Tag Archives: Jules Verne

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

Anthology Submission Call—Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered

On June 20, 1870, Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published, giving the world a new type of vessel, and a new type of pirate.

The novel’s original cover

150 years later, on June 20, 2020, Pole to Pole Publishing will launch Twenty Thousand Leagues Remembered, a sesquicentennial tribute to Verne’s masterwork. The kind folks at Pole to Pole have asked me to co-edit this anthology along with Kelly A. Harmon, and I’m honored to do so. Here’s the submission call.

But we’ll need stories, people! What’s your take on this novel? What story can you write?

You’ve got a few months until we open the antho to receive submissions, but Pole to Pole accepts stories as they go, and they’ve always filled their previous anthologies before the closing deadline.

Watch this space for more news about this upcoming anthology. For now, all the details are here.

In the meantime, let your imagination voyage as freely as Captain Nemo did within the Nautilus. Write your story. Eagerly waiting to read your submissions, I’m the co-editor—

                                                            Poseidon’s Scribe

September 22, 2019Permalink

Stepping on the Moon…Again…Someday

As you may have heard, July 20, 2019 marked fifty years since a human first set foot on the Moon. What follows is one fiction writer’s perspective of that event.

Neil Armstrong on the moon

I was eleven years old then, and watched the landing on my family’s small black-and-white TV. I stayed awake to watch the “first step” too, though it occurred close to 10 pm central time. There was no way to watch that live event and not feel pride and awe. Even those who balked at the mission’s expense knew how historic it was.

Fiction writers had long been imagining the moment, and had prepared us for the wonder of it. From Lucian’s True History, to Rudolf Erich Raspe’s Baron Münchhausen’s Narrative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” writers had taken us to Earth’s silver satellite in our imagination.

Later science fiction writers gave the trip greater clarity and realism in such works as Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, and Robert Heinlein’s The Man Who Sold the Moon.

As a writer of historical technological fiction, I’ve written of flights to the moon occurring before 1969 as well. In “A Tale More True,” a rival of Baron Münchhausen travels to the moon in 1769 using a gigantic clock spring. In “To Be First,” my characters from an alternate Ottoman Empire are returning from the moon in 1933 when the action starts. And in “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall,” you can read about Dutch citizens traveling to the moon by balloon in the 1830s.

Although fiction writers helped us imagine the first trips to the moon, nobody prepared us for a five-decade lapse in missions. Nobody in 1969 thought we’d finish out the Apollo series of moon landings, and then stay away for over fifty years. If you could travel back in time from 2019 to 1969 and tell that to the world, not a soul would believe you.

The moon was ours! Surely by 1979 we’d have a moon base, then by 1989 a moon colony, and by 1999 the moon would be our springboard for trips to asteroids and other planets. The excited folks of 1969 would inform the time traveler that by 2019, naturally, average families would take trips to the moon for vacations.

How odd that we’ve stuck to our planet and near orbit for close to forty-seven years (since Apollo 17). Historians may well wonder what took humanity so long to go back, given the advances in technology that have occurred since the early 1970s. Here are some possible reasons for the long gap:

  • The Mercury/Gemini/Apollo series ingrained in the public mind that only governments can finance moon missions, and only at colossal expense.
  • The moon wasn’t that exciting, after all. Gray, dusty, airless, and lifeless, it was a place only an astronomer could love.
  • The war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal shattered the public’s former confidence in government’s ability to accomplish great tasks.
  • We’d gone there to accomplish the late President Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and to win the supposed ‘space race’ with the Soviet Union. With no further goal, schedule, or apparent rival, we’d lost all impetus for further trips.

We’ll go back to the moon, of course, and with any luck, the next lunar landing will be witnessed by you and by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 21, 2019Permalink

Your Own Steam Elephant

The Gallery of Curiosities, issue #3, Summer 2018

I’m delighted The Gallery of Curiosities has chosen to reprint my story, “The Steam Elephant” in their Summer 2018 Issue (#3). It gave me a chance to re-read the story, and recall the fun I had writing it.

Verne’s steam elephant on its way through India

“The Steam Elephant” is my sequel to Jules Verne’s novel The Steam House. In Verne’s tale,  a British inventor constructed a steam-powered mechanical elephant (and two wheeled carriages towed behind it) on commission from an Indian rajah. This rajah died before taking possession, so ownership remained with the inventor. He took a group of British friends, a Frenchman, and several servants, on a series of adventures in the wilds of India.

My steampunk sequel picks up eleven years later. Although the original steam elephant met its end in Verne’s novel, the engineer constructed a second one in my tale. He modeled this new elephant after the African species. The group of friends gathered again, this time to go lion hunting in Africa, but found themselves drawn into the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.

