Three Miles Down: A Novel

Harry Turtledove

Jul 2022 · Sold by Tor Books

About this ebook

From New York Times bestselling author Harry Turtledove, the modern master of alternate history, a novel of alien contact set in the tumultuous year of the Watergate scandal.

It's 1974, and Jerry Stieglitz is a grad student in marine biology at UCLA with a side gig selling short stories to science fiction magazines, just weeks away from marrying his longtime fiancée. Then his life is upended by grim-faced men from three-letter agencies who want him to join a top-secret "Project Azorian" in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean—and they really don't take "no" for an answer. Further, they're offering enough money to solve all of his immediate problems.

Joining up and swearing to secrecy, what he first learns is that Project Azorian is secretly trying to raise a sunken Russian submarine, while pretending to be harvesting undersea manganese nodules. But the dead Russian sub, while real, turns out to be a cover story as well. What's down on the ocean floor next to it is the thing that killed the sub: an alien spacecraft.

Jerry's a scientist, a longhair, a storyteller, a dreamer. He stands out like a sore thumb on the Glomar Explorer, a ship full of CIA operatives, RAND Corporation eggheads, and roustabout divers. But it turns out that he's the one person in the North Pacific who's truly thought out all the ways that human-alien first contact might go.

And meanwhile, it's still 1974 back on the mainland. Richard Nixon is drinking heavily and talking to the paintings on the White House walls. The USA is changing fast—and who knows what will happen when this story gets out? Three Miles Down is both a fresh and original take on First Contact, and a hugely enjoyable romp through the pop culture, political tumult, and conspiracies-within-conspiracies atmosphere that was 1974.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

it captures how many liberals felt back during the Watergate era. But fails on other levels. Especially on the conservatives view. The other world, and aliens seemed underwritten.

half of this book is a good read; the rest is fluff and filler. i skimmed a lot, trying to find substance.

A third of the way through and it's time to move on, I found it slow with tedious verisimilitude. It's an interesting plot though.

About the author

HARRY TURTLEDOVE (he/him) lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife, the novelist Laura Frankos. He is a winner of science fiction's Hugo Award, for the novella Down in the Bottomlands; and of the Sidewise Award for alternate history, for the novels How Few Remain and Ruled Britannia.