I am a marine biologist who studies salt marshes, fishes, crabs, and marine pollution. I fell in love with the ocean as a child and am interested in sharing my love and knowledge with other people. So, in addition to my scientific research, I write books for the general public. This was the first one, and I wanted a second author to help me write in a "user-friendly" way, different from technical writing.
Jacques Cousteau, an engineer and the inventor of scuba, chronicled his early days of underwater adventure in this book. It is a real-life adventure story by a person who first made us realize what a fascinating world exists under the sea.
Cousteau and his friend Fredric Dumas take us into the world under the sea. (We now know with new technology that it’s pretty noisy down there). They are developing new technologies to bear the enormous pressure in the depths. They go to depths that no one has ever gone to before, discover the effects of gases, and get drunk on nitrogen in their air supply. They also tackle large squids and octopuses and escape shark attacks.
The book has old black-and-white photos of underwater dives and of sharks and squids.
Before becoming the man who introduced us to the wonders of the sea through his beloved television series, Jacques Cousteau was better known as an engineer and the inventor of scuba. He chronicled his early days of underwater adventure in The Silent World?a memoir that was an instant, international bestseller upon its publication in 1954. Now, National Geographic presents a 50th anniversary edition of this remarkable book, allowing readers to once again travel under the sea with Cousteau during the turbulent days of World War II.
I’m a Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of horror fiction and have always had an affinity for the autumn season. I grew up in North Carolina and have wonderful memories of the time of year when the summer heat finally ends and the chill returns—the season of long walks in the turning woods, campfires, ghost stories, and, of course, Halloween. There’s something about that time that has always stuck with me and finds its way into my writing even now. My first collection, As Summer’s Mask Slips and Other Disruptions, draws on this period of transition and so I absolutely love sharing those works which have influenced and entertained me.
The “Cthulhu” in the title is a bit of a misnomer, since the big squid doesn’t actually make an appearance, but this anthology does collect some wonderful contemporary authors of Weird fiction exploring the autumn season. I love fiction that hints at the hidden world(s) behind our own, and these stories capture that immense and unsettling feeling of when the world’s disguises rot and fall away. You can open it to any page and find a gem, but my personal favorites include Laird Barron’s invocation of small-town bizarreness in “Andy Kaufman Creeping Through the Trees”; Nadia Bulkin’s election season meets haunted corn maze allegory “There Is a Bear in the Woods”; and Gemma Files’s archaeological horror “Grave Goods.”
H.P. Lovecraft, the American master of horror, understood with horrible clarity that all things must die. After summer is winter, and life inevitably gives way to frozen sterility. In our modern world, we live cushioned existences, and congratulate ourselves on our supposed escape from the old dangers. We think ourselves caught out of nature’s reach by our technological wizardry. Safely cocooned. This foolishness blinds us to the truth that our elder forebears could not avoid. Engulfed by the rhythms of the world, they understood... Autumn means death.
When I was young, I worked on fishing boats in Alaska and developed an affection for weird sea creatures. All manner of unusual marine life would come up on the line, like wild-looking sea stars, pointy-nosed skates, and alien-looking ratfish. Later, I graduated from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks with a degree in Communications. One of my early jobs was with the Washington Department of Wildlife public information department, writing about fish, as well as other wildlife-related topics. When I moved to Bozeman, Montana, I had the opportunity to create content for a museum exhibit on early life forms. That hooked me on all things paleo. It is a joy to write about and share the things I love—like oddball creatures from deep time.
Evolution, extinction, evo-devo, a “vampire squid from hell”—what more could a paleo-curious reader ask for? Staaf keeps it interesting and breezy as she takes a deep dive into the mysteries of that most ancient and fascinating group, the cephalopods. The fossil record for this extraordinary, important, and long-surviving class (which includes ammonoids and nautiloids as well as the shell-free squids and octopuses) goes back 500 million years. The book is full of “wows,” like a 20-foot-long fossil shell, and the fact that ink has been reconstituted from fossil belemnites and used for illustration. Just wow.
An epic and fun history spanning from the mollusks that invented swimming to the octopuses and other intelligent cephalopods of today Publisher's Note: Monarchs of the Sea was previously published in hardcover as Squid Empire.
