Just as Jules Verne’s Nautilus traveled all over the world, we’re throwing a world-wide party. It’s on Thursday August 6th, from 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM EDT and it’s on Facebook.
We’re doing this to celebrate the launch of the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. Published on the 150th anniversary of Jules Verne’s masterwork, this book contains new stories by 16 modern authors, all paying tribute to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, that classic proto-steampunk novel of undersea adventure.
At the party, you can meet the editors and the authors of the stories and ask all the questions you want. Best of all, you can win prizes!
You’re invited! Everyone is. Now, of course, you’re wondering how to attend. Just follow these steps:
Create a Facebook account if you don’t already have one.
If you don’t receive a party invitation within a day or two, send me a message to prompt me.
Once you get the invitation, accept it.
Share info about the party with your friends.
Log into Facebook at the right date and time and join the fun.
(If anyone knows a simpler way to invite the whole world to a Facebook event, let me know in the comments to this blogpost.)
You’ve waited 150 years for this sesquicentennial celebration. It would be a shame to miss it. After all, the bicentennial won’t be until June 2070, and that’s a long time from now.
See you at the party! You’ve been cordially invited by—
In the summer of 1947, months before something fell to Earth near Roswell, New Mexico, the skies above the Pacific Northwest were alive with strange lights and unearthly phenomena. I know this because the Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum told me so. In fact, according to Don Wildman and crew, less than a week passed between the infamous Maury Island Incident and the Kenneth Arnold sighting above Mt. Rainier which introduced the phrase “flying saucer” into the American zeitgeist.
That connection or coincidence was the spark that led to my novel, Project Notebook. The spark, but not the fuel. The origins of this story may go back to 1947, but they also reach farther back into my own history than a late-night binge-watch in early 2017.
Jason J. McCuiston
Like most kids who grew up on action, sci-fi/fantasy, and horror in the 1980s, I was instantly hooked on Chris Carter’s The X-Files when it debuted on Fox in 1993. Aside from having a twenty-year-old’s crush on Gillian Anderson, I loved the conspiracy-theory/dark fantasy vibe of the show. And though I never became more than a casual interloper into the world of ufology, I’ve kept an open mind on the topic and have always found it fascinating.
A decade later, after watching the stunning HBO adaptation of Band of Brothers in 2001, I read not only Stephen E. Ambrose’s book, but also the excellent biography of Major Dick Winters, Biggest Brother by Larry Alexander. These volumes gave me an insight into the Greatest Generation, as well as a glimpse of what my own grandfather, the late Master Sergeant Darius E. McCuiston, U.S. Army, had faced in WWII. While writing Project Notebook, I soon realized that the main character, Captain El Summers is a synthesis of Winters and my Papaw.
In 2006, I found myself in a new life in Knoxville, Tennessee. Part of this new life was my weekly gaming group. We were playing the d20:Modern role-playing game at that time. Wizards of the Coast had just released the Dark Matter supplement for d20:Modern, a campaign setting that leaned heavily into the conspiracy-theory/dark fantasy/darker sci-fi atmosphere of The X-Files. That’s when it occurred to me that the first people most likely to be tapped by the U.S. Government to investigate rumors and reports of UFO’s and aliens would be battle-hardened vets of The Big Two.
So I launched a campaign based on this premise.
Sadly, the game tanked after one session, but the premise hung around in the back of my mind for over a decade. And in the summer of 2017—after two years struggling to break in as a “pro” writer and several nights watching Mysteries at the Museum—I decided to throw that premise at the page and see if it stuck. After writing the first draft of what eventually became Chapter One of Project Notebook, I posted it to a Facebook writing group for feedback. Naturally, it drew a troll quicker than a goat on a bridge. After this individual lambasted my abilities and concepts, I thanked him for his opinion, and sat down to write this story. As much out of spite as anything else.
Writing is about passion, no matter where that passion comes from. Remember that.
I’m honestly glad that troll got under my skin. Being more interested in fantasy than sci-fi and in the eleventh century than the twentieth, I may have never written this story otherwise. I may have never learned so much about the era of my grandparents. I may have never delved so deeply into the lore of ufology. I may have never created these characters for whom I have developed an amazing fondness in the ensuing years of revisions and edits.
I can only hope that you will find El, Red, Olivia, and Bill as endearing should you decide to follow their adventures in Project Notebook.
Jason J. McCuiston
Thanks, Jason. I know my readers will seek you out on Facebook and Twitter. Then they’ll buy your book on Amazon.
