The Deep

"The Deep" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was written in July 1952 and first published in the December 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. The story subsequently appeared in the Asimov collections The Martian Way and Other Stories (1955) and The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973). In In Memory Yet Green, Asimov wrote that his motive in writing the story was to deliberately test whether one could do anything in science fiction, so he invented a society in which mother love was considered obscene.