Category Archives: Science Fiction

Character Analysis — Ned Land

Today we’ll consider the character Ned Land in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Before doing so, I’d like to remind you to submit a short story to Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered, an anthology I’m co-editing along with the creative and capable Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. We’re open for submissions and accepting stories as we go, and this publisher’s previous anthologies have all filled up before their closing dates. Therefore, don’t wait until the official closing date of April 30. Submit your story here.

Turning now to Ned Land, Verne introduces him as a Canadian harpooner from Quebec assigned to the frigate USS Abraham Lincoln to assist the crew in hunting a menacing sea creature.

Verne has fun with this character’s name. In French editions, it is rendered as “Land,” the same as in English translations, not the French word for land, “terre.” Verne’s audience would have had to know the English word to get his pun. Ned is a man of the sea named for the land, who craves to escape from under the sea and eat food of the land.

Between Professor Aronnax and Ned Land, readers come to understand two opposing ways of dealing with their imprisonment aboard the Nautilus. The pair are opposites, with Aronnax’s servant Conseil serving as the median. On several spectra, the two men occupy extreme ends.

Ned Land is the ‘physical’ to Aronnax’s ‘intellectual.’ Land is often depicted as taking action, while Aronnax observes and deliberates. It is Ned who throws the harpoon, who assaults a steward, who goes ashore and shoots birds and kangaroos, who grabs the electrified railing, who kills a shark, who harpoons a dugong, and who joins in the attack on the giant squid, who tries to signal a nearby ship, and who arranges their escape from the Nautilus.

Further, Ned Land acts without thinking, while Aronnax thinks without acting. Often, Ned acts impulsively, sometimes with a bad result but sometimes heroically. Aronnax suffers from ‘paralysis by analysis,’ knowing what he should do, but not doing anything about it.

Land represents the common man in contrast to Aronnax, the upper-class gentleman. Aronnax eats with Nemo and bunks in a room next to the Captain’s. Ned bunks and eats with Conseil in the midships area reserved for the crew. Ned speaks plainly, occasionally joking, while Aronnax speaks like a professor throughout.

The last facet of their contrast is what I’d term the ‘man of nature’ vs. the civilized man. Ned’s comfort zone is the out-of-doors, in the wild, killing and preparing his own dinner. For his part, Aronnax would be lost without his servant and is more at home in drawing rooms and eating gourmet food. Here, most of Verne’s audience would identify closer with the professor, but nonetheless be fascinated by the harpooner.

Given their differing viewpoints, it’s no wonder Aronnax sees the Nautilus as a vessel of underwater exploration, while Land sees only a prison. Aronnax sees Captain Nemo as a rational engineer and scientist, while Land sees him as an insane pirate and jailer.

Although the two share the same goal, leaving the Nautilus, they differ on timeframe and method. Aronnax would like to leave someday, after persuading a captain he sees as reasonable. Land wants to get off the submarine immediately, by force if necessary.

Verne resolves this conflict in a draw. The trio departs the Nautilus far later than Ned would have liked, after spending seven months aboard. However, they must sneak off the ship without the Captain’s permission, during an emergency, and with Ned guiding.

Ned Land, then, is the perfect ‘friendly opposition’ to Pierre Aronnax, giving the novel dramatic tension throughout. Have you ever known someone like Ned Land (except for his harpooner occupation, of course)? A few like him have been known to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 12, 2020Permalink

Character Analysis — Conseil

This post begins a short series discussing major characters from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I’ll start with Conseil.

First, a reminder. Along with the esteemed and talented Kelly A. Harmon, I will be co-editing Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered, an anthology of short stories honoring Verne’s novel. Submissions open this Friday, January 10. Although submissions are scheduled to close on April 30, Pole to Pole Publishing accepts stories on the fly, so once the anthology is filled, later stories get rejected. Submit early; all their anthologies have closed before the advertised closing date. See all the details here.

Now, to Conseil. The book’s narrator, Professor Pierre Aronnax, introduces him this way: “Conseil was my manservant. A devoted lad who went with me on all my journeys; a gallant Flemish boy whom I genuinely liked and who returned the compliment; a born stoic, punctilious on principle, habitually hardworking, rarely startled by life’s surprises, very skillful with his hands, efficient in his every duty, and despite his having a name that means “counsel,” never giving advice—not even the unsolicited kind!”