Today’s the day! It’s launch day for the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book was 150 years in the making.
Let me explain. The first publication of Jules Verne’s classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was in serial form. It appeared in two-week intervals in a magazine, the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Starting on March 20, 1869, the magazine printed a chapter or two in each issue, concluding on June 20, 1870.
The first time the public could read the novel from beginning to end was on that Wednesday in June, the first day of summer, precisely 150 years ago today.
To commemorate the sesquicentennial, Pole to Pole Publishing presents 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology of works by modern authors, each inspired by Verne’s literary masterpiece. Along with the Senior Editor, Kelly A. Harmon, I co-edited the book. It’s the first book I’ve ever edited.
What will you get when you buy this book? You’ll enjoy sixteen short stories, each paying homage to the Father of Science Fiction and his novelized underwater voyage. They span the spectrum from adventures set at a time contemporary with Verne’s tale, to more thoughtful historical pieces exploring various aspects of the novel, to stories set in our present day, to others that defy easy categorization.
Our table of contents includes: “The Ghost of Captain Nemo” by J. Woolston Carr, “Water Whispers” by Gregory L. Norris, “At Strange Depths” by Jason J. McCuiston, “The Maelstrom” by Maya Chhabra, “The Game of Hare and Hounds” by Stephen R. Wilk, “Recruiter” by Andrew Gudgel, “Nemo’s World” by James J.C. Kelly, “The Silent Agenda” by Mike Adamson, “Fools Rush In” by Allison Tebo, “An Evening at the World’s Edge” by Alfred D. Byrd, “A Concurrent Process” by Corrie Garrett, “Homework Help From No One” by Demetri Capetanopoulos, “Leviathan” by Michael D. Winkle, “Last Year’s Water” by Nikoline Kaiser, “Farragut’s Gambit” by M.W. Kelly, and “Raise the Nautilus” by Eric Choi.
It’s not necessary to have read Verne’s book first. You can still enjoy these stories on their own. You might gain a deeper appreciation of them if you dive into the original first, though. For dedicated Verne scholars, be aware that some of our authors scattered ‘easter eggs’ in their stories for you—little references (some quite obscure) that will make you smile.
Where, you’re wondering, can you get your own copy of this book? I thought you’d never ask. It’s available as an ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.
We’ll launch a paperback version as soon as we can, likely in a month or two. If you read my blogposts or follow me on social media, you won’t miss that announcement.
As Ned Land said, “Professor Aronnax…You talk about some future day… I’m talking about now.” Now, as in today. Launch day. After 150 years, the Nautilus sails again, thanks to Kelly A. Harmon and—
You still have time to submit a short story to the upcoming anthology, 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book will be a sesquicentennial tribute to Jules Verne’s novel.
Cover Image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered
I’m co-editing this anthology along with Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. We’re received and accepted a number of fine stories already.
However, we still have room for two or three more. For us to accept your submission, your story:
• must pay tribute in some way to Jules Verne’s novel;
• may be set in any time or place;
• may use characters from Verne’s novel or you can make up your own;
• need not be written in Verne’s style;
• need not be ‘dark’ (as stories in other Pole to Pole Publishing anthologies have been);
• must capture, in your own way, the sense of wonder and adventure for which Jules Verne is famous;
• demonstrate a significant and obvious connection with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; and
• must not disparage either the novel or its author.
Come on. You’re sitting at home anyway. You might as well type up a story and send it here.
Your story might well be the next one accepted by—
As you know, I’m co-editing an upcoming anthology called 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a collection intended to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the publication of Jules Verne’s classic submarine novel. My co-editor, Kelly A. Harmon, and I are are still accepting submissions. Click here for details. This image is what we intend to use for the cover.
We’ve received a
good number of submissions, and have accepted several. There’s still room for more,
though. I’ll be providing a list of prompts that might help you write a story
for this anthology. Feel free to use one, or your own variation of it.
Before I do
that, I’ll state the rules for the anthology. Your story:
must
pay tribute in some way to Jules Verne’s novel;
may
be set in any time or place;
may
use characters from Verne’s novel or you can make up your own;
need
not be written in Verne’s style;
need
not be ‘dark’ (as stories in other Pole to Pole Publishing anthologies have
been);
must
capture, in your own way, the sense of wonder and adventure for which Jules
Verne is famous;
demonstrate
a significant and obvious connection with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea; and
must
not disparage either the novel or its author.