Before mammals, there were dinosaurs. And before dinosaurs, there were cephalopods--the ancestors of modern squid, octopuses, and more creatures--Earth's first truly substantial animals. Essentially inventing the act of swimming, cephalopods presided over an undersea empire for millions of years--until fish evolved jaws, and cephalopods had to step up their game or risk being eaten. To keep up, some streamlined their shells and added defensive spines,…
Since I was a little boy, I’ve been fascinated by all things ‘creatures’–from massive Grizzly bears that roam the mountains to Kraken that swim in the depths of the oceans to massive Anaconda that are worshiped in the Amazon rainforest. Having discovered The Weekly World News tabloids at my grandma’s, I couldn’t get enough of what makes us question what lurks in the trees or swim in the waters around us. I’ve taken that love of all things cryptid and used those moments of awe and fear that I had while discovering these creatures all those years ago and placed them into the novels I write.
McConvey does a remarkable job of giving us a detective novel masquerading as a horror novel. I loved the main character, Eddie ‘The Yeti’ Gesner, a deeply flawed and grief-stricken man who is a cryptozoologist.
Having this novel take place in Newfoundland, Canada, worked perfectly to allow McConvey to fill the story with squid-based events and profound historical elements, and with the addition of the corporate greed angle, it felt timely and topical.
A genre-bending noir, and perhaps the squiddiest novel ever written, False Bodies creates a horror/thriller blend of the renowned Newfoundland culture seen in shows like Come From Away with the heart-pounding tension and creeping fear of Alien.
False Bodies follows monster hunter Eddie “The Yeti” Gesner to Newfoundland, to investigate a mass death on an offshore oil rig—which some say is the work of a kraken. A mysterious incident in Eddie’s life has made him obsessed with chasing unfathomable things, but when an antique diary plunges him into a watery world of squid cults, tentacled beasts and corporate greed, Eddie…
I’ve been fascinated by “other worlds” since I found my father’s battered copy of Dune when I was eleven. I’ve been seeking that experience of transportation, of transcendence, that I got from reading Dune, ever since. I’ve found it in diverse places, from the very alien worlds of Jo Clayton’s Diadem from the Stars series to the somehow-familiar woods of Richard and Wendy Pini’s ElfQuest comics. I’ve tried to give that experience back to my readers, in creating worlds wondrous and strange but entirely relatable. The books on this list sparked that same sense of transcendence and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
“What if?” That’s the question sci-fi and fantasy authors have been asking for over a hundred years. What if humanity was dying and aliens offered salvation, but only at a terrible price? That’s the question this book poses, and it does it so compellingly. The story’s set on a poisoned world, and in a dying race’s spaceship. There is no escape here except death. There are no familiar, comfortable spaces. Nowhere left to hide. There is only the smallest spark of hope: that the humans can somehow connect with the aliens who are “not squid” but absolutely not like us. To do so, they have to overcome the basest squeamishness of human nature, and that they do makes for not just brave characters, but an extremely brave book.
“It will take the whole night at least,” he said, “to implant all my eggs.”The colony planet is a death trap. Only the tiniest fraction of humanity survives the gruesome rejection virus.
And then the aliens arrive.
The Nepenthe, too, seek a new home world, but discover instead a species capable of incubating their precious eggs: humans.
The two dying races can either reach an agreement to help each other live on … or prepare for extinction.
Publisher's Note: The We Are Nepenthe series contains tentacles, shapeshifting aliens and squirm-in-your-seat depravity. A one-click read for the seriously adventurous only.
Every animal gets a two-page spread that includes a photograph and an illustration, as well as a short description.
My kid loves weird animals, like the bootlace worm—the longest animal! It's even longer than a blue whale! But it looks like a brown bootlace. It's gross. He also likes the flying squid, which jet-propel themselves out of the water up to 30 feet through the air!
Dive into the wondrous world of water and discover the stories of more than 100 incredible aquatic lifeforms.
The underwater world is so much bigger than young minds can fathom and there is always more to learn. An Anthology of Aquatic Life is a stunning ocean encyclopedia for young readers to explore, with reference pages packed with fascinating information, little learners will be captivated as they discover the facts, stories and myths behind their favourite sea-life animals.
