Tag Archives: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Is Science Ruining SciFi?

Fantasy fiction writers have an advantage over science fiction writers—no scientist will come along and say the fantasy writer depicted her dragons incorrectly or that she botched a description of werewolves.

But scifi relies on facts about a field that’s frequently upending previous conclusions, so new scientific discoveries can invalidate your fiction at any time.

Still, do those discoveries render the affected novel unreadable? That is, just because your story, written before 2006, discusses the ‘planet’ Pluto, does the body’s new designation as a ‘dwarf planet’ make your novel passé, or so retro as to be unworthy of reading?

The pair writing under the name James S.A. Corey wrote an open letter to NASA about such an occurrence. Their novel Leviathan Wakes portrayed a human population on the asteroid Ceres as being so desperate for water that they obtained it from Saturn’s rings.

In 2015, a NASA mission to Ceres showed that it has plenty of water, easily enough for the millions of people living there in the novel.

Oops.

Does that mean nobody should read Leviathan Wakes or watch The Expanse?

In my opinion, it doesn’t mean that at all. As Corey points out in their letter, there’s a supportive feedback mechanism at work, a mutual admiration society. SciFi writers respect scientists, follow every discovery, and cheer them on. For their part, many scientists were inspired to pursue their passion by science fiction writers.

Many scifi short stories and novels will not endure; their fate will be to gather dust and remain unread. But, that’s not because scientific discoveries rendered them obsolete. It’s because those stories aren’t good fiction.

In other words, classic scifi becomes classic because of its high quality, not because it anticipates new advances in knowledge.

To take my favorite novel as an example, Jules Verne strove to keep Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as accurate as the known science of 1870 would permit. Today, however, we know:

  • A riveted steel submarine could not safely dive as deeply as the Nautilus;
  • A sodium/mercury battery would not propel a submarine at fifty knots (without taking up its entire internal volume);
  • No spot in the ocean is 16,000 meters deep;
  • Sharks do not need to turn upside down just prior to attacking;

…among many other errors. Does that mean you can’t read and enjoy the novel today? Of course you can.

Editors should do their best to provide footnotes or forwards that state where subsequent discoveries have made parts of a fictional work implausible. However, even if they don’t, most readers don’t turn to fiction for the latest scientific facts. Readers understand that scifi authors use the best-known science of their time…and then sometimes stretch that for the sake of a great story.

Science doesn’t ruin scifi. If anything, they reciprocally support each other. In that conclusion, I think James S.A. Corey would agree with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 18, 2020Permalink

Having Tea with Jules Verne

When I found out about an online book review of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, I had to sign up. On Thursday, August 27, the St. James Literary League conducted one of their quarterly meetings online using Zoom, and just happened to select my favorite novel.

The St. James Literary League is associated with the St. James Tearoom in Albuquerque. I suspect that, pre-COVID, they held their meetings in that elegant restaurant. For this meeting, luckily, I could join in from home without traveling to New Mexico.  

Janisse Rakes hosted the event, for which there were about ten attendees. I say ‘about’ because some people came and went. Janisse started by asking people to introduce themselves and give their overall impressions of the book.

Most attendees had completed reading the novel, several for the first time. Verne’s 19th Century style of writing, combined with his interminable lists of fish, made it a difficult slog for several reviewers. Some wondered about the accuracy of Verne’s information, suspecting he must have made up many of those facts. (No, he didn’t, but the science of Marine Biology has moved on, so I wouldn’t use that novel as an ichthyology reference.)

On the positive side, they liked the steampunk nature of the book, Verne’s ahead-of-his-time predictions, and the dramatic tension between the characters.

Janisse had prepared well, and kept the discussion lively by posing questions for the group to ponder. She asked about the novel’s characters, the technology, the character names, the title of the book itself, whether Aronnax should be considered a reliable narrator, the theme of freedom in the novel, how characters changed throughout the story, and the meaning of the book’s final lines.

For me, having first read the novel a half century ago, and having re-read it several times since, I’d forgotten—and can never quite recapture—the thrill of reading it for the first time. By listening to the reviewers that night, I got a glimpse of the wonder and amazement of a first-time reader. In a sense, through their eyes, I got to read the book for the first time…again! I enjoyed that.

In my opinion, the event was a great success. I thank the St. James Tearoom, the St. James Literary League, all the attendees, and Janisse Rakes in particular for a wonderful time.