Some of the
prompts below may describe stories we’ve already accepted. That’s okay; write
your story your way. Here are those promised prompts:
What
if Captain Nemo had a time machine?
What
was Captain Nemo’s (Prince Dakkar’s) origin story?
What
adventures did Nemo have aboard the Nautilus before the events of Verne’s
novel?
Did
the Nautilus survive the volcanic eruption on Lincoln Island? What if it were
salvaged today?
Did
any of the Nautilus crewmen have an unusual talent, or a story worth telling?
What
if a Nemo-like character were captain of an airship, a spaceship, a
mole-machine?
What
if a theme park (not starting with ‘D’) featured Twenty Thousand Leagues-inspired
tour submarines, but one of the subs broke free of the designated ride?
What
if Jules Verne rode a submarine before writing the novel?
What
if a high-tech submarine manned by mysterious pirates began endangering sea
travel today, how would the world’s navies react?
What’s
the story of Captain Nemo’s wife? His children?
What
if, in reaction to Nemo’s attacks, one or more of the world’s navies built a
squadron of submarines designed to hunt down and destroy the Nautilus?
Did
Captain Nemo have a pet? Tell its story.
Admit it. Some of those did get your creative fluids pumping around, didn’t they? Now all you have to do is write your story and submit it here. The hard part’s already been done for you by—
The publication
of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea led to a boom in
books about undersea adventures. But the boom didn’t occur immediately and
Verne wasn’t the sole cause.
Before explaining all that, I’ll mention an upcoming anthology of short stories titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, scheduled for release on the 150th anniversary of Verne’s submarine novel. Until April 30, fellow editor Kelly A. Harmon and I are accepting short stories inspired by that novel. For more details and to submit your story, click here or on the cover image.
Verne wasn’t the first to venture into undersea fiction, though the predecessor works are fantasy, not science fiction. The list is brief. If I stretch the definition of undersea fiction, it includes the Biblical story of Jonah, Edgar Allan Poe’s 1831 poem “The City in the Sea,” and Theophile Gautier’s 1848 novel Les Deux Etoiles (The Two Stars). At least the latter included a submarine.
As shown by the
graph, many books involving submarines appeared in the years following Verne’s
undersea novel. The vast majority of these were intended for what we now call
the Young Adult market, and included works by Harry Collingwood, Roy Rockwood,
Luis Senarens, Victor G. Durham, Stanley R. Matthews, and Victor Appleton.
In a similar
manner, Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) preceded an
explosion of novels with subterranean settings. To a lesser extent, these also
included many YA works.
But notice a
curious thing about the two curves. The rise in subterranean fiction occurs
earlier and starts its upward trend earlier than does the curve for undersea
fiction.
I have three
theories to explain this.
The
most obvious reason is that Journey to the Center was published six
years before Twenty Thousand Leagues. That six-year gap doesn’t explain
it all, however.
I believe
other authors, after reading Twenty Thousand Leagues, were daunted by the
prospect of imitating that novel. To write credibly about submarines required
knowledge most writers lacked. However, subterranean fiction required no geological
expertise and no vehicle. Moreover, the writer’s underground setting could
include any fantasy elements imaginable.
I think
the later peak in submarine novels had less to do with Verne than it did with the
introduction of real submarines into the world’s navies. With actual submarines
becoming familiar to readers, authors could pattern their fictional vehicles
after real ones.
Neither of these mountain-shaped curves is due solely to Verne’s works. They both coincide with a boom in publishing adventure fiction of all kinds, not just undersea and subterranean. A drop in publishing costs, a rise in disposable income, a recognition that young people craved to read—all these factors attracted writers and publishers to new opportunities.
Still, I don’t
want to understate Verne’s impact on undersea fiction either. Prior to Twenty
Thousand Leagues, such works were fantasies. Afterward, they were either science
fiction or real-life adventure stories.
After the publication of Twenty Thousand Leagues, it became the standard to which later submarine novels got compared. Even today, 150 years later, if you ask people to name a submarine novel, most likely they will either answer with The Hunt for Red October, or Verne’s book.
I just can’t help this fascination with stories of the sea. After all, I’m—
French author Jules
Gabriel Verne, born on this date in 1828, has been found alive at the age of
192. Reports of his death at age 77 in 1905, and accounts of his subsequent
burial, apparently were in error.