From the deepest, widest ocean to the tiniest puddle, this beautiful compendium takes young readers on an enthralling journey through the aquatic world,…
Growing up in Los Angeles, I am well familiar with strange, grotesque, illogical, and wonderful cities. My love of fantasy has always been for the odd ones out, less the bucolic farmlands and forest, more for those that present a twisted mirror of modern urban life. As an amateur lover of history, I love to study the evolution, mutation, and decay of cities. I find most interesting cities, in both real life and fantasy, to be those shaped by not one single culture, but by many over history and space.
If dragons and elves are the mainstays of traditional fantasy, then mushrooms and squids are the mainstays of weird fantasy. And there’s no city with more squids or mushrooms than Vandermeer’s Ambergris. A haphazard port town infested by fungi and built on ancient ruins holding dark secrets, there’s nothing quite like Ambergris.
What I love so much about Vandermeer’s trilogy is that the city evolves and changes. City of Saints and Madmen is an excellent short story collection that introduces the setting in peacetime, and by the end of Finch it has seen so much conflict and upheaval that Ambergris evolves into a completely different and yet equally fascinating city.
From the author of Annihilation, now a major motion picture on Netflix.
From Jeff VanderMeer, an author praised by writers such as Laren Beukes, China Mieville and Michael Moorcock, City of Saints and Madmen is by turns sensuous and terrifying. This collection of four linked novellas is the perfect introduction to VanderMeer's vividly imagined world.
In the city of Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he's…
I’ve always been an animal lover who's also interested in what makes different creatures tick: how they’ve evolved as living beings, where and how they exist, and what role any given one plays in our world at large. I also find bodies of water calming to gaze at, fun to splash in and sail on, and it’s intriguing to study them as ecosystems. Each type—from small transient sidewalk puddles to vast enduring seas—can support some form of animal life under the right circumstances. And, for me, the fact that we humans spend most of our time experiencing life on land makes marine life that much more mysterious and magical to learn and write about.
One look at the cover of this visually stunning, expertly crafted nonfiction picture book sparks the notion that the elusive giant squid has much more to teach us than what meets the eye.
Next, this opening line from the prologue plunges the reader into the squid’s mysterious world so the rest of the book can fulfill the cover’s promise:
"Down,
down
in the depths
of the sunless sea,
deep,
deep
in the cold,
cold dark,
creatures,
strange
and fearsome,
lurk."
I was hooked from the get-go, and I know Fleming and Rohmann’s innovative pairing of poetic expository text with darkly arresting illustrations—with every word and brushstroke remaining faithful to the facts—will engage any reader lucky enough to pick up this book.
The giant squid is one of the most elusive creatures in the world. As large as whales, they hide beyond reach deep within the sea, forcing scientists to piece together their story from those clues they leave behind.
An injured whale's ring-shaped scars indicate an encounter with a giant squid. A piece of beak broken off in the whale's belly; a flash of ink dispersed as a blinding defense to allow the squid to escape-- these fragments of proof were all we had . . . until a giant squid was finally filmed in its natural habitat only two years…
I discovered mind uploading in 1997 via a nonfiction book by Earl and Cox. That book literally changed my life, opening my eyes to concepts I had never previously considered. I joined groups and organizations that advocate for and advance research toward eventual mind-uploading technology. My enthusiasm for the topic ultimately culminated in my 2014 nonfiction book and then again in my 2024 novel, Contemplating Oblivion. The novel presents my philosophy concerning the purpose of existence and the universe, offering an answer that is closely tied to our destiny to one day computerize the brain, upload humanity, and populate the galaxy.
This book has two concepts that have stuck in my memory for years: the uplifted space-faring squid and the end-of-universe-scouring of astronomical bodies into perfectly smooth spheres. How many stories take the notion of the future to its logical extreme by showing the cosmos literally withering away countless eons downstream?
This book directly shows such a far-flung world, an endgame to which almost no science fiction story ventures. Mind uploading occurs in the novel in the far future of humanity, less so in much of the novel’s storyline in the near future, but I included it in this list because the book itself is fantastic and Baxter genuinely leans into a future in which mind uploading is an inevitable and expected outcome.
“Reading Manifold: Time is like sending your mind to the gym for a brisk workout. If you don’t feel both exhausted and exhilirated when you’re done, you haven’t been working hard enough.”—The New York Times Book Review
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. As the world’s governments turn inward, one man dares to envision a bolder, brighter future. That man, Reid Malenfant, has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of…