For some new stories written by modern authors, but inspired by Jules Verne’s novel, I recommend 20,000 Leagues Remembered, co-edited by Kelly A. Harmon and also…well—

Poseidon’s Scribe

August 30, 2020Permalink

It’s a Party, and You’re Invited!

Just as Jules Verne’s Nautilus traveled all over the world, we’re throwing a world-wide party. It’s on Thursday August 6th, from 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM EDT and it’s on Facebook.

We’re doing this to celebrate the launch of the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. Published on the 150th anniversary of Jules Verne’s masterwork, this book contains new stories by 16 modern authors, all paying tribute to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, that classic proto-steampunk novel of undersea adventure.

At the party, you can meet the editors and the authors of the stories and ask all the questions you want. Best of all, you can win prizes!

You’re invited! Everyone is. Now, of course, you’re wondering how to attend. Just follow these steps:

  1. Create a Facebook account if you don’t already have one.
  2. Send a friend request to me.
  3. If you don’t receive a party invitation within a day or two, send me a message to prompt me.
  4. Once you get the invitation, accept it.
  5. Share info about the party with your friends.
  6. Log into Facebook at the right date and time and join the fun.

(If anyone knows a simpler way to invite the whole world to a Facebook event, let me know in the comments to this blogpost.)

You’ve waited 150 years for this sesquicentennial celebration. It would be a shame to miss it. After all, the bicentennial won’t be until June 2070, and that’s a long time from now.

See you at the party! You’ve been cordially invited by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 26, 2020Permalink

Captain Nemo and I

Many people have commented on how much I have in common with Captain Nemo. Not just in appearance:

I’m the one on the right. Want more proof? Just look at this table of inexplicable parallels:

AttributeCaptain NemoPoseidon’s Scribe
Known by 2-word pseudonymYesYes
TrainingEngineeringEngineering (Naval Architecture)
Submarine constructionBuilt his own submarineHelped overhaul a submarine
Submarine operationCaptain of his own submarineOfficer aboard a submarine
Polar experienceTraveled by submarine to South PoleTraveled by submarine near North Pole
MusicPlayed pipe organPlayed cello and piano
BirthplaceBundelkhand – middle of a country (India)Wisconsin – middle of a country (USA)
AgeBetween 35 and 50Used to be between 35 and 50
Pacific island experienceMarooned on Lincoln IslandVisited Hawaii
WeaponryElectric RifleElectric Pistol (not fully operational)
Lost civilization experienceDiscovered AtlantisWrote a story about Atlantis
LanguagesFluent in French, English, German, Latin, and BundeliAdept in using Google to translate 107 languages
Electrical experienceUsed electric rails to shock Papuan nativesElectrically shocked self during home repairs
WealthImmensely rich from salvaging treasureOften imagined being rich
RoyaltyBorn a princeListened to music by Prince

I know, it’s eerie, right? It’s not like I set out to pattern my life after Captain Nemo. I doubt very much that I’m somehow related to him, or that I’m a reincarnation of him. However, I wouldn’t dismiss those possibilities out of hand, either.

At this point, I’d like to ease the fears of any mariners reading this post. Despite my many similarities to Captain Nemo, I have no immediate plans to voyage around the world’s oceans, ramming ships along the way. Sailors of all vessels at sea are safe from any attack by me.  

I promise to use my Nemo-like powers only for good, like co-editing 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology recently launched by Pole to Pole Publishing.

For the record, I am—

Captain Nemo

…er, I mean

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 19, 2020Permalink

Jules Verne’s Calendar Problem

Sometimes an author belatedly tries to force-fit two or more stories into the same world timeline, but it doesn’t work well. Just ask the creators of Star Trek, Star Wars, and the writers of just about any long-running comic book series.

Jules Verne tried to tie three of his novels together, recognized the chronological errors, attempted to explain them away, and ended up confusing things even more.

In Verne’s novel In Search of the Castaways (also called Captain Grant’s Children), the main characters abandon the traitorous Tom Ayrton on a deserted island in March 1865.

In the subsequent novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, three main characters are taken aboard the Nautilus in November 1867.

So far, so good. However, in The Mysterious Island, the castaways find Ayrton in December 1866. Ayrton states he was abandoned 12 years earlier, in March 1855. (Not just less than 2 years, as simple subtraction would indicate.)

Verne and his publisher included this footnote in the text:

The events which have just been briefly related are taken from a work which some of our readers have no doubt read, and which is entitled, Captain Grant’s Children. They will remark on this occasion, as well as later, some discrepancy in the dates; but later again, they will understand why the real dates were not at first given.

