Underwater Borders

The Fleet Of Stars, 10.

"A riskful dive to the borders of what an unaided body could survive was a rite of passage into adulthood. It did more than test strength; it was religious revelation, awe and mystery and the implacability of the universe." (p. 130)

For what an unaided merfolk body can survive, see Aquamen. 

For the sea as religious experience and the implacability of the sea, see Lir III.

For human beings living on and in an extraterrestrial sea, see Nyanza!

 

Another Christmas Activity

See:

Aquamen (scroll down)
Comics And Science Fiction
"Great Books"

Another possible Christmas activity is going to see a superhero film. Aquaman recalls Poul Anderson's The Merman's Children. Superheroes began in sf and still overlap with it. Poul Anderson could have novelized and rationalized superhero characters. The heroic deeds of medieval knights in his The High Crusade are an earlier form of superheroism, especially when translated to an interstellar stage. Comic book superheroes have included Thor (and see here) and a time traveling Arthurian knight.

Comparisons With Superheroes

Alien Animals
Words And Texts
Hugh Valland And Superman
Watchmen
Green Lantern
Hawkman
Superman
Batman
A Mad Time Patrol Story

I hope that page viewers reread these earlier posts while I am out of town all day!

Addendum: Nineteen or so hours later, I am back from London and adding more links:

Aquamen
The Martian Manhunter 

Aquamen

Pantheons include sea gods like Neptune and Lir. Superhero teams include aquatic superheroes like Aquaman or the Submariner. After the continuity-changing Crisis On Infinite Earths, Editor and Writer Roy Thomas retconned Neptune Perkins and Tsunami to replace the Golden Age Aquaman. Such marine superheroes are fascinating but would be even more so if we were told more about their physiology and psychology and about how they function at different depths.

Once, trying to touch the bottom of an artificial lake, I swam down to a level that was suddenly dark and cold with a pain in the ears so I re-ascended as fast as possible. Our heroes would be comfortable at that depth and would be able to descend further.

Poul Anderson describes this process in The Merman's Children (London, 1981), pp. 53-54. In mid-Atlantic:

the halflings wave to wind and sun, then submerge;

for their first breath of sea, they blow out, then widen lips and chest;

water enters and permeates their bodies, activating the merfolk metabolism;

subtle humors decompose water to extract oxygen;

salt is sieved from tissues;

interior furnaces counteract the cold although it is still felt (merfolk are few because they need more food at sea than men do on land);

as they descend, light decreases, then departs;

there is complete silence;

the underwater dialect of the mer-tongue comprises hums, clicks and smacks;

each halfling has an undersea "lanthorn"/lantern strapped to his left forearm (not quite Green Lanterns);

they regularly work chest and stomach muscles to equalize pressure inside and out but still feel the weight of the water;

their leader feels that he nears bottom before uncovering his lantern;

he smells rank flesh and hears or senses the movement of the kraken's gills;

with the lantern, he sees the kraken.

We need this kind of description and more in superhero comics.