Well, this is mostly true. At thirty years old, Conseil is hardly a lad or boy. Also, that last sentence is doubly ironic. ‘Conseil’ means ‘counsel’ or ‘advice’ in French, and though Aronnax thinks his servant never gives advice, he often does so.

Aronnax goes on to mention Conseil’s habit of referring to his master in the third person. Although we often see Conseil beginning a sentence with, “If Master pleases…” or “If Master will permit me…” this, also, turns out to be a rule broken on occasion.

Conseil’s first characteristic mentioned by Aronnax is devotion, and in this, Conseil is consistent. The servant jumps into the ocean when his master falls in, and helps to keep him afloat. Conseil agrees to don a diving suit when Aronnax does so, and accompanies him on every excursion.

The utterly loyal servant became a stereotypical character in Verne’s novels, most notably with Passepartout in Around the World in Eighty Days, and Nebuchadnezzar (Neb) in The Mysterious Island. In each case, Verne has literary purposes for these characters, such as representing the “common man” to whom the genius explains certain scientific phenomena, or to dramatically play off some other character’s eccentricity, or simply to keep conversations going.

In 20,000 Leagues, Conseil serves as an intermediary between Aronnax and Ned Land. Conseil may be devoted to his master, and shares the professor’s interest in sea creatures, but he is, like Land, a common man and spends a lot of time with the Canadian harpooner. It is Conseil who must explain to Aronnax why Ned Land behaves the way he does.

The servant also becomes the calming influence on all actions in the novel. Whenever Aronnax becomes overly excited or afraid or alarmed, Conseil grounds him and helps him relax. Conseil also attempts to sooth the impetuous Ned Land, but with less effective results.

In a couple of scenes, Conseil becomes the imaginative voice of Verne himself. Early on, Conseil laments “the drawback in not having one universal language,” a cause for which Verne was an enthusiast. Later, when they reach the central Mediterranean, Conseil considers the possibility of a volcanic upheaval closing off that sea from the Atlantic. This foreshadows, in a way, Verne’s later novel Invasion of the Sea.

Conseil serves yet one more purpose in the novel. He is Verne’s tribute to his friend Jacques-Francoise Conseil, who is said to have built a submarine craft in 1858.

Watch this space for more character analyses from—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

January 5, 2020Permalink

9 SciFi Predictions for 2020

Continuing the tradition established last year, I’ll make some predictions for science fiction for the coming year.

First, however, I have an update on Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered, the upcoming anthology I’m co-editing along with the talented writer and editor Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. We’ve moved the opening date for submissions to January 10. Click here for details.

Back, now, to the prognostications. Abandoning my crystal ball, which didn’t work so well, I’ve since mastered the technique of Tasseography, or reading tea leaves. Let’s peer into the cup and see what the leaves reveal:

  • Partisan Politics. SciFi will become more political in this U.S. election year. With the citizenry becoming increasingly partisan, authors will show their political biases and opinions in their stories. Stories will increasingly be either left/liberal or right/conservative. This trend disturbs me, but I have to call ‘em as I see ‘em.
  • Post-Apocalypse. With the decline and death of the dystopia will come the birth of a more hopeful and positive future. We’ll see more stories of civilizations rising from the ashes of past global destruction.
  • Time Travel. There are plenty of time periods left to explore, many with subtle lessons for us today. Despite the risk of paradox, authors will give us more time-traveling protagonists heading off to the past or future. Most of these stories will involve romance to some degree.
  • Climate Fiction. CliFi will remain a strong sub-genre, with authors exploring humanity’s influence on the Earth’s climate. I predict most such stories will either deal with human attempts to fix the climate before a catastrophe or will take place after a climate catastrophe.
  • LBGTQ characters. More protagonists and other major characters will be part of the LGBTQ spectrum. Within these fictional worlds, the cisgendered characters will respect and admire the LGBTQ main characters, not ostracize or mistreat them. Other related works will continue to take place in transhuman, post-gender worlds.
  • Strong Female. The damsel in distress is dead. During the last decade or two, she’s been replaced by the Strong Female. This woman is strong in the sense of being fierce, capable, and not dependent on men. Though by now she’s a stock character, SciFi authors will continue to explore various subtleties and nuances of the Strong Female in 2020.
  • Star Wars Reaction. With the completion of the triple trilogy “Skywalker Saga” in 2019, authors will pen stories reacting to all things Star Wars. In 2020, I anticipate stories satirizing and otherwise mocking aspects of the George Lucas-created franchise, and probably other SciFi fantasies trying to fill the void by launching Star Wars variants.
  • Afrofuturism. Authors in 2020 will weave tales comporting with Afrofuturism 2.0 and Astro-blackness. Audience reaction to the 2018 film Black Panther demonstrated a strong enthusiasm for works merging the themes of the African Diaspora with high technology.
  • Boomer Lit. I see some SciFi in 2020 examining baby boomer themes. This will include stories with older protagonists, as well as stories with strong 1960s nostalgic references.

