The Bathysphere Book

11 June, 1930. On a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, a curious steel ball is lowered 3000ft into the sea. Crumpled up inside, gazing through the three-inch thick quartz windows, sits the famed zoologist William Beebe. With uncontrollable excitement, he watches as bizarre, never-before-seen creatures drift out of the inky blackness, illuminated by explosions of bioluminescence, bathing in the strange blue light of the deep sea – the bluest blue he has ever experienced.Beebe’s dives took place against the backdrop of a transforming and paradoxical America, home of ground-breaking scientists, outmoded adventurers and eugenicist billionaires. Yet under the ocean’s crushing pressure, narratives of scientific discovery and exploration slowly disintegrate; the colour spectrum shatters into new dimensions; organisms thrive in defiance of conventional understanding.The Bathysphere Book blurs the line between research and poetry to travel deep into the mind of William Beebe and his colleagues – and from this, towards the very edges of scientific discovery.

Author Biography

Brad Fox is a writer, journalist, translator and former relief contractor living in New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily and Guernica, among other publications. His novel To Remain Nameless was a finalist for the Big Other Fiction award and a staff pick at the Paris Review.