Tag Archives: Jules Verne

How Deep is a League?

We all know Professor Aronnax and his companions traveled 20,000 leagues under the sea in Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus. Just how deep is that? It turns out, that’s the wrong question.

Let’s set that aside a moment.

You can certainly sense the excitement building—on the web, in the bookstores, and in conversations with everyone you meet. Less than a week to go, now, until the launch of the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. On Saturday, June 20, you can celebrate the 150th anniversary of the marvelous Verne novel. Remembered is a brand-new collection of stories by modern authors, each tale inspired by Jules Verne’s masterpiece. Pre-order it here.

Back to our question. What, exactly, is a league? Like most obsolete units of measurement, there is no precise answer. It dates from ancient Rome, when the leuga meant about 7500 pedes (Roman feet), or about 1.4 of our statue miles.

According to Wikipedia, the league has taken on a wide variety of lengths over the millennia. It ranged from the Roman length of 1.4 miles all the way to the Norwegian league of 11.3 miles.

That doesn’t help us much. Maybe the better question is, what did Jules Verne think a league was? Even in his time, the unit was falling out of favor. It had taken on a vague, almost poetic meaning. At one syllable, it rolled off the tongue much easier than ‘kilometer’ did.

According to the annotated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, translated by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter, Verne used a league of 2.16 nautical miles, or 2.49 statute miles.  

So, 20,000 of Verne’s leagues would be nearly 50,000 miles. The deepest known spot in any ocean is Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, with a depth of 6.79 standard miles or 3.14 leagues.

Let’s say we stay in Verne’s fictional world. In the chapter titled “The Sargasso Sea,” the Nautilus reached a depth of 16,000 meters, which Verne translated as 4 vertical leagues.

Even if the ocean stretched all the way to Earth’s center, it could only be about 3,963 miles, or 1,592 leagues deep.

Clearly, Verne intended that the Nautilus travel 20,000 leagues horizontally in its path through the oceans. Verne later wrote a novel titled La Jangada – Huit Cents lieues sur l’Amazone, or Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon. Nobody would expect anyone to travel 800 leagues downward in a river.

For a humorous treatment of the question, we can turn to the TV show Saturday Night Live. They ran a skit, and I believe it was in Season 19, Episode 17, which originally aired on April 9, 1994. It satirized the 1954 Disney movie (then 4 decades old), and had Kelsey Grammer as Captain Nemo, Phil Harman as Ned Land, Mike Myers as Professor Aronnax, and Rob Schneider as Conseil. Here’s the transcript, and here’s a partial video clip.

The next time someone asks you how deep a league is, you have a good answer. Or, you can simply refer them to—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 14, 2020Permalink

Writing for Jules Verne

Here’s a thought experiment for you. It’s 1868, and your close friend, Jules Verne, is deathly ill. Since you’re an author too, he’s asked you to write a novel in his stead. All he’s got is a concept—a ship that travels underwater—and a title: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. You cannot refuse your friend. What will your novel be like?

Remember, nobody has ever written a novel involving a submarine. Yours will be the first. You jot down some plot ideas:

  • A single nation is the first to build and use a working military submarine. Perhaps it’s your beloved France; or the mighty seapower, Great Britain; or the science-loving and adventurous United States.
  • Some wealthy and inventive person builds a submarine and uses it purely for exploration and the advancement of Science.
  • A wealthy and evil man builds a submarine and uses it for vengeance against those who have wronged him.
  • A man is convinced Atlantis exists, and builds a submarine to search for it.
  • A sailor lost someone close (a brother?) to a specific and recognizable giant squid, and builds a submarine to pursue and destroy the creature. (If Melville’s Moby-Dick was successful, this could be too.)
  • Perhaps combine the scientist and the vengeance-obsessed pirate, and tell the story from his (or her?) point of view.
  • A sailor falls in love with a woman he believes is a mermaid, but she dives underwater. He builds a submarine and travels 20,000 leagues in search of her.
  • A treasure-hunter builds a submarine and recovers gold and other valuables from sunken ships.
  • A nation announces a huge prize for whichever privately-built submarine wins a 20,000-league race.
  • A clever criminal builds a submarine and robs banks along various coasts, escaping underwater. A detective hero must track him down.

After an hour, you’ve written down these ideas and another 20 more. Now you must select the best one. Will your eventual novel be as good as the one Jules would have written, had he not become ill?

We’ll never know, of course. It’s just a thought experiment. In real life, Verne wrote his marvelous novel himself, without your help. For its first publication, it was serialized in the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. The issue containing the final chapter came out on June 20, 1870.

That means June 20 of this year, just 13 days from now, is the 150th anniversary, the sesquicentennial, of that undersea classic. To commemorate this date, I’ve partnered with Kelly A. Harmon, Senior Editor at Pole to Pole Publishing, to edit an anthology of short stories inspired by Verne’s masterwork.

Titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, it will launch on June 20. We’ve chosen 16 wonderful stories for the volume, each taking a different approach, but all born from a love of Jules Verne’s fantastic adventure novel. Each one captures some aspect of the adventure, the wonder, and the drama of Twenty Thousand Leagues.

Perhaps Verne’s book is no longer new to you, but these 16 stories will be. Beginning on June 20, you’ll be able to buy the ebook version of our anthology at Pole to Pole Publishing’s website or at other online booksellers. Pole to Pole will put out a paperback print version as soon as possible after that.

Back to that thought experiment. I’m sure you thought of some possible story ideas yourself, in addition to the ones I listed. Feel free to add a comment to this blogpost, sharing one or more of your ideas with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 7, 2020Permalink

Jules Verne’s Impact on Undersea Fiction

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 23, 2020Permalink

Jules Verne Found Alive!

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—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 8, 2020Permalink

Character Analysis — Captain Nemo

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—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 26, 2020Permalink

Character Analysis — Pierre Aronnax

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 The Mysteries 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—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 19, 2020Permalink

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

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