At the end of 2020, I’ll make every effort to assess these predictions, as I did for my 2019 prophecies. Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” but I have confidence in the tea leaves, so you should have confidence in the prognostication prowess of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 29, 2019Permalink

Looking Back, My 2019 Predictions Assessed

A year ago, I made several predictions about what would happen in 2019. It’s time to assess my skill as a prognosticator.

Like any good soothsayer, I worded some of my predictions so that it’s difficult to say whether they came true or not. Also, I don’t have access to solid data that would confirm whether some came true or not. Still, here goes:

  • Prediction: In 2019, you’ll see more science fiction books written by authors from previously underrepresented groups (women, people of color, LGBTQ, etc.) and these books will explore concepts of belonging and isolation, as well as bending our current notions of gender and race.
    • Assessment: I think this one came true. Certainly 2019 saw the publication of SciFi novels written by women such as Elizabeth Bear, Margaret Atwood, Sarah Pinsker; and people of color such as Cadwell Turnbull, Tade Thompson, and Chen Qiufan; and self-identified members of the LGBTQ community such as Charlie Jane Anders, Annalee Newitz, and C.J. Cherryh. I haven’t verified the second part of my prediction, but I suspect it’s true.
  • Prediction: The superhero theme in movies will peak and begin a gradual decline. It’s been an amazing ride, but I believe the market has saturated and audiences are getting tired.
    • Assessment: It’s too early to tell if I was right. Four superhero movies came out in 2019 compared to seven in 2018, but one of them, Avengers Endgame, was the highest grossing film of all time.
  • Prediction: Very few, if any, best-selling scifi books will feature faster-than-light drive. Most authors have accepted Einstein’s speed of light limit. FTL now seems hokey to readers.
    • Assessment: I don’t have good data on this. Tiamat’s Wrath (Expanse #8) by James S. A. Corey contains gates to other star systems. Alliance Rising by C. J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher contains FTL with jump points. Obviously, FTL hasn’t gone away in SciFi, but it’s hard to say if it’s on a downward trend.
  • Prediction: Having already peaked, the steampunk and alternate history genres will continue to wane in books and movies, though they may retain strength in the video gaming world. This genre trend in books is troubling to me, since I enjoy writing steampunk and other alternative history.
    • Assessment: I got that one very wrong. Several good Steampunk novels came out in 2019, including The Secret Chapter (The Invisible Library #6) by Genevieve Cogman; Made Things (Made Things #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky; Counter Culture by J.L. Merrow; Tarnished Are the Stars by Rosiee Thor; The Light at the Bottom of the World (The Light at the Bottom of the World #1) by London Shah; The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club #3) by Theodora Goss; and White Hornet (The Viper and the Urchin #5) by Celine Jeanjean)
  • Prediction: We’ll see more Solarpunk, and the Punk Family will grow by a few more. I think there’s a great deal of uncharted territory in the solarpunk genre and a general hunger for it among readers. Most new ‘punks’ added in 2019 will be future-based, rather than alternative histories.
    • Assessment: Again, this prediction’s hard to evaluate. Certainly, The Weight of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures, edited by Clark A. Miller and Joey Eschrich is solarpunk and some have likewise classified Emergency Skin (Forward Collection #3) by N.K. Jemisin; and All City by Alex DiFrancesco as solarpunk. As to new ‘punks’ being added in 2019, I haven’t seen evidence of that.
  • Prediction: There will be fewer dystopian young adult books, and there will be an upsurge in YA depicting a positive (though not utopian) future. I think dystopias have run their course for the time being, and readers are ready for less bleak outlooks.
    • Assessment: I think there were fewer dystopian YA books in 2019, but among them were Internment by Samira Ahmed; The Farm, by Joanne Ramos; and The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh. Certainly, Peyton Skoczylas thinks this genre has run its course. However, I didn’t sense an upsurge in 2019 of YA SciFi involving positive futures.
  • Prediction: Overall, as a genre, science fiction will do well in the visual media of movies, video games, and graphic novels, but not in traditional book form. Plenty of authors enjoy writing scifi, but readers will turn away from this genre in greater numbers. This is another prediction I find personally disappointing.
    • Assessment: I couldn’t find data to confirm or deny the truth of this prediction. Plenty of authors did produce SciFi in 2019, but whether readership or revenues went up or down, I don’t know. SciFi in movies, video games, and graphic novels remained strong.
  • Prediction: The trend toward series novels will remain strong. Once modern readers make an emotional investment in a set of characters and their fictional world, they want to know what happens after the first novel, and after the next.
    • Assessment: I nailed this one. In addition to the series novels mentioned above, Moon Rising (Luna #3) by Ian McDonald, Atlas Alone (Planetfall #4) by Emma Newman, Dark Age (Red Rising Saga #5) by Pierce Brown, and several other series novels were published in 2019.

