Where does a retired astronaut go for emplyment? Into an environment that is every bit as dangerous.
One of only a handfull of fiction stories written by Clarke that are not directly concerned with space, Deep Range looks to a future where the killer whale is used as a sheepdog [a joke to do with the colouring of Border Colliers perhaps?] to herd larger whales that are killed and turned into food.
If that is enough to put you off the story you will be missing out on a classic Clarke novel, and you must remember that when it was written whaling did not have the image it does now, any more than it did at the time when Melville wrote Moby-Dick.
There is a parallel with Ahab and one of the lead characters in the book who is obsessed by a strange sonar reading he has seen on occasion, and is convinced that it is an undiscovered sea creature-and a large one at that.
The design and operation of submersables is given as much detail as the space craft that are more familiar Clarke territiory. The characters have a little more depth [pun intended] than some of Clarkes contemporary work and it is an interesting look at a future that never was to be.
