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    20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
    20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
    20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

    Written by Jules Verne

    Narrated by Alex Jennings

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is an action-packed story of a voyage into the unknown - an enthralling mixture of 'fact' and fiction. Although Jules Verne is describing the most fantastic of events, he gives credence to them by packing the novel with details and dates. To add further weight, the narrator is a man of science – the respected Professor Aronnax. It is through his empathy with Captain Nemo that the reader comes to know the fallen, tortured soul who has condemned himself ceaselessly to roam the seas. His story elevates a good, rip-roaring yarn into fine tragedy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Copyright Group
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781780000053
    Author

    Jules Verne

    Jules Gabriel Verne was born in the seaport of Nantes, France, in 1828 and was destined to follow his father into the legal profession. In Paris to train for the bar, he took more readily to literary life, befriending Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo, and living by theatre managing and libretto-writing. His first science-based novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was issued by the influential publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1862, and made him famous. Verne and Hetzel collaborated to write dozens more such adventures, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1869 and Around the World in 80 Days in 1872. In later life Verne entered local politics at Amiens, where had had a home. He also kept a house in Paris, in the street now named Boulevard Jules Verne, and a beloved yacht, the Saint Michel, named after his son. He died in 1905.

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    Reviews for 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

    3.5/5

    3,040 ratings113 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I read the abridged version with my 6-year-old son. What a great adventure--we both enjoyed it.
    • 2/5
      I think this is the 19th century version of the Discovery Channel, with a bit of plot thrown in here and there.

      This must have been a fantastical book when it was first written. In the infancy of submarines and electricity, all of this must have been incredibly far fetched, and it's amazing to me how much is accurate predictions.

      The long lists and descriptions of fish and animals, I assume, was equally incredible to the people of that day, who'd probably never heard of most of these fish, let alone seen drawings of them. But for me, who's seen some of that in person while scuba diving, and seen a lot of photographs and video of underwater life, the lists of common names and scientific nomenclature just doesn't work anymore.

      I did like the plot and the characters, but interspersed as it was between all the long lists, and engineering calculations, this book just hasn't aged well at all.
    • 4/5
      As much an underwater travelogue as it is a sci fi/steampunk classic, Jules Verne takes us around the world, thru the depths of the ocean with the enigmatic Captain Nemo at the helm. Narrated by a Professor Arronax, a French naturalist accidentally swept into the world of Captain Nemo, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is thought to be an allusion to Homer's Odyssey- and I suppose it is- but it's theme of one man's defiance of humanity, especially after being disappointed and devastated by it, is a theme repeated time and again throughout ALL literature and entertainment.The story begins with the Professor joining a hunting expedition for a large underwater creature menacing the ships traversing the waters of the world. After a brush with the strange sea creature sweeps Professor Arronax, his companion Conseil ,and the brutish Canadian whaler, Ned Land, overboard their ship, they find themselves unexpectedly rescued not by the large narwhale they were chasing, but rather a man-made creature instead- Captain Nemo's underwater ship, the Nautilus.Unsure of their three new companions, Nemo keeps them imprisoned till he decides what to do with them, but when he finds at least one of the ragged men to be a man of thinking, he decides to let them have free roam of the ship- with a couple conditions: They must go back to their rooms when asked- with no questions asked by them- and they must never leave the Nautilus.Ned Land, a lover of freedom, is furious and Professor Arronax is worried as well, but quickly finds himself enraptured with the amazing sights to behold and the chance to be the first to catalog them!Soon months fly by with Ned getting more restless and approaching an inevitable crisis point, although just as caught up in the new adventures around them.Hunting in underwater "forests", amazing underwater creatures never seen before, underwater volcanoes, caves and hidden channels, along with natural terrors like hurricanes, icebergs, and a spot aptly named the navel of ocean- all of this to be borne until the Nautilus's fierce implacable captain reveals his heart of vengeance in an all out battle with another ship.When confronted with the true nature of Nemo, that archangel of hate as Professor Arronax calls him, the professor agrees it's time to leave and they make their plans only to be thwarted by a squid of colossal dimensions. But Nemo wrestles his ship free in his usual efficient manner and now it is only Nemo himself left to block their escape.Written in the late 1800's, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is a marvel. Verne imagined self sufficient underwater vessels, electric "bullets" (that's tazers to you and me) and all kinds of things that is norm to modern man, but to a man on the brink of the 20th Century only fantastical. He also surprised me with his outright admonitions of humanity for its over fishing/whaling and the dire consequences if left unchecked.Although I could have done with less of the eye-glazing cataloging and info dumping, when the action hits, it hits in a big way.Truly a man ahead of his time, Jules Verne deserves his unofficial title as the father of science fiction as he teaches, imagines, admonishes and entertains generation after generation- but isn't that what good sci fi is supposed to do?
    • 4/5
      How to begin... there are some aspects of this book that were extremely fascinating and the adventure that Jules Verne writes is captivating. What I did not care for were the excessive uses of nautical terms as well as zoological/biological terms used to describe everything in the book. Perhaps it is just more evidence of the dumbing down of society as we no longer describe things in these fashions and makes it difficult for the reader of today to follow. Even with the author's fluent and graceful writing. The thing that most irritated me, was that all my life I've been led to think the Nautilus was attacked by a giant squid when that chapter in the book was described VERY differently! However, I guess I cannot fault the original story for how other interpretations have distorted it. Still, I can see why this book is so timeless and I encourage everyone to give it a read to enjoy the great adventure with mad Captain Nemo under the sea.
    • 2/5
      Classic. Got really boring after a while though, and so I cheated and skimmed. Other Verne is far better.
    • 3/5
      I read this for the Steampunk category of the SF Reading Challenge on Shelfari.