Like the best oracle, my results are an ambiguous mixed bag, subject to interpretation. Perhaps I didn’t do so badly after all. Next week, check this space for predictions about 2020 by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 22, 2019Permalink

Welcome Aboard the Nautilus

The submarine in Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is one of the most amazing settings in all of literature. Let’s explore it.   

Before we do, I’ll invite you to write and submit a short story to an anthology I’m co-editing along with the esteemed Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered is intended for release on June 20, 2020, the 150th anniversary of Verne’s masterwork. Click here for details about submitting your story.

As a degreed naval architect and former submariner, I could write many posts about the design of the Nautilus. You can read this book or this one, or peruse this website for more information like that. My purpose today is to explore this submarine as a literary setting.

Before the publication of Verne’s novel, submarines were tiny and dangerous; they could only stay submerged a short time. In the public’s mind they were curiosities, odd little experimental toys. Moreover, electricity was new—a phenomenon with known, but unrealized potential.

At a stroke, Verne astounded readers with a submarine like they’d never imagined. He gave them a glimpse through the veil of the future. The Nautilus was far bigger than any real submarine to date, nearly as big as the naval ironclad surface ships of the time. With a maximum speed of fifty knots, the Nautilus could outrace anything at sea. Moreover, it could dive into any deep-sea trench and only needed to surface once a day for air.

At a time when people lit their homes with whale oil, cooked with wood, and powered ships with coal, Verne sparked their imaginations by giving them an all-electric vessel. “Electricity” was then still almost magical, and Nemo had tamed it for lighting, cooking, and propelling his vessel.

Verne alarmed his readers with a horrible new weapon of war. No longer would the seas be safe when an unseen danger could rise from the depths and cleave ships in two. It’s how the book began, with mariners terrified of a ‘sea monster’ that struck without warning.

Yet the Nautilus had another side, as Pierre Aronnax learned. It was a civilized vessel, with a vast library and a relaxing parlor or salon with paintings, busts, and display cases. Yes, even a pipe organ. Large portals opened to provide a window to the sea, making this submarine a vessel of exploration, too.

But Verne’s surprises didn’t end there. For the sailors of the Nautilus, the sea wasn’t merely their workplace. It was home. Unlike all previous humans, they lived their lives in the ocean, never making land, eating only seafood, and being buried in the depths.

For Conseil, Pierre Aronnax, and especially Ned Land, the Nautilus was also an iron prison from which escape seemed impossible. Before the phrase ‘gilded cage’ came in vogue, Verne trapped his characters within one. The scenes played out between metal bulkheads with characters caught in an odd dichotomy. Freer than anyone else to explore the vast oceans, they could not pass beyond the Nautilus’ steel hull. Were they guests, or prisoners, or both?

The Nautilus was, and remains, unique. Some literary scholars consider it a character in its own right. I don’t go that far, but this submarine makes for a remarkable setting. Many novels since have been set aboard submarines, but we must measure all fictional subs against the standard of the Nautilus.

That concludes our tour. Watch your step on the ladder and don’t hit your head on the hatchway. Please exit quickly; if Captain Nemo found out I’d brought you aboard, I’m not sure what he’d do to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 8, 2019Permalink

A Few Leagues Short of 20,000

My favorite novel is Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Still, the book is not free of literary flaws. Let’s examine them.