Thank you very much, Jules. That helps a lot.

Later in The Mysterious Island, in October 1869, the castaways come across Captain Nemo. He states it has been 16 years since the three guests came aboard the Nautilus. (It had been just shy of 2 years, but maybe time moves slower on that island.)

Again, Verne and his publisher included a footnote:

The history of Captain Nemo has, in fact, been published under the title of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Here, therefore, will apply the observation already made as to the adventures of Ayrton with regard to the discrepancy of dates. Readers should therefore refer to the note already published on this point.

Sooo, Jules, I think you’re saying you know you goofed up, and want your readers to know that you know. However, with two enigmatic footnotes that reference each other, you’re hoping we’ll accept that there’s some logical reason for these hopeless temporal contradictions.

It’s a strange attempt at chronological hand-waving, but we see what happened. Verne’s proclivity for including precise dates in his novels got the best of him. After publishing Captain Grant’s Children, he wished he had set that novel ten years earlier. That way, Ayrton would have been living alone for 12 years rather than 2, and more believably reduced to an uncivilized state.

Similarly, Verne needed a much older Captain Nemo in The Mysterious Island, an aged and lone survivor of his crew in 1869. Only then did Verne wish he’d not already written about a younger and energetic Nemo, and full crew, set in the years 1867-8.

He could have set The Mysterious Island further in the future, but he wanted his castaways to escape from a prison during the American Civil War, so that fixed his start date no later than 1865. He could have left his castaways on Lincoln Island a lot longer, say, 20 years rather than 4, but that’s stretching credibility.

If you had been Jules Verne and faced with these problems, how would you have solved them?

While you’re thinking about that, I can recommend a good book to read. 20,000 Leagues Remembered is a just-released anthology of 16 stories by modern authors, each tale inspired by…well, you can guess.

Verne wrote so many fine novels, he certainly can be pardoned for some botched stitch-up jobs. At least he’s forgiven by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 5, 2020Permalink

Mobili or Mobile?

Mobilis in Mobili—the motto of Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo. Or should that be Mobilis in Mobile? Let’s consider it.

Why even ask the question? Well, Verne’s publishers went back and forth, using mobili in some versions and mobile in others. It seems even they were confused.

The two are Latin words. I’m no expert in that language, but as I understand it, mobili is pronounced mob´il-ee and mobile is pronounced mob´il-ay.

Here’s the text from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, as it appears in the 1993 translation by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walker:

“Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, plate, bore a letter encircled by a motto, of which this is an exact facsimile:

Motto from Wikipedia

‘Mobile within the mobile element!’ That Latin motto was certainly appropriate for this submarine craft, so long as the preposition ‘in’ was translated as ‘within’ and not ‘upon.’ The letter N was no doubt the initial of the enigmatic person in command at the bottom of the ocean.”

Miller and Walker use their own motto image, with mobile. They state that mobili is plural and mobile is singular. Since Verne’s explanation in French (“l’element mobile”) is singular, they reason that the Latin word should be singular as well, hence mobile.

What does the motto mean? My old copy of Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary gives several meanings for mobilis including movable, easy to move, active, rapid, pliable, flexible, changeable, inconstant, with quick motion, easily, and quickly.

So we have ‘moving in a moving thing’ or ‘living free in a free world’ or ‘changing with change.’ Those first two meanings presume a singular object (moving thing or free world), so the singular mobile seems more appropriate for them.

At this point, many of you are thinking of the Monty Python Latin lesson scene in the movie Life of Brian. Now imagine John Cleese as Professor Aronnax staring at the Nautilus’ tableware and correcting Captain Nemo’s Latin!

Now that your head is spinning from that language discussion, permit me to urge you to buy and read the new anthology from Pole to Pole Publishing—20,000 Leagues Remembered. It’s available in ebook form now, and soon in paperback.

To finish up, I’ll confess to an unscholarly preference for mobili. It looks more like a Latin word than mobile, which is identical to the English word mobile.

Still, despite my preference, I guess I must be flexible and willing to change, and must therefore bow to the experts. Mobilis in Mobile it is. As you can see, there are few people more mobilis than—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 28, 2020Permalink

Launch Day!

Today’s the day! It’s launch day for the new anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book was 150 years in the making.

Let me explain. The first publication of Jules Verne’s classic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was in serial form. It appeared in two-week intervals in a magazine, the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, edited by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Starting on March 20, 1869, the magazine printed a chapter or two in each issue, concluding on June 20, 1870.