      Although the story was very interesting and well-written, I found that it dragged at times due to the great amount of detail that Verne included. It often seemed that I was reading a natural history reference on the flora and fauna of the world's oceans.

      That said, I would recommend it since it was an enjoyable read. This would also qualify for the category of Work not originally published in English.
    • 3/5
      I liked the book because I AM fascinated by the sea, but everyone is right, the details of EVERYTHING are awful to sit through. You completely forget where you are in the "story" after pages and pages of detail on a fish, or a rock. A tough read, but a nice fantasy story. I personally don't think the details and monotony were NEARLY as awful as say Moby Dick, but they were pretty bad.
    • 3/5
      I don’t know what I exactly expected from this book, but not exactly this. I think I anticipated more plot and action. And this book is very erudite.

      This is not really my thing. But still I’m amazed with the amount of information and knowledge contained in this book. Nowadays, we do not have a problem with access to detailed information on any topic, you can search virtually anything on the internet. But at a time when Verne wrote his book, this amount of information had to be impressive and required some serious research. All these curiosities included in the book were then completely unknown to the readers. I imagine that they had to ignite the imagination back then.

      Unfortunately, times have changed and now this accumulation of encyclopedic information is a bit boring. Enumeration of all kinds of fish and marine animals is simply uninteresting for today's reader who is looking for action and plot twists. And I am not an exception.

      Nevertheless, the book is a wonderful record of the scientific knowledge on the seas and oceans at the time. And this aspect is especially interesting for me. It's fascinating to catch a glimpse of how people saw the world 150 years ago. What interested them, what they were afraid of and how they imagined the future. And even more interesting is what they did not know then and what we already know now. Like the South Pole, which in Verne’s book looks very like Greenland which is very far from truth. And although the south pole is still studied by scientists, it is not a white patch on the map anymore.

      The same with regard to the use of electricity. The light bulb was not invented until around 1880. It was not until 1882 that factories in the United States began producing light bulbs. Verne published his book 10 years before this! The idea of an entire ship (and a submarine!) being electrically powered had to be something fantastic in the Verne era and beyond human imagination.

