The Watch Below

The Watch Below

Ballantine, 1966. Words: 65500

" … his remarkable talent for extrapolating human survival under enormously hostile conditions is exploited to the full in a tense and moving novel group of humans trapped in the hull of a sunken ship -- for generation!  Skilfully woven into the desperate problems which confront [them] is the story of a far different group of beings, creatures who face extermination with courage and determination equal to that of the humans" (blurb).  The Watch Below more than fulfilled the potential James White had shown a s novelist in Second Ending and Open Prison.  He produces meaningful drama without subjecting both sets of voyagers to the Dreaded Lurgi, flat atomic batteries and Ghod knows what all else.

Synopsis by graham Andrews

First Publication:

Ballantine Books No U2285, February 1966

Publication History:

Ronald Whiting & Wheaton, March 1966

Transworld/Corgi No GS7759, October 1967

Walker & Co, New York, January 1969

Ballantine, No 0275-7-085, October 1972

Ballantine/Del Rey  No 345-27691-4-175, October 1978

Old Earth Books, Baltimore, ISBN 882968-08-5, August 1996

Foreign Publication:

TERRA UTOPISCHE No 122, May 1967 as Gefangene des Meeres

Edicao Livres do Brasil, Lisbon, late 1971 as O Mondo do Abismo 

TERRA SF ROMANE No 234, May 1974 as Gefangene des Meeres

KOSMOS SFR, Sweden, Wahlstroms Bokforlag, 1976 as Fangede i Djuopet

Hayakawa Publishing Inc,Tokyo, 1983

URANIA No 1011,  December 1985 as Incontro Nell Abismo