Verne’s story predated automobiles and appeared long before Recreational Vehicle motorhomes, when people only knew about steam locomotives on rails. I’m sure it fascinated his readers to imagine taking their home with them while travelling. Today, millions of people do just that…but they’re restricted to travelling on roads. Verne’s elephant walked anywhere, even through shallow rivers.

Star Wars’ All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT)

As an engineer, I loved the idea of a quadrapod, animatronic, bio-inspired walking vehicle powered by steam. This lay well beyond the technology of the Nineteenth Century, and we’re only at the early stages of such mechanisms today. That’s why the AT-AT ground assault combat vehicles of Star Wars seem so cool. By the way, the AT-AT designers also drew inspiration from a pachyderm.

Verne described the elephant as being a ‘traction engine,’ a steam engine that pulls loads on roads or smooth ground. This term doesn’t find much use today, since internal combustion gasoline engines supplanted steam for tractors and other off-road vehicles.

Still, imagine owning such an elephant. Within its iron flanks, there’d be the water reservoir, fuel storage, firebox, boiler, and cylinders common to locomotives. Also, you’d find the massive gears and linkages necessary to move the four giant legs in a stable pattern.

Seated in your well insulated howdah on top, you’d rotate the trunk down to pump in water from a river. Then you’d swivel the trunk up, start the engine, sound a blast from its trumpeting whistle, and watch steam and smoke belch from the trunk. When you pushed a lever, your elephant would plod forward on its ponderous legs over any type of flat ground or shallow water. Roads? Where we’re clomping, we don’t need roads.

Perhaps after ten minutes of sweating through that, you’d retreat to one of the towed carriages and let someone else drive the elephant while you sipped wine and played whist.

I’ll take two of those, please. In a way, I did. I wrote about one in another story, “Rallying Cry.”

Too bad you can’t buy your own steam-powered, mechanical elephant vehicle. You could try to build one for several thousand dollars. Or, the next best thing, you could lay down just $3.00 and get a copy of The Gallery of Curiosities magazine, issue #3, and read “The Steam Elephant” by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 22, 2018Permalink

Sense, or the Censor?

Say someone just changed the words of your book because they were offended. Whether you call it censorship, expurgation, bowdlerization, or comstockery, this practice always seems so wrong…to authors. Is it ever the right thing to do?

Allow me to define what I mean by censorship. It’s the deliberate alteration of text, without the author’s permission, to make the story less offensive to the censor. This is not what a normal editor does. Editors collaborate with authors to correct errors, to make the book as good as it can be.

To me, changing the text of a book seems a little less egregious than banning the book entirely. Banning prevents readers from reading the book at all. With censorship, some version of the book’s thoughts gets transferred to readers.

Why censor at all? It’s usually for one or more of five different offenses: profanity, political, religious, racial, and sexual. Let’s call them 2P2RS for short. These five areas are likely the topics your mom told you to avoid at parties upon first meeting someone. 2P2RS can be sensitive for many people.

Throughout history, censors have altered books for each of those five reasons. They’ve taken strong curse words out and substituted mild ones. They’ve cut out the author’s political text if it’s not in keeping with government doctrine. They’ve removed religious references that cast certain organized faiths in a bad light. They’ve deleted words they interpret as racial slurs. They’ve eliminated sex scenes and altered the sexual proclivities of certain characters.

Examples are too numerous to cite, so I’ll merely mention the censorship inflicted on one work of my favorite author, Jules Verne. When translating it into English, W.H.G. Kingston cut out and rewrote much of Verne’s novel, The Mysterious Island. He likely felt the anti-British motivations of the character Prince Dakkar of India would be too objectionable to British readers, so deleted and rewrote those passages. Unfortunately, for English language readers, Kingston’s edition ended up being the predominant one for a century.

Publishers have treated the elements of 2P2RS differently over time. In the past, they permitted less sex and profanity than they do now. However, certain racial and religious slights used to be easier to publish than now. As for political censorship, that seems to vary from country to country and is roughly constant with time.

From the viewpoint of an author or a reader, a censor seems forever a villain. I can conceive of one narrow example of good censorship, but it must meet all of the following conditions. The publisher:

  1. wishes to put out a children’s edition of a book, and
  2. cuts out parts of the book deemed unsuitable for children while retaining as much of the essence of the story as possible, and
  3. is unable to obtain the author’s consent to the necessary cuts, and
  4. ensures the children’s version is clearly labeled as such on the cover, and
  5. ensures that the uncut, unabridged, version of the book is on sale and available to the public.

Of course, authors sometimes make it difficult to condemn censorship entirely. Writers occasionally push the edge of the envelope on one or more of the five aspects of 2P2RS. Some are out to shock, to make a name for themselves.