      Another aspect that I noticed reading this book is the perception of the world at the time. Even more valuable that it is not presented from the perspective of today's political correctness or an attempt to point out certain problems but shown in a way that was then quite natural. In the book we have a very well illustrated approach to colonialism and a way of thinking about the ‘savage’. And although today we have a completely different approach to these topics, contact with a report from the past helps us understand how our ancestors thought and how the world changed over years. Therefore, Captain Nemo who would be considered an ecologist and social activist even in more recent standards is an extremely interesting character.

      I’m glad I read this book even if it is not my favourite. It's fascinating to see how people imagined the future and what turned out to be true.
    • 4/5
      I loved all the descriptions of underwater life, and the different places the characters visit. I wanted to become a marine biologist after I finished reading!
    • 5/5
      I loved this story when I was a kid and my rating is based on those memories. I doubt I would rate it lower if I read it again.
    • 4/5
      How to begin... there are some aspects of this book that were extremely fascinating and the adventure that Jules Verne writes is captivating. What I did not care for were the excessive uses of nautical terms as well as zoological/biological terms used to describe everything in the book. Perhaps it is just more evidence of the dumbing down of society as we no longer describe things in these fashions and makes it difficult for the reader of today to follow. Even with the author's fluent and graceful writing. The thing that most irritated me, was that all my life I've been led to think the Nautilus was attacked by a giant squid when that chapter in the book was described VERY differently! However, I guess I cannot fault the original story for how other interpretations have distorted it. Still, I can see why this book is so timeless and I encourage everyone to give it a read to enjoy the great adventure with mad Captain Nemo under the sea.
    • 2/5
      Good story, but too much biological minutiae.
    • 4/5
      I loved all the descriptions of underwater life, and the different places the characters visit. I wanted to become a marine biologist after I finished reading!
    • 4/5
      This book intrigued me more than I expect, given the profoundly boring first few pages. Once the narrator finally was aboard the Nautilus, Verne's ability as a science fiction adventure write bloomed. He described dazzling underwater worlds, strange men and animals, and mysteries of the depth with excellent prose. I can see why this is a classic science fiction novel. Recommend for the ocean lover and the nerd alike.
    • 2/5
      Two stars is almost generous; given his importance in the history of the science fiction genre, it really seems like Jules Verne should have produced something that stood the test of time. Twenty Thousand Leagues is a chore to read; I read in another review that a total of 75 pages are devoted to lists of fish. This explains why it didn't take me very long to read this book, after the first few fish passages, I began jumping over them whenever I noticed they were starting again. Captain Nemo is an interesting character, but Verne practically wastes every chance to develop him into something great. I understand that in "hard" sci-fi, characters take a backseat to the science, but it's such a shame that Nemo wasn't fleshed out more. His presence alone (and deference to its position in literary history) is what saves this book from receiving only one star.The main character's servant is almost as annoying as the fish passages; he splits his time between sucking up to his boss and compulsively classifying marine life. I wanted to strangle him every time he opened his mouth.After suffering through this and Journey to the Center of the Earth, I considered myself well educated on Verne's contributions to the genre and returned Around the World in Eighty Days to the library without reading it.
    • 3/5
      In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne's 1869 adventure story, a strange creature has appeared in the world's oceans. It looks like a whale, but it is much larger and faster than any whale yet known to science. When international hysteria over the mysterious creature reaches its height, the U.S. sends a warship out to find and destroy it. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a famous French naturalist, is invited to come along and observe. Also on board are Conseil, Aronnax's faithful manservant and classification expert, and Ned Land, an expert harpooner. When they finally do meet the creature, they are astonished to learn that it is not a creature of flesh and blood at all, but a manmade ship that sails under the water. A submarine! Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned are shipwrecked and taken aboard the Nautilus by its enigmatic and brilliant captain who calls himself Nemo (Latin for "no one"). Why has Nemo built this incredible submarine, and what has caused his intense hatred for the powers that reign on dry land? And — more to the point — will he ever let his prisoners go?20,000 Leagues Under the Sea begs comparison to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and Ray Bradbury's introduction to this edition explores each to illuminate the other (please note there are spoilers for both in this paragraph!). Bradbury says both Melville and Verne are "blasphemers" in their open questioning of God's dispensations. But while Melville is bleakly existential, Verne has a much more practical view of things. If Melville and Verne were building the Tower of Babel, Melville would write poetry about ascending the heavens while Verne would be busy trying to discover the best mixture for the bricks. Ahab goes down dramatically with the Whale to his death; Nemo builds a mechanical whale and plumbs the depths of the oceans to survive. Both stories end in a swirling vortex, but while Ahab's fate is certain, Captain Nemo's is left open.I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with this book. It is evident that Verne did a lot of research for it — too much at times. In every ocean they visit, Monsieur Aronnax gives us detailed descriptions of the ocean life, telling us what each fish looks like (and whether it is good to eat). This is interesting some of the time, but as it went on and on, my eyes started glazing over. Often the characters ask questions that are obvious lead-ins to info dumps. This is fine to a point, but when it happens in every chapter it gets a bit old. I do see why Verne would go to such lengths (depths?) to describe everything minutely; his readers in 1869 would be thirsty for every word detailing the mysterious underwater realms of the ocean. Maybe it just doesn't work as well with modern readers who have already seen all kinds of underwater exploration footage and pictures. I do have to give Verne credit for thinking up halfway-plausible theories for how his submarine could operate (though several are not at all correct). Verne is a towering figure in the science fiction genre, and it's easy to see why. Despite the slow parts, there are some iconic moments here that I remember from the Great Illustrated Classics edition I read as a child... the shadowy underwater graveyard, the giant squid attack, and the pearl-oyster beds of Ceylon. Verne does not dwell overmuch on the philosophical aspects of the story, but their undertones are very much present, and they come out strongly when someone dies. Gradually we come to see that Nemo is just as much of a fanatic as the more demonstrative Ahab; he really means it when he says he hates the human societies on the dry land. In this book Nemo's nationality and the specific injustices he suffered remain a mystery, though I understand that these are explored in the sequel, The Mysterious Island.This book is thought provoking when read in our context of the modern environmentalist movement. In one place, it sounds like Nemo doesn't care about using nature responsibly; dugongs are becoming quite rare due to overhunting and yet Nemo allows Ned Land to harpoon one in a very offhand manner. But later, when Ned wants to kill some baleen whales, Nemo refuses to allow it because they would not use the meat; it would be for the sheer joy of killing, and those particular whales were already becoming rare. It is fascinating that Verne was so aware of the issues even then, and embodies these two opposing viewpoints through Ned Land and Captain Nemo. Neither, of course, can understand the other.And yet Nemo has no problem killing a group of sperm whales that were going to attack the more benign baleen whales. The carnage is quite graphic. Nemo justifies this by saying that the sperm whales are vicious killers that the world can easily spare. It seems that Nemo equates the vicious sperm whales with a particular nation/political movement, the one that destroyed his family. He sees himself as judgment meted out upon them.And randomly, I was also hugely amused at the brief mention of and explanation for global cooling (yes, you read that right). Interesting how we keep changing our mind on this topic. Maybe in the next century we will determine that the earth's temperature is remaining constant?I can understand why this is a classic, and I am impressed at the breadth of its ideas. Underwater ships, batteries powered by sodium, pressurized diving suits, guns that shoot electric bullets, incredibly inventive ocean cuisine — all of man's creative forces focused on reaping life from the elements. Man is moving forward, conquering, exploring, classifying, and cataloguing every inch of the globe. But after all its underwater victories over the forces of nature, the Nautilus disappears in a raging whirlpool... or does it? If the Nautilus is a metaphor for scientific progress, there is an interesting parallel here; its implications are still too ambiguous to admit of a neat and tidy conclusion. Every reader will come away with a different perspective.Just a note: I do not recommend the Tantor Media audiobook of this story. I tried to listen to it and had to turn it off because the narrator's voice (which was fine in itself) kept spiking and distorting even at a normal conversational volume level, resulting in a grating fuzziness. This really surprised me because it was recorded in 2003, presumably with decent equipment (?). But it was too annoying to be borne. I have not listened to the audiobook done by Naxos; perhaps it is better.Overall, I would say this is a work I respect because of its landmark position as a classic of science and adventure fiction. But besides Captain Nemo, the characters aren't very compelling, and the long, frequent descriptions of ocean life impede the plot. It left me cold, and I don't think it is a book I will revisit.
    • 4/5
       A barely recalled classic book, but recalled as being enjoyable. It took a while to realized that the 20,000 leagues were not about the, impossible, depth that Nemo reached, but the distance from place to place the craft traveled.
    • 3/5
      Good adventure story. I'm not really sure when I read it.
