Theodore Sturgeon Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)
I wouldn't ordinarily have bothered but for this novelisation having been written by Theodore Sturgeon. I think I saw the movie as a kid, but I'm not absolutely certain, and I recall being underwhelmed by what I saw of the subsequent TV series which, given my unconditional juvenile love of anything starring a vaguely futuristic vehicle, doesn't seem to speak well of the enterprise. Momentarily ignoring what Sturgeon did here so as to examine his source material, Voyage is essentially a variation on Gerry Anderson's formula with characters and situations packed in around the edges of the technological lead role - typically a fast car which shoots house bricks or something; which is in turn an essentially Gernsbackian misreading of Jules Verne; and so Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is Twenty Thousand Leagues reimagined by a dunce, a man who dared to ask what anyone ever saw in Nemo, suggesting the story would be a lot more fun and exciting if we were to reinvent him as a guy one could respect such as a police officer or a solid military man, someone who knows doctors and dentists. As with Star Trek and others of its general type, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is adventure with safety features, framed in a tidily modular setting with regular guys and associated squares at the controls, none of that weird beatnik stuff to confuse you or keep you awake at night.
Against all odds, Theodore Sturgeon managed to squeeze something pretty damn readable out of this near terminally beige commission. Charles Bennett, co-author of the original script, seems to have had an otherwise reasonably impressive track record, so I assume his role was to elevate Allen's basic ideas above grade school level. I don't know how much Sturgeon kept of what Bennett wrote, but it's fairly easy to forget this was ever a movie, which is probably a good thing. Sturgeon's prose is intense and jazzy, twisting and turning in such a way as to blur the focus of what we're actually reading, but throwing out such wild images and ideas that it doesn't really seem to matter that it's founded on what may as well have been an unusually dull episode of Stingray. Additionally, he makes an effort with the science, or at least more of an effort than whoever came up with the original plot, so even if Asimov's title remains unchallenged, the reader can squint a bit and just about get past this being a story in which the sky catches fire.
Assuming the novel inherited these details from the script, it's interesting - even amusing - that the good guys, the progressive, radical thinkers should be conservative uniformed Americans who know when to say sir, while the dangerous, backwards-looking bureaucrats are sceptical European types; but Sturgeon manages this aspect without either hint of an agenda or diluting the occasional ecological digression. Following the maxim of how lousy books can make for decent movies, it's pleasing to find that the equation can work both ways.
I wouldn't ordinarily have bothered but for this novelisation having been written by Theodore Sturgeon. I think I saw the movie as a kid, but I'm not absolutely certain, and I recall being underwhelmed by what I saw of the subsequent TV series which, given my unconditional juvenile love of anything starring a vaguely futuristic vehicle, doesn't seem to speak well of the enterprise. Momentarily ignoring what Sturgeon did here so as to examine his source material, Voyage is essentially a variation on Gerry Anderson's formula with characters and situations packed in around the edges of the technological lead role - typically a fast car which shoots house bricks or something; which is in turn an essentially Gernsbackian misreading of Jules Verne; and so Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is Twenty Thousand Leagues reimagined by a dunce, a man who dared to ask what anyone ever saw in Nemo, suggesting the story would be a lot more fun and exciting if we were to reinvent him as a guy one could respect such as a police officer or a solid military man, someone who knows doctors and dentists. As with Star Trek and others of its general type, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is adventure with safety features, framed in a tidily modular setting with regular guys and associated squares at the controls, none of that weird beatnik stuff to confuse you or keep you awake at night.
Against all odds, Theodore Sturgeon managed to squeeze something pretty damn readable out of this near terminally beige commission. Charles Bennett, co-author of the original script, seems to have had an otherwise reasonably impressive track record, so I assume his role was to elevate Allen's basic ideas above grade school level. I don't know how much Sturgeon kept of what Bennett wrote, but it's fairly easy to forget this was ever a movie, which is probably a good thing. Sturgeon's prose is intense and jazzy, twisting and turning in such a way as to blur the focus of what we're actually reading, but throwing out such wild images and ideas that it doesn't really seem to matter that it's founded on what may as well have been an unusually dull episode of Stingray. Additionally, he makes an effort with the science, or at least more of an effort than whoever came up with the original plot, so even if Asimov's title remains unchallenged, the reader can squint a bit and just about get past this being a story in which the sky catches fire.
Assuming the novel inherited these details from the script, it's interesting - even amusing - that the good guys, the progressive, radical thinkers should be conservative uniformed Americans who know when to say sir, while the dangerous, backwards-looking bureaucrats are sceptical European types; but Sturgeon manages this aspect without either hint of an agenda or diluting the occasional ecological digression. Following the maxim of how lousy books can make for decent movies, it's pleasing to find that the equation can work both ways.
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