Библиотека современной фантастики. Том 6. Большая глубина. Рассказы (L)

1966 edition.
The sixth volume of the Library of Contemporary Fiction series.

The Moon and Mars are inhabited, the exploration of Venus is in full swing, and on Earth, humanity has gone to the ocean in search of food. Plankton farms flourish, and underwater shepherds deftly manage huge herds of whales. Almost like their distant whaler predecessors, only much more humane, more technologically advanced and more efficient. The World Food Organization, the Department of Whales, funding, bureaucracy, bosses and vacations - the vast underwater world is divided into quadrants and actively explored. The Great Barrier Reef is bustling with life and new ways to improve production efficiency are being tested. For humanity, whales have become something like underwater sheep: it is necessary to protect the livestock from killer whales, monitor its health, transfer it from one plankton "pasture" to another, and when it reaches a certain weight and size, send it to slaughter ... In this novel, Clark raises different topics: here are questions of ethics and religion in the world of a high-tech future, and the tragedy of a person who, due to an accident, lost the opportunity to go into space. The spaceship had to be replaced by a submarine, and instead of space, oceanic spaces were to be surfed. A life shattered into smithereens gradually acquires a new meaning, and the imposed area is of interest with its unexploredness, because the depths of the ocean conceal no less secrets, and moral and ethical issues are present on Earth, and not only among the stars.