Deep End (short story)
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"Deep End" is a short story written in 1961 by British author J. G. Ballard. It first appeared in the May 1961 edition of New Worlds (Volume 36, Number 106)[1] and then in the 1962 collection The Voices of Time and Other Stories[2] followed by The Complete Short Stories of J. G. Ballard: Volume 1 in 2006. The tale is typical of Ballard's dystopian science fiction.
In either a near-future or alternate present reality, the Earth lies nearly desolate after extensive overuse of its resources in order to colonise other planets. The oceans had undergone 'oxygen mining' to electrolytically provide oxygen for the atmospheres for the new planets, and in doing so had left only the hydrogen extract from the water, which escaped the Earth and stripped the Earth's hospitable atmosphere to about a mile high, and ensuring the extinction of most life. As a result, the remaining inhabitants that have not emigrated are forced to live on the drained ocean floors, and have become nocturnal so as to avoid the scorching heat and radiation of the Sun during the day. The last orbiting launch pads are falling out of the sky to the salt dunes and corals towers that were once the ocean bed, and after the last have fallen, the Earth is truly abandoned.