Before diving into those, allow me to remind you I’ll be co-editing an anthology paying tribute to Verne’s novel. Along with award-winning author and editor Kelly A. Harmon, I’ll be launching Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered on June 20, 2020, the sesquicentennial of the classic submarine tale. Click here for details on when and how you can contribute a short story to this anthology.

Regarding the weaknesses of 20,000 Leagues, I know it’s unfair to judge a Nineteenth Century French novel by the standards of Twenty First Century America. Still, it is a classic, and therefore it must explore universal and enduring facets of the human condition. It does so, as I discussed here, but some aspects of the work have not stood up well by modern standards.

Submarine

Verne devotes two whole chapters to a tour of the Nautilus and a discussion of its features and capabilities. No modern writer would risk boring readers that way. In truth, some of us like these chapters, and I credit them with inspiring me to major in Naval Architecture at college, but for most readers these tedious details are unnecessary.

Women

No significant female characters appear in the work, a glaring defect by modern standards. The only mentions of women are a brief reference to Ned Land’s former fiancée, Kate Tender (Really? Kate Tender?) and a moment when Pierre Aronnax spies Captain Nemo kneeling and crying before a portrait of a woman—presumably Nemo’s former wife—and two children. Few of Verne’s novels feature female characters, and he might have found it difficult to write one into this story, had he been so inclined. Film versions of the novel often include women, though.

Protagonist

Any well-written novel has a clear protagonist. Who is the protagonist in 20,000 Leagues? Before you answer, recall a protagonist is at the center of a story, propels the plot forward, makes key decisions, faces the obstacles, and endures the consequences.

You could make a case that Captain Nemo is the protagonist, making all the novel’s key decisions and driving the plot along. The consequence of his mounting hatred against oppressive nations is that he goes mad at the end.

However, most reviewers consider Pierre Aronnax the protagonist. He’s the narrator through whose eyes we see all the action. He faces a significant conflict—whether to stay aboard with Nemo the Ultimate Marine Biologist, or escape from Nemo the Insane Pirate. Still, Aronnax is a weak protagonist, more of an observer of events, a scientist studying Nemo’s decisions.

Motivation

In modern literature, no antagonist can be purely evil without a reason. In our post-Freud world, we must know the backstory behind the ‘bad guy.’ As an antagonist (if he is one), Captain Nemo seems driven by forces kept obscure and never revealed. We’re left to wonder why someone would gather a crew, construct a submarine, shun all inhabited land, and sail around the world attacking ships from certain nations. In this novel, readers see a few vague hints about Nemo’s motives and background. Only in Verne’s later novel, The Mysterious Island, do we come to understand what made Nemo tick.

Fish

Among the major turn-offs for modern readers are the long, tiresome descriptions of fish. To give his work credibility, Verne wrote on and on about the fish seen by his characters. Long paragraphs with lists and details litter the work. While acceptable, and even standard for novels of his time, these extensive descriptive paragraphs would be recommended for deletion by any editor today. As if knowing he might bore some readers, Verne structured these descriptions such that a reader could skip to the next paragraph without missing anything.

Please forgive me for taking these unfair swipes against a literary classic. If I point out the tiny blemishes making this novel less than perfect for modern readers, I do so out of love, and with full recognition of the glorious masterpiece it is. Writing a novel half as good as 20,000 Leagues remains a dream cherished by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 24, 2019Permalink

What Makes 20,000 Leagues a Classic?

Literary scholars consider Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to be a classic. Why? Let’s dive deep into that subject.

First, as a reminder, I have teamed up with the talented writer and editor Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing with the intent of producing Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered, an anthology of stories paying tribute to Verne’s submarine novel. Our antho will open for submissions soon, as detailed here, and will launch on June 20, 2020, the sesquicentennial of 20,000 Leagues.

What makes a classic book, and why include 20,000 Leagues in that category? I like the definition put forward by Esther Lombardi in this post. She says a classic: (1) expresses artistic quality, (2) stands the test of time, (3) has universal appeal, (4) makes connections, and (5) is relevant to multiple generations.

Let’s find out if Verne’s work meets these standards.