    • 5/5
      This book is one of the best by Jules Verne as far as I am concerned. Not a fast read and I am not sure if all the sea creatures he had in the book are real as well as some ot the details but still a very interesting read.A great read about history, the sea, countries, sea animals and sea plants. Captain Nemo has taken Professor Aronnax, the faithful servant of the Professor, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, as prisoners on his ship the Nautilus.The word league refers to distance and fathom is depth.Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is the distance the book takes us on less than a ten month journey.At one point, Professor Aronnax says "I end here this catalogue, which is sometimes dry perhaps, but very exact, with a series of bony fish that I have observed..." ( I have ended the rest of what he wrote but he continued to write more about sea creatures and fish.)This book was published on 1870. I gave it a 5 star rating.
    • 2/5
      90% info dump. 10% plot
    • 3/5
      The original Captain Nemo and the Nautilus story, which takes place in the 1860s.If one view is this as a true period piece then one has to conceive of the wonder that the reader would feel on hearing about a boat that could go under the water. In this version, Captain Nemo is a partial villain as well as a hero.His eclectic attitude towards sea life and the undersea environment almost makes him a climate change advocate 140 years too early! At times zero almost repeats of what has just happened and in terms of pacing there is some slacking.However as audiobooks go particularly one that he is as old as this , this was a good listen.
    • 4/5
      Classic science fiction, adventure story. This has the crew going around the world in a submarine built and designed by Captain Nemo, a man who is avoiding governed lands. He is essentially hiding out in his submarine. The Professor, his servant and the Canadian harpoonist became prisoners of the Nautilus and not allowed to leave because the the Captain's avoidance of governed society. What I like about Jules Verne's books is his scientific details and the adventures his characters enjoy. This book covers 20,000 leagues (not depth) of the oceans including the polar regions. The book references scientist known at the time who were exploring the oceans. It also mentions The Terror and The Erebus, which I mostly recently encountered in The Terror by Dan Simmons. Verne also touches on ecology and political themes in this book. Very enjoyable and I would read it again.
    • 1/5
      This was kind of like reading a science textbook with an action scene added every couple chapters. I did actually laugh once, but other than that it was painful. I really wanted to find out if anything would happen so I listened to the whole thing, but nothing really ended up happening. It really just felt like Verne was showing off how smart he was the whole time. It was a series of, "How will we survive/conquer this problem?" and then some scientific solution. I can see some science people really digging it, but I'm not sure how it got to be so popular.One strange thing, this audio book was about 11 hours long, but I saw another version that was 18 hours long. Both claimed to be unabridged. Seems crazy that one narrator would read almost half as fast as another. This one didn't seem especially fast or anything.
    • 2/5
      A well written adventure that fails to captivate.The large majority of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea feels like a walk through a museum in your mind. When you're done looking at one exhibit you walk to the next and listen to your tour guide, in this case Aronnax, explain to you what exactly you're looking at.Unfortunately if you don't know genus' or scientific names of marine lifeforms you *still* won't know what I'm looking at most of the time.Sadly there's not much plot to go along with it. Or any most of the time. Instead you get full paragraphs explaining things that you in all likelihood don't care about. Like what kind of lens the lights on the submarine uses. For a long time the things the characters are doing and the places they visit don’t matter at all to the plot. You travel from a dull event to another dull event to "ooo sharks" and repeat.Aronnax is clearly an extremely smart guy but grovels to the psychopath that is Captain Nemo. Usually because Nemo explains how a battery works or whatever. If you introduced Aronnax to Google he'd willingly enslave himself to you forever. It honestly felt like an abusive romance. Like someone told Edward "find someone who looks at you the way Aronnax looks at Nemo" and he went out and found Bella.Nemo demands loyalty and complete obedience in return for... not killing our party? This man imprisons our three characters which they accept for far too long. By the time the three of them are like “yo maybe we should like... leave?” I was skipping paragraphs trying to get to the end.On a more positive note it reads really smooth. Much better than the only other 19th century book I’ve read, Sleepy Hollow. And there are occasionally scenes that land with an emotional punch though most of them are towards the end after you’ve already suffered through endless paragraphs telling you which cetaceans and mollusks and medusae Aronnax can currently see.2.5 due to a strong ending and good friends. Maybe 2 for continuously telling me you killed animals that wouldn’t even defend themselves.
    • 3/5
      It's cool how he used imagination and tried to keep things as scientific as possible. I'm sure this story inspired many after it.

