De profundis

Every time giant squids appear in the news I am reminded of an old science fiction short story by Murray Leinster titled De profundis (nothing to do with Oscar Wilde).

The narration is told in the first person, and it pretends to be a report composed by a member of a species of intelligent, telephatic squid-like creatures who live in the abyssal depths. The creatures have a peculiar cosmology: for them the Universe is a shell of solid rock, full of water that is repelled from the center by some kind of natural force. That, for them, explains the decrease in pressure as you ascend, and the fact that most objects tend to sink.

However, the existence of gasses (on which they depend for flotability) is in contradiction with the theory. They come to regard gasses as some kind of spiritual substance, their souls in fact. When they die, the gas ascends to the center of the Universe, where the existence of an hypotetical Great Bubble is postulated.

As is to be expected, the protagonist has to undergo a trip to the surface, to find strange things like emerged landmasses and the Sun. The fact that the surface has quasi-religious significance in his cosmology only adds to the tales's charm.

Although the inclusion of telepathy cheapens it little (as it tends to happen whenever  that gimmick is used in science fiction), this is one of the best stories told from the point of view of the alien. Another great example is Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death by James Triptee, Jr.