Remarkable
though it may seem, there is simply no other way to explain the large number of
people, still today, who’ve undergone life-changing experiences after contact
with Verne. This list includes people who became:
Astronauts or astronomers after reading From the Earth to the Moon;
Submariners, undersea explorers, or naval architects after reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea;
Geologists, spelunkers, or cavers after reading Journey to the Center of the Earth;
World travelers or circumnavigators after reading Around the World in Eighty Days; and
Engineers, scientists, or fiction writers after reading any of Verne’s works.
Monument to Verne at the Jardin des Plantes in Nantes
I can see you’re not buying it. Okay, Skeptic, there’s an entire Wikipedia page devoted to the Cultural Influence of Jules Verne. It lists the following people who claim to have been inspired to pursue their profession by Verne: astronaut William Anders, undersea explorer Robert Ballard, undersea explorer William Beebe, astronaut Frank Borman, polar explorer Richard E. Byrd, speleologist Norbert Casteret, undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, rocketry innovator Robert Goddard, cosmonaut Georgi Grechko, roboticist David Hanson, astronomer Edwin Hubble, submarine designer Simon Lake, astronaut Jim Lovell, French General Hubert Lyautey, inventor Guglielmo Marconi, speleologist Édouard-Alfred Martel, explorer Fridtjof Nansen, rocketry innovator Hermann Oberth, aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky, rocketry innovator Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and rocketry innovator Wernher von Braun.
There’s a
similarly long list of authors who drew inspiration from Verne. Ray Bradbury
said, “We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules
Verne.”
There exists a group known as the North American Jules Verne Society. Seriously, are you likely to have an active fan club on a different continent 192 years after your birth?
Yes, Verne is still
alive, if not in body, at least in spirit. Very much in spirit.
Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered
You, too, can join the list of those who’ve been influenced by Verne. You can write a short story and submit it for inclusion in the upcoming anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. I’m co-editing it, along with Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. It’s scheduled to be published on the 150th anniversary of the publication of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this coming June. Here you can see the cover image we’ve selected. For more information, and to submit your story, click here.
Happy 192nd Birthday, Jules, wherever you are. Today, in raising a toast to you with a glass of French wine, countless Verne fans around the world will be joining—
My co-editor, Kelly A. Harmon, and I have chosen the cover image for our upcoming anthology, 20,000 Leagues Remembered. The book will pay tribute to Jules Verne’s classic novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on the June 2020 sesquicentennial of its publication.
Here is that
image, with the Nautilus being menaced by a tentacled monster.
Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered
Pole to Pole Publishing is still open for short story submissions to the anthology. Click here for details, and to submit your best work. Although the closing date is April 30, please note we are accepting stories as we go, so the anthology may well fill up before that date. Submit early!
We’ve received some wonderful stories so far. Still, there’s no one more anxious to read your story than—
Now we’ve come
to the last major character in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under
the Sea. Let’s study Captain Nemo.
Before we do, I’ll remind you to submit a short story to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a tribute anthology scheduled for publication on the 150th anniversary of Verne’s marvelous novel. Along with unparalleled word-master, Kelly A. Harmon, I’m co-editing this anthology for Pole to Pole Publishing. The official closing date is April 30, but you should submit early. We’re accepting stories as we go, and this publisher has filled each of its anthologies before the closing date. For more details, and to submit your story, click here.
Regarding Captain
Nemo, I’ll restrict this analysis to what we know from the 20,000 Leagues
novel and disregard information provided later in The Mysterious Island
as well as later adaptations.
When readers
first encounter Nemo, they learn he appears self-confident, energetic, and
courageous. He is tall, of indeterminate age, and has wide-set eyes. He says, “To
you, I’m simply Captain Nemo,” adding a rank to the name “no one” by which
Odysseus (another sea captain) fooled the Cyclops.
In subsequent chapters,
Pierre Aronnax learns Nemo is a highly intelligent scientist and engineer, has
divorced entirely from the land and all nations, and is immensely wealthy. Later,
Aronnax discovers Nemo cares deeply for a dying crewman and buries him on the
seafloor. He assists a stricken pearl diver off the coast of India, saying he “lives
in the land of the oppressed, and I am to this day, and will be until my last
breath, a native of that same land!”
Nemo provides a
huge sum of gold to a Grecian diver, apparently to aid in the uprising of Crete
against Ottoman rule. Aronnax sees a set of paintings in Nemo’s cabin, all portraits
of historical revolutionaries. Using the Nautilus’ ram, Nemo slaughters a pod
of sperm whales to save some baleen whales. He then attacks and sinks a ship whose
nationality is unknown to Aronnax. Following this act of destruction, Aronnax
spies Nemo kneeling and weeping before a portrait of a woman and two children.
