Jerry Pournelle's "Extreme Prejudice" (novelette, extreme engineering, free): An ocean-based permanent habitat

What I read here is the description of a huge water-based human habitat. A little portion of it above surface, most of it subsurface. Located somewhere in the Pacific. Sea farming, sea-bed mining, generating electricity by exploiting the ocean's vertical thermal gradient, tame & talking dolphins, ...

What some others at ClassicScienceFiction seem to have read into it are contradictory & unsatisfactory behavior of key actors & background events. I liked it because I only noticed the engineering aspects; if you're more into characters, your mileage might well vary.

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "The Deep Range": Similar sea-based setup.
   
   The novel is primarily about using whales as cattle - herding, pasturing, milking, & not insubstantial parts about butchering them for meat. Plus bits about deep-sea monster hunting & a bit of Buddhist ideology.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 1974.
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1975 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Jerry Pournelle.