      Merged review:

      It's cool how he used imagination and tried to keep things as scientific as possible. I'm sure this story inspired many after it.
    • 3/5
      Picked this back up after Vol I back in September. I found the first half quite a bit, well, boring, frankly. I'm glad I decided to pick it up again, though, because I found that I enjoyed Vol. II quite a bit (well, mostly). I don't know if that's due to any particular change in the narrative style and/or structure between parts, or if it was a change in my own attitude and/or circumstances coming back to it. Perhaps I just learned to handle the boring parts better.

      Verne is clearly a great describer, but I think many of the places where I got bogged down is with that description. My inner cynic keeps reminding me that he was paid by the word as this story was originally serialized. I've been assured that's not (wholly) the case, and as part of my ongoing attempt to stifle the misanthropic homunculus that whispers to me from the back of my brain, I'll give Vern the benefit of the doubt. I do suspect, however, that it was a form of Asperger's which compelled Jules to create vast lists of marine life. (I did get a kick how at one point Dr. Aronnax says that their current location didn't have very many different species of fish than a previous location, and then he went on to name them all anyway.)

      Also, as I went along I became less dogmatic about reading the explanatory notes, which sped the reading along a bit. Some of the notes in this volume are quite enlightening, but others are dreadfully boring — to the point of vying with Verne's own fish lists. I suppose that's what you get when you read a critical edition... Once I got past the urge to read the text behind every asterisk, I was better able to "lose" (in a good way) myself in the story.