Artistic Quality

This attribute concerns whether the book was well written by the standards of its time and whether it expresses life, truth, and beauty with artistic excellence. Although much of Verne’s prose seems stilted today, and the book’s over-long descriptions of the submarine and various fish tend to bore today’s readers, the artistic merit of the work certainly met the literary standards of its era. No mere adventure novel, it explored deep themes through its complex anti-hero, Captain Nemo. As the first fictional book to feature a submarine, written in a style imbued with scientific credibility, it stood out from all previous works.

Test of Time

A century and a half after its first publication, 20,000 Leagues is still widely read, with new editions appearing frequently. The novel inspired several films, comic books, video games, and a theme park ride. In 2018, Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company produced a play based on the novel. There’s a Wikipedia entry devoted entirely to adaptations of the work.

Universal Appeal

Everyone can relate to some aspect of the novel. We all admire the unshakable loyalty of Conseil for his master, understand the impulsive and restless Ned Land, sympathize with the dilemma forced on the scientist Pierre Aronnax, and marvel at the unfathomable engineer/pirate Captain Nemo. What reader could remain unmoved while riding along in a fantastic submarine, the Nautilus—part warship, part exploration vessel, and part private yacht—as it cruises from one undersea adventure to the next?

Connections

Verne’s novel contains plenty of allusions to prior works. Captain Nemo’s name (Latin for ‘nobody’) recalled the pseudonym Odysseus used as a ruse with the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey. In naming his submarine Nautilus, Verne paid tribute to the American inventor Robert Fulton, who gave that name to his submarine in 1800. The encounter with the giant squid was reminiscent of an octopus scene in Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea. The maelstrom at the end of Verne’s novel honored A Descent into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe, a writer Verne admired. As already mentioned, this web of connections continued into a vast number of later works, all inspired by 20,000 Leagues.

Relevance

To be relevant, the work must resonate with multiple age groups throughout time. Young people can certainly connect with the adventurous aspects of 20,000 Leagues—the visit to Atlantis, the escape from the ice, the attack on the warship, and the battle with the squid. More mature readers can appreciate Aronnax’s internal struggle between staying aboard for scientific discovery and leaving to escape a madman, as well as the twisted genius of Nemo as he descends into insanity. Even in our age, when nuclear submarines prowl the seas, nothing compares to the Nautilus’ museum, library, and pipe organ. No modern submarine can travel both as deep and as fast as Nemo’s, and the oceans remain almost as mysterious to us as in Verne’s day. Thus, the Nautilus retains its singular fascination for us.

By this standard, 20,000 Leagues has earned its designation as a classic work of fiction. You can check with any literary scholar; you don’t have to take the word of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 7, 2019Permalink

Was 20,000 Leagues Inspired by a Woman?

Did one of Jules Verne’s female fans inspire history’s most famous undersea adventure novel, a work that includes not a single female character?

First, readers of my posts will note I’ve been writing a lot about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea lately. That’s because I’ve teamed up with editor par excellence Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing to develop 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology filled with short stories paying tribute to Verne’s submarine masterpiece. It’s scheduled to launch on June 20, 2020, the sesquicentennial of the famous novel. Write your own story now, and submit to this site.

Let’s set the scene. It’s 1865, early in Jules Verne’s career. He has contracted with the famous editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel, and two of his novels have already achieved fame in Paris and across France: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864). Another novel, From the Earth to the Moon, will soon be released.

Sometime during that year, Verne receives a letter from a woman. After she praises both Five Weeks and Journey, she writes “Soon I hope you’ll take us into the ocean depths, your characters traveling in diving equipment perfected by your science and your imagination.”

Within a few years after that, Verne sails on the ship Great Eastern to visit America, and acquires his own sailboat, the Saint-Michel. Writing aboard his boat, he boasts to his publisher that he’s writing a new novel with an oceanic setting unlike anything written before. It will be “superb, yes superb!” By March 1869, the first chapters of 20,000 Leagues begin appearing in Hetzel’s magazine.

What can we conclude? Did Verne get the idea for 20,000 Leagues from a fan letter? Had she not written to him, would Verne have begun such a novel?

First, who was this mysterious woman? She was none other than George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin. By 1865, Sand had achieved fame in her own right, having written numerous popular novels and plays. Her publisher was the same Pierre-Jules Hetzel who published Verne’s works. When she wrote to Verne, she would have been about 61, and he about 37.

