flit out of the inky darkness.

A deep dive into Beebe’s eyewitness accounts of underwater exploration, The Bathysphere Book blends research and storytelling, uncovering a magical world where ghostly glowing organisms test the limits of human understanding.

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FURTHER PRAISE:

‘A weird and often beautiful fusion of science writing, history and poetry’ Guardian

‘Wondrous’ Spectator

‘Hypnotic . . . beautifully written’ New York Times

‘Delightfully eccentric . . . a love letter to the magic of the ocean’ Waterstones

‘Full of suspense, revelation, and beauty’ Sy Montgomery

Publisher Review

‘A weird and often beautiful fusion of science writing, history and poetry that explores our own relationship with the unknown’ – Guardian

‘Holds up a mirror to a pioneering explorer of the deep seas… Fox unspools a quirky, digressive series of meditations on Beebe, his times and ours’ – Financial Times

‘Wondrous… Beebes descent becomes a Blakean heaven or hell, as the giant eyeball of the bathysphere hangs in the abyss… As Fox dives into Beebes biography, the book itself becomes the bathysphere’ – Philip Hoare

‘Hypnotic… Beautifully written… raises questions of exploration and wonder, of nature and humanity, and lets readers find answers on their own’ – The New York Times

‘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’