Editors and publishers once kept the more scandalous and shocking 2P2RS pushes away from the public by rejecting the authors’ manuscripts. Only when they deemed the writing excellent in quality, and when they felt the public might be ready for a new boundary line, did they release such a book. In these days of self-publishing, however, those gatekeepers can no longer hold back the pressing throng of writers who recognize no 2P2RS restraints.

I’m against most censorship, other than the narrow example mentioned above. Let’s treat the public like adults. Our self-publishing era may lack gatekeepers, but it teems with readers who can post comments. Let the ideas and counter-ideas flow, says—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 18, 2018Permalink

Characters at the Edge

Are your story’s characters living out at the edge? If not, maybe you should push them further out there.

What does that mean? In this post by author Steven Pressfield, he mentions a friend of his who considers fictional characters far more interesting, more worth reading about, if they operate at some extreme, if they’re desperate enough to act outside normal boundaries.

Image from pixabay.com

Only then is the drama enticing enough, the character fascinating enough, to make the tale worth the reader’s time.

Pressfield’s post cites examples including several movie characters played by Matthew McConaughey, as well as characters on cable TV shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men.

Two thoughts I’d add to Pressfield’s post. First, he claims it should be as if a character is telling the reader, “Don’t take your eyes off me because I am capable of doing anything.” By “anything” I believe Pressfield means anything consistent with the character’s personality and motivations. The character should be at the edge, yes, but at the edge of a space bordered by that character’s nature and inner dreams.

Second, as one of the commenters pointed out, being at the edge doesn’t only mean rough-and-tumble actions such as picking fights, killing people, or driving 100 miles per hour.

For example, say you’re Arthur Conan Doyle and you want to write about a fictional detective. Taking that character to the edge means making him capable of deductive reasoning and powers of observations that are at the outer limits of human capability. Then, of course, compensate by giving that character weaknesses and flaws; you don’t get superhuman abilities in one facet without suffering in some others.

Say you’re Jules Verne and you want to write about a character desperate to complete a journey around the world before a deadline. Taking that character to the edge means making him fixated on time, exacting and precise, decisive and unemotional. Compensate by giving him faults as well, such as being uncaring and oblivious to the emotions of others.

Before writing your story, create a written description of your main characters, including each one’s physical appearance, motivation, personality type, goals, and dreams, etc. Then ask yourself if you can make those characters more extreme. Don’t worry about realism or authenticity too much. See how close to the edge you can push them.

If you succeed in doing this, your story’s action and dialogue will be fascinating and dramatic, your characters vivid and unforgettable.

Go ahead and push them out toward the edge…further…further… Out on that precipice stands your finest character, a big part of your best story. Now write that story.

One more thing. When your story succeeds, tell me about it by leaving an edgy comment for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 9, 2017Permalink

The 7 Best Science Fiction Submarines

My recent experience moderating a panel on Science Fiction submarines at Chessiecon inspired this blog post. As a former submariner and current science fiction writer, I’m fascinated by the submarines of SF. Earth’s ocean, or oceans in general, are not common settings in SF, and I really enjoy such stories when I come across them.

Before I reveal the list of the seven best, here’s my chronologically ordered list of the more prominent submarines of science fiction. The list includes those from books, movies, TV shows, and some Anime. I included the Red October as a SF sub because of its advanced “caterpillar drive.”

Name Source (Book, Movie, TV, Anime) Year(s)
Nautilus (B,M,T) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 1870 (B)

1916, 1954 (M)

1997 (T)
Wonder (B) Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat 1910
Rocket Submarine (M) The Undersea Kingdom 1936
The Iron Fish (C) The Beano 1949
USS Triton (B) Attack From Atlantis 1953
Jetmarine (B) Tom Swift and His Jetmarine 1954
Diving Seacopter (B) Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter 1956
Fenian Ram S1881 (B) Under Pressure or The Dragon in the Sea 1956
Seaview (M,T) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 1961, 1964-1968
Flying Sub (FS-1) (T) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 1964-1968
Unnamed (M) Atlantis the Lost Continent 1961
Stingray (T) Stingray 1964
Gotengo (M) Atragon 1963
Proteus/Voyager (B,M) Fantastic Voyage 1966
Blue Sub 006 (A) Blue Submarine #6 1967,1997-2000
Dyna-4 Capsule (B) Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule 1969
<Unknown> (B) The Deep Range 1970
Rorqual Maru (B) The Godwhale 1974
S.S. Cetacean (T) The Man from Atlantis 1977-78
Sea Trench (B) Aquarius Mission 1978
Blue Noah (T) Thundersub 1979-80
Red October (B,M) The Hunt for Red October 1984 (B) 1990 (M)
Seaquest (T) Seaquest DSV 1993-96
Gungan Bongo Submarine (M) Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 1999
Ulysses (M) Atlantis: The Lost Empire 2001
UX (A) Submarine 707R 2003
I-507 (M) Lorelei: The Witch of the Pacific Ocean 2005
Vorpal Blade (B) Looking Glass series 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009
I-401 (A) Arpeggio of Blue Steel 2009-Present
Hydra MiniSub (M) Captain America: The First Avenger 2011

