January 1970 saw the presentation to the International Marine Biology Symposium in Khartoum of Jacques Cousteau’s groundbreaking work on the growing literacy of sealife so it was no surprise to see book publishers rush to fill the genre void. One of the first novels to print was C.D. Hippocampus’s science fiction adventure The Crabonauts Conquer The Stars.
Taking place in the near future the story follows the first group of space crustaceans and their quest to dominate the wild worlds within the crab nebula. Critics were generally kind to the book and its author although concern was raised that it might give the undersea creatures megalomaniacal ideas.
Ultimately, though, Cousteau admitted he’d been drunk during the symposium, the literacy of sealife had been grossly overstated, and crabs overwhelmingly demonstrated a preference for turn-of-the-century romance over sci-fi in the book shops.
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