No doubt Sand had noted Verne’s talent and observed the success of what would come to be known as Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires. She had a keen sense of what would catch on with the French reading audience of the time.

So, was Sand’s letter truly the spark that led to Captain Nemo and the Nautilus? We may never know for sure. I’ve seen no evidence that Verne wrote back to Sand or admitted to anyone that the idea had originated with her.

We know, too, that Verne visited the Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) in Paris in 1867 and saw a model of a primitive (and unsuccessful) submarine, Plongeur. He also saw demonstrations of electrical apparatus there. Could these exhibits have inspired 20,000 Leagues instead?

It’s impossible to say with any certainty whether George Sand provided the true impetus for Verne’s novel. It’s fun—and a bit ironic—to think she did, for there are only a few minor mentions of women in the novel.

Still, in case George Sand did inspire Verne to write 20,000 Leagues, she deserves this sincere thank-you, sent back through time, from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 27, 2019Permalink

20,000 Mistranslations Under the Sea

If you’re a really good author, your book’s reputation can survive even a botched translation. As evidence, I offer the first English language translation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Before we get to that, I’ll remind you of an upcoming anthology I’m co-editing, along with the talented and creative Kelly A. Harmon. We both encourage you to contribute a short story to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, our sesquicentennial tribute to Verne’s novel. You can find more information about that here.

The success of Verne’s undersea masterpiece in France prompted its translation into several other languages. As bad luck would have it, the first translation into English got rendered in 1872 by Lewis Page Mercier, a Protestant Reverend in London.

Among his many translation errors are the following:

  • Sea or Seas? Mercier should have translated the novel’s title as “…Under the Seas” (plural). Note how that one little ‘s’ could have spared countless mix-ups between vertical depth and horizontal distance. You can’t go 20,000 leagues (43,000 miles) deep into one sea, but a plural ‘seas’ clarifies the meaning.
  • Disagreeable Territory. Verne knew his geography and wrote about his character Pierre Arronax returning from the Badlands of Nebraska. In one of his worst howlers, Mercier rendered the Badlands as “the disagreeable territory of Nebraska.” In other words, the phrase survived the English-to-French translation, but couldn’t quite make it back the other way.
  • Lightweight Steel. Mercier translated some dialogue of Captain Nemo as “These two hulls are composed of steel plates, whose density is from .7 to .8 that of water.” If Nemo had discovered a type of steel that could float like wood, it would be worth more than that casual mention. Of course, Verne wrote “whose density is 7.8 times that of water.”
  • Cork Jackets. When the (Mercier-translated) Nemo asked Arronax if he’d like to don his cork jacket, he didn’t mean a garment woven in Cork, Ireland nor a coat made from tree bark. Verne’s words should have come out as ‘diving suit.’
  • From Where to Where? Mercier translated the title of Part II, Chapter XX as “From Latitude 47° 24′ to Longitude 17° 28′.” Wait…from a latitude to a longitude? For all its numerical precision, that title tells you nothing about the path of the Nautilus. A competent translator would have rendered it as “In Latitude…and Longitude…”

These are only a few of the atrocities Mercier committed against Verne’s text. For example, he left 20-25% of the novel untranslated. Perhaps these were the parts he considered the dullest.

Perpetuating Mercier’s many errors, subsequent English editions of the novel used his translation. Up until the 1970s, his was the most widely available. When I first read 20,000 Leagues, I read a Mercier.  

As pathetic a hatchet-job as Mercier’s translation was, the innate greatness of Verne still shone through. When a bad version is all you have, you pause only a second to wonder at the odd phrasings and logic flaws, then read on. I wish I knew French and could read the novel in its original tongue.

Fortunately, today’s English readers have several good translations from which to choose, including the following:

Translator: Anthony Bonner; Publisher: Bantam Press (1985)

Translator: Imanuel J. Mickel; Publisher: Indiana University Press (1992)

Translators: Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter; Publisher: Naval Institute Press (1993)

Translator: Ron Miller; Publisher: Penguin Books (1998)

Translator: Frederick Paul Walter; Publisher: SeaWolf Press (2018)

Translator: William Butcher; Publisher: Oxford University Press (2019)

While writing your own story inspired by Verne’s classic and preparing it for submission to 20,000 Leagues Remembered, consider re-reading the original work. Avoid any version translated by Mercier, and read one of the newer ones recommended by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 13, 2019Permalink

Twenty Thousand Leagues of Film

What’s the best film adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? Let’s discuss them all.

