Deepwater Black

Deepwater Black is a 1992 novel, first in the Deepwater trilogy, by the New Zealand science fiction writer Ken Catran, with a cast of young characters who are supposedly stranded in space while a virus ravages Earth. The book series itself is quite different from the television series later developed. The approach of the novels focused on the characters as younger children, around 13-14, rather than the television approach, in which the characters were much older.