To choose the best of these, I considered these criteria:

  • Vividness. How detailed was the description, or how thoroughly was it depicted on screen? Did the audience form a clear mental picture of the sub?
  • Technological Advancement. How much more advanced was the submarine when compared to typical submarines of the era in which the work was produced (not necessarily the time of the story)?
  • Necessity to Plot. Did the plot of the story require a submarine at all, or would the story have worked if set aboard a different kind of vessel?
  • Coolness. Was the depiction of the submarine aesthetically pleasing?
  • Memorability. Does (or will) the submarine in this fiction work stand the test of time? Can you recall details of the submarine and the story years later?

Here’s my list of the 7 best science fiction submarines:

  1. Fenian Ram S1881. This is the submarine from Frank Herbert’s 1956 novel The Dragon in the Sea (also published as Under Pressure). The novel is intense, and focuses on the psychologies of the characters, and how the submarine setting affects them. The Fenian Ram is a nuclear-powered “subtug” that sneaks into the underwater oil fields of enemy countries, pumps out the valuable oil, and tows it back home. Herbert took the name of his fictional vessel from the submarine built by John Holland for the Fenians in 1881.

 

  1. Proteus/Voyager. Most will recall the submarine from the 1966 film, and Isaac Asimov novel Fantastic Voyage. In the book and movie, the submarine was known as Proteus, but in the 1968-1970 cartoon it was known as Voyager. It didn’t go underwater, but was miniaturized and injected into a human body. You’ve got to love the many windows, and the bubble window on top. The movie version was designed by Harper Goff, a movie prop man I’ll mention again later.
  1. Sea Trench. Here is the submarine from the 1978 novel Aquarius Mission by Martin Caidin. The novel is not well-known, but I like that the book contained a foldout picture of the submarine, a complete side view depiction of its interior. This sub was huge, and well equipped for both exploration and military missions. Nuclear-powered, it had an observation deck with a window, an observation bubble that could be lowered, a mini-sub, torpedoes, nuclear missiles, and a handball court.

 

  1. FS-1.You’ll recognize the flying submarine from the 1964-1968 TV Show “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.” Nuclear-powered, it had windows, a manipulator arm, and room for two operators, plus perhaps a passenger. It launched from and returned to its mother sub, the Seaview. Oh yeah, and it could fly. It could land on water, on an aircraft carrier, or on a runway ashore.
  1. Seaview. Now we’ve come to the submarine from the 1961 movie “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” and the 1964-1968 TV show of the same name. In the movie, it was USOS Seaview, for United States Oceanographic Survey, but in the TV show it was S.S.R.N. Seaview, apparently to indicate it was part of the US submarine fleet, but still a research sub. Nuclear powered, it could deploy the Flying Sub, as mentioned. It had observation windows near the bow. The bow had a distinctive shape, reminiscent of a manta ray. The stern looked like the back end of a 1961 Cadillac.
  1. SeaQuest. The second-best SF submarine is from the 1993-1996 TV series “seaQuest DSV” (or “seaQuest 2032” in the final season). Measuring over 1000 feet long, the sub could move at 160 knots thanks to its twin fusion reactors. Its shape resembled a squid, and its hull had a bio-skin coating to repel sea organisms. It could dive to 29,000 feet. Seaquest travelled with a cloud of unmanned undersea vehicles, with sensors and other capabilities. Its armament included torpedoes, missiles, and lasers. One member of the crew was a genetically enhanced dolphin that moved throughout the sub in water-filled tubes.
  1. Nautilus. The best science fiction submarine could only be the Nautilus, from Jules Verne’s 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Verne also mentioned it in his 1874 novel, The Mysterious Island. The story has been depicted in at least six films and there have been several spin-off novels and films featuring the submarine. With a length of 230 feet and a maximum speed of 50 knots, the vessel used a bow ram as its weapon. It could deploy divers as well as a small rowboat. It had a large “living room” with a pipe organ. Despite Verne’s meticulous description, there have been numerous different depictions of what the Nautilus looked like. The best, in my view, is the version Harper Goff created for the 1954 Disney movie.

There they are, the 7 best science fiction submarines. Did I miss your favorite, or would you have put them in a different order? Leave a comment for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 18, 2016Permalink