The Aquanauts

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

A decade after her mother’s death, Greta Kovachi, 16, feels like an
orphan because her particle physicist father seemingly lives only for
his work, which involves proving his new theory on the nature of time.
Dr. Kovachi’s place of work is located some 100 miles off Oregon’s
coast in a converted nuclear submarine that is now a deep-sea research
habitat 8,000 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean.

Faced with attending summer school to improve poor grades or getting a
job, Greta avoids both by joining her father as a gofer on Deep-Sea One.
Those aboard consist of the vessel’s crew and the scientists working
on a secret project headed up by Dr. Simms. The only non-adults, besides
Greta, are the spit-’n’-polish Jules McGuire (a 17-year-old Naval
Academy Prep School cadet), Marco Ventopolos (the habitat commander’s
17-year-old son and a Stanford sophomore), and Nicky (Marco’s
12-year-old brother). After severe underwater waves strike the habitat,
disabling it, the true adventure of the young quartet, aka “The
Aquanauts,” begins.

In science-fiction plot terms, Dr. Simms is the “evil scientist”
who, for his own nefarious purposes, seeks to exploit the project’s
illegally created black hole, which has opened portals into all past and
future time periods. The Aquanauts’ self-appointed task is to stop
him. At this point, the plot stumbles somewhat, as Lunn must write
metaphorically to explain the science of what is occurring. Readers
seeking action-based sci-fi may be disappointed, but those more science
inclined could be engaged by the mind-twisting concept of all times
co-existing. Recommended with reservations.