The Captain combines several opposing characteristics and sentiments:
He
claims to support the downtrodden, yet he designed the Nautilus with a distinct
two-class system, and treats Aronnax as an upper-class gentleman, in contrast
to the way he treats Conseil, Land, and his own crew.
He financially
supports freedom-seeking revolutionaries, and his Mobilis in Mobili
motto implies a love of freedom, yet all who enter his Nautilus are confined
aboard forever.
At the
outset, Nemo declares, “I’m not what you term a civilized man! I’ve severed all
ties with society, for reasons that I alone have the right to appreciate.
Therefore I obey none of its regulations…” yet he plants a flag at the South
Pole just as any imperialistic conqueror from a land nation might.
It’s well-known
that Verne initially gave Nemo a detailed back-story with a former nationality
and a traumatic past to explain his motivations, but his publisher urged him to
delete all that. We’re left with an unexplained mystery, a Byronic Leonardo da
Vinci, a marauding scientist, a sea hermit, a gentleman savage.
Like Captain
Ahab, Nemo suffers from a troubled past that leads him on an obsessive oceanic quest,
resulting in madness. Unlike Ahab, the cause is not as evident as a bitten-off
leg, but resides only in his mind. His motives remain as invisibly submerged as
his submarine.
I hope you’ve
enjoyed reading these recent blogposts about the four main figures in 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea. This one completes the quartet of character analyses
by—
Having analyzed
Conseil and Ned Land in recent blogposts, I’ll turn my attention today to the
narrator of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Pierre Aronnax.
First, don’t forget to submit your best short story to the upcoming anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered, my tribute to Verne’s undersea masterpiece on its sesquicentennial. I’m co-editing this book, along with editor and award-winning author Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. We’ll officially close for submissions on April 30, but I encourage you to submit well before then. We accept stories as we go, and every previous anthology from this publisher has filled up before its closing date. See this site for guidelines and to submit your story.
Pierre Aronnax,
forty years of age, was an Assistant Professor at the Paris Museum of Natural History.
He’d written a definitive book on sea creatures, titled TheMysteries
of the Great Ocean Depths. Aronnax had been visiting the Nebraska Badlands and
was in New York when he received an invitation to join the crew of the frigate
USS Abraham Lincoln on its mission to hunt down the reported ‘sea monster.’
Of the three men taken aboard the Nautilus, only Aronnax is given a tour and introduced to most of the wonders aboard. Captain Nemo treats him as an approximate equal, a gentleman, while he treats the rest of his crew, and both Conseil and Ned Land, as lower-class commoners. To our modern sensibilities, this sounds absurd, but to Verne’s class-conscious readers it must have seemed understandable, even natural.
Some have theorized Verne was playing with the word ‘arrogant’ in giving the Professor his surname, but I disagree. I don’t believe Verne thought of Aronnax as arrogant or intended him to appear that way to readers. The Professor was a Nineteenth Century gentleman-scholar and behaved that way. Though he may seem arrogant to us, it is unlikely Verne would have foreseen our modern sensibilities and named his character accordingly.
I’ve mentioned before that Conseil served as the imaginative voice of Verne. I think Aronnax and Nemo together represent what Verne aspired to be. Verne would have loved to be a scientific scholar like Aronnax and an engineer like Nemo.
That said, Aronnax is a disappointing character. He enjoys being free to examine undersea life from within a submarine, while ignoring that he’s trapped aboard. He admires the scientific and engineering genius of Nemo while choosing to ignore warning signs of the Captain’s insanity. Aronnax knows he must someday try to leave the submarine, but would prefer that date be well in the future. In short, he’s there to observe and to marvel for us, not to act in any daring way.
Modern writers can understand Verne’s dilemma. To pull off his undersea novel with all its various travels and adventures, Verne needed at least one character who was content to remain in an iron prison for the duration. Aronnax is that character, but he comes off as too trusting and too slow to act. He is carried along by events rather than causing things to happen. These aren’t traits we like to see in a main character.
In a way, we can think of Verne’s Aronnax as an unreliable narrator. The Professor gives us accurate information on the Nautilus, Nemo’s scientific and engineering prowess, and the many fish they see and places they visit. But he ignores and then rejects Ned Land’s opinion about Nemo and the Canadian’s plans for escape. Only in the end do we (and Aronnax) see that Ned was right all along.
I suppose you can guess the next 20,000 Leagues character to be analyzed by—