By now you’ve heard I’m co-editing an upcoming anthology called 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a collection of short stories intended to honor the original novel on its sesquicentennial. I’m really looking forward to reading the submissions. (Click here for more information.)

In the meantime, I figured I’d offer a brief discussion of the film versions. In doing this, I’m only considering live-action (not animated) versions, and only those sharing the title of Verne’s novel. Therefore, I’m not including Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969), the TV miniseries Kapitan Nemo (1975),  The Amazing Captain Nemo (1978), or 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007).

1907 – Star Film Company

First on our list is a silent black and white movie from 1907. It was really a loose parody of the novel, featuring a fisherman who dreamed of traveling by submarine and encountered a Fairy of the Ocean and her dancing coterie of naiads. He’s attacked by large fish, a crab, and an octopus. For the audiences of the early 1900s, it must have been very exciting. Directed by the amazing George Méliès, the film is just eighteen minutes long and you can watch it here.

1916 – Universal Film Manufacturing Company

Nine years later, The Universal Film Manufacturing Company (now Universal Pictures) put out another silent black and white version, but this was much closer to the novel. Directed by Stuart Paton, the movie starred Allen Holubar as Captain Nemo, Curtis Benton as Ned Land, Dan Hanlon as Professor Aronnax, and Edna Pendleton as Aronnax’s Daughter. This was the first motion picture filmed underwater, though they used a vertical tube with mirrors lowered from a boat rather than using underwater cameras. The film includes some very long sequences showing nothing but fish and coral. To make the movie, they built a full-size mock-up of the surfaced Nautilus, which could be driven and steered. The movie’s plotline deviated considerably from the novel and incorporated elements of Verne’s The Mysterious Island. At 105 minutes in length, you can watch it here without paying the 25¢ fare they charged in 1916.

1954 – Walt Disney Productions

This is the most famous version. Produced by Walt Disney Productions and directed by Richard Fleischer, the film starred Kirk Douglas as Ned Land, James Mason as Captain Nemo, Paul Lukas as Professor Arronax, and Peter Lorre as Conseil. Of all the film versions, this one adhered most closely to the novel, but the character Ned Land was more prominent than in the book. Still, it was James Mason’s performance as an internally tortured Nemo that truly shined. The fanciful, steampunk Nautilus used in the movie has become iconic, and the attack of the giant animatronic squid was the film’s highlight. The movie is 127 minutes in length, and you can watch the trailer here.

1997 – Hallmark Entertainment

A curious thing happened in 1997. Two made-for-TV versions came out within months of each other. The first to air was produced by Hallmark and aired on CBS on March 23rd. Directed by Michael Anderson, it starred Richard Crenna as Professor Aronnax, Ben Cross as Captain Nemo, Paul Gross as Ned Land, and Julie Cox as Sophie Aronnax, the Professor’s daughter. This movie, as well as the 1916 version, featured submarines whose exterior shape most closely matched the novel’s descriptions. Deviations from the novel included the substitution of Sophie for the Conseil character; the presence of women among Nemo’s crew; the addition of a love triangle between Nemo, Ned, and Sophie; and the substitution of a strange sea monster for the giant squid. The movie was 95 minutes long and you can watch the trailer here.

1997 – Village Roadshow Pictures

The second of the two 1997 versions was produced by Village Roadshow and aired on ABC on May 11th and 12th. Directed by Rod Hardy, this one starred Michael Caine as Captain Nemo, Patrick Dempsey as Pierre Arronax, Mia Sara as Mara (Nemo’s daughter), Bryan Brown as Ned Land, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Cabe Attucks (a crewman on the USS Abraham Lincoln). The Nautilus in this film was menacing, wide, and shaped like a spiky crab. The movie contained numerous deviations from the novel, including a mechanical hand for Captain Nemo, a motivation for Nemo that involved preventing earthquakes long-term by triggering some in the short-term, an Oedipus complex for a young Professor Arronax, and a menacing version of Ned Land. At 158 minutes, it was the longest film adaptation of the novel.

Which version is best? Each one had strengths and weaknesses. Each one deviated from the novel to cater to contemporary audiences and to distinguish it from earlier versions. But overall, the 1954 Disney version best satisfied—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 29, 2019Permalink