The first time the public could read the novel from beginning to end was on that Wednesday in June, the first day of summer, precisely 150 years ago today.

To commemorate the sesquicentennial, Pole to Pole Publishing presents 20,000 Leagues Remembered, an anthology of works by modern authors, each inspired by Verne’s literary masterpiece. Along with the Senior Editor, Kelly A. Harmon, I co-edited the book. It’s the first book I’ve ever edited.

What will you get when you buy this book? You’ll enjoy sixteen short stories, each paying homage to the Father of Science Fiction and his novelized underwater voyage. They span the spectrum from adventures set at a time contemporary with Verne’s tale, to more thoughtful historical pieces exploring various aspects of the novel, to stories set in our present day, to others that defy easy categorization.

Our table of contents includes:
“The Ghost of Captain Nemo” by J. Woolston Carr,
“Water Whispers” by Gregory L. Norris,
“At Strange Depths” by Jason J. McCuiston,
“The Maelstrom” by Maya Chhabra,
“The Game of Hare and Hounds” by Stephen R. Wilk,
“Recruiter” by Andrew Gudgel,
“Nemo’s World” by James J.C. Kelly,
“The Silent Agenda” by Mike Adamson,
“Fools Rush In” by Allison Tebo,
“An Evening at the World’s Edge” by Alfred D. Byrd,
“A Concurrent Process” by Corrie Garrett,
“Homework Help From No One” by Demetri Capetanopoulos,
“Leviathan” by Michael D. Winkle,
“Last Year’s Water” by Nikoline Kaiser,
“Farragut’s Gambit” by M.W. Kelly, and
“Raise the Nautilus” by Eric Choi.

It’s not necessary to have read Verne’s book first. You can still enjoy these stories on their own. You might gain a deeper appreciation of them if you dive into the original first, though. For dedicated Verne scholars, be aware that some of our authors scattered ‘easter eggs’ in their stories for you—little references (some quite obscure) that will make you smile.

Where, you’re wondering, can you get your own copy of this book? I thought you’d never ask. It’s available as an ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.  

We’ll launch a paperback version as soon as we can, likely in a month or two. If you read my blogposts or follow me on social media, you won’t miss that announcement.

As Ned Land said, “Professor Aronnax…You talk about some future day… I’m talking about now.” Now, as in today. Launch day. After 150 years, the Nautilus sails again, thanks to Kelly A. Harmon and—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 20, 2020Permalink

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

That Bookshelf Behind You

On TV these days, we’re seeing the insides of a lot of people’s homes. Particularly bookshelves. If you’re an expert being interviewed by the media, it’s important to have an impressive bookshelf as backdrop behind you.

Ah, but what is an ‘impressive’ bookshelf? Let’s explore that today, so you can prepare for your next Skype call from a TV network.  

A portion of Poseidon’s Scribe’s bookshelf

I’m not that impressed by bookshelves arranged for show. If it looks like the books sit there for years without being read, that indicates a shelf intended to dazzle others, not to serve the owner.

A useful home bookshelf should have a sense of chaos, of disorder, with some books leaning, and perhaps others left horizontal. That indicates a reverence for books as things to be read, not as props to be displayed.

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne gives Captain Nemo a library aboard the Nautilus intended both to impress Professor Aronnax (and thus, the reader) and to convey a sense of frequent use by an eclectic mind.

Captain Nemo’s bookshelves

“Tall pieces of furniture, made of black rosewood inlaid with copper, contained in their deep shelves a vast number of books uniformly bound…works of science, ethics, literature, in many languages, were in abundance…And, strange to say, these books were not grouped according to the languages they were written in, and the resultant mixture suggested that the captain could read fluently whatever books came to hand, regardless of language.”

(Well, I do have one quibble, Captain Nemo. If the Nautilus takes an angle or encounters rough seas on the surface, most of your books will fall to the floor. Bookshelves aboard the submarines I’ve seen always include moveable restraining bars to keep books in place.)

Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

This seems a good moment to mention that both I and Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing are co-editing an upcoming anthology titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a collection of short stories intended as a sesquicentennial tribute to Jules Verne’s novel. Submit your own story here.

Returning to the topic of bookshelves, remember—they’re meant to be used, not just seen. If a TV network calls you for a video interview, you’d like to be known as a person who reads, not just owns, books.

If you work for a news station and want to interview an expert on the use of bookshelves as background, or just desire to interview an interesting author, call me and ask for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 19, 2020Permalink