James Cameron's Aliens of the Deep: Voyages to the Strange World of the Deep Ocean - Hardcover

Macinnis, Joe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792293436 ISBN 13: 9780792293439

Publisher: National Geographic, 2005

Synopsis

A companion volume to the new 3-D giant-screen film follows a team of scientists as they explore the deep ocean vents of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, offering readers a view of life in Earth's most hostile and inaccessible environments and their remarkable inhabitants.

About this title

About the Author:

Longtime colleague of James Cameron, author Joseph MacInnis accompanied James Cameron on the Aliens of the Deep expeditions in the summer of 2003. Dr. MacInnis spent his early career studying the performance of divers working at extreme depths under the sea. As an undersea explorer he led thirty major expeditions and logged more than 5,000 hours below the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. In 1974, he led the first team of scientists to dive under the ice at the North Pole. Dr. MacInnis has written six books and numerous articles for magazines including Scientific American and National Geographic. He lives in Canada.

James Cameron (Introduction) is an award-winning feature filmmaker whose credits include Terminator, The Abyss, and the international smash-hit Titanic. In 2003 Cameron produced Ghosts of the Abyss, a 3-D large format film that was a return to the site of the famous wreck. He lives in San Diego, CA.

From Publishers Weekly:

Physician and scientist MacInnis, the first person to dive under the North Pole, brings extensive experience surveying the undersea world to this tribute to Titanic director Cameron's latest 3D, giant screen deep-sea extravaganza of the same name. The book combines MacInnis's fascinating descriptions of the deep-sea hydrothermal vents that are the film's focal point with fawning reporting on the many obstacles Cameron faced as he directed what has become one of the most expensive documentary films ever made. The work's most compelling parts are MacInnis's brief "Dispatches": two- to three-page sidebars giving more detailed investigations of related scientific issues, such as how hydrothermal vents may provide a way of looking at the subterranean life that might exist on planets and moons in our solar system. Unfortunately, MacInnis's text makes up only half of the book. The other half, nearly 100 photographs taken from the film, is a major disappointment, with most images lacking crisp resolution and definition. Almost all of the most interesting views of underwater life appear to have been photographed through a thin gauze; what could have been an amazing shot of superheated water shooting from a vent ends up looking like a blur of black and brown, for example, while another shot of shoals of shrimp covering a vent system ends up looking like a mass of pasta. (Feb.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: National Geographic
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0792293436
• ISBN 13: 9780792293439
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192