      So, it was worth the read, even if it took me awhile to realize it. That said, I'm not sure I'll be reading it again anytime soon.
    • 3/5
      Lots of taxonomy (too much for me), just enough story to justify sticking with it. The story really picks up at the end.
    • 2/5
      I had mixed feelings about this one. The narration was good but the content... I couldn't decide if the author was trying to write an action/adventure book or a textbook. There are so many descriptions of marine life and landscape using scientific terminology that I sometimes felt I was attending a lecture on marine biology. Many of the action scenes were lacking in action compared to today's novels. The handful of main characters were also shallowly drawn in my opinion. Nemo's reasons for what he did were not understandably explained. And where the financing came from for his extraordinary ship? Once he has it he claims undersea treasures, but before? I don't know, it was ok but I had higher expectations going in.
    • 5/5
      The french equivalent of the great American novel Moby-Dick? There are some striking similarities and reading through 20,000 leagues under the sea it was hard to get the idea of Moby-Dick out of my head. Moby-Dick was published in 1851 and 20,000 leagues appeared in serial form in 1869 and there is evidence that Verne had read Moby-Dick by his reference to the whale ship Essex and it's destruction which inspired Melville's novel. For French language readers 20,000 leagues had always been a literary masterpiece, but English readers had to wait until 1962 for a translation that did Verne's novel any justice. The original translation and the one that you are likely to read free on the internet, cut out over a quarter of Verne's novel and bowdlerised other sections and so for English readers Vernes novel had some catching up to do.First of all the similarities: like Moby-Dick there are pages and sometimes chapters that read more like scientific research than an adventure novel, which has lead to shortened versions and films that leave out the boring stuff. Captain Nemo like Captain Ahab is a driven man that no one understands; exercising control by force of character as well as a knowledge that other people do not posses, also like Ahab he starts off by being mildly crazy, but ends up being completely insane. Most of the action takes place on the high seas or under the high seas. All of the protagonists are men, not a woman or love story anywhere. There are references to literature, to history and mythology strewn throughout the book. Verne like Melville as an author seems to be on a quest for knowledge. The protagonists are on a ship/submarine an enclosed space and are actual prisoners on the Nuatilus very similar to the crew signed up to serve on the Pequod. However it is the way the story is told that made this reader think he was reading such a similar book: interspersed with an adventure story are pages and sometimes chapters that focus on zoological or technical aspects of life in and under the oceans and on board the submarine. Much of this has little direct relevance to the storyline.The big difference is that Jules Verne's is a science fiction story which has things to say about the future, whereas Melvilles book is mainly concerned with the here and now, (1850's) but also could be said to be looking backwards at an industry, the whaling industry which was looking at an uncertain future. A simple outline to the story in 20,000 leagues... is that Professor Arronax and his domestic servant (Conseil) are on board a frigate that has been sent to search out a mysterious animal that is believed to be doing damage to shipping. The frigate attacks what it believes to be a monster and in the battle Arronax, Conseil and the harpooner Ned Land are swept overboard. they manage to swim to what turns out to be the submarine Nautilus and reluctantly captain Nemo takes them on board. The terms of their rescue is that they must remain as captives of the captain because they become party to some of the secrets of the Nautilus and Nemo is interested in Professor Arronax knowledge of marine life. The Nautilus travels around the oceans of the world with a purpose that remains obscure, and on the voyages there are some notable events, which have become famous through more popular extracts from the novel. There are fights with various sea monsters, giant sharks, giant sea spiders and a kraken (giant octopus). The battle with the savages near an island in the south seas when the Nautilus is grounded. The discovery of the underground passage linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. The rescue of a pearl diver off the coast of India, the visit to the lost world of Atlantis beneath the waves. Nemo and Arronax reaching the South Pole and the Nautilus stuck below the ice. The journeys on the ocean beds in full metal diving gear and oxygen equipment are some of my favourite sections of the book, because of Vernes descriptions of the world beneath the waves.The tension in the story apart from the life threatening adventures is the relationship between the four men, Nemo remains a mystery, but Arronax is full of admiration for the man he recognises as a genius and is perfectly happy to carry out his own exploratory work as a marine biologist. Ned Land is hell bent on escape but realises he jeopardises the safety of the other two and Conseils hovers between his loyalty to Arronax and his friendship with Ned Land. Opportunities for escape are rare as Nemo has a hatred for landfall, preferring to have nothing to do with the race of men that inhabit the land. His crew remain a mystery speaking in a language that is foreign to Arronax and there are few clues as to where they come from and how they got to be part of Nemo's loyal entourage. Science fiction in my opinion is all about a sense of wonder, and there is much of this in the novel, but there is also plenty of what could be termed as hard science fiction and then again there is much that is just plain descriptions of fauna and flora, perhaps the best parts of the book are when Verne manages to combine all three. His love and respect for the natural world is evident throughout his book, however a total lack of anything approaching a sense of humour is a drawback. Embarking on a reading of either of these two classics calls for some determination to get to the end, there are highs and lows in both novels, perhaps the highs in Verne's book outweighs those of Melvilles, but the lows are certainly lower; the descriptions of marine life, the outlines of historical events can be little more than list making and some of them seem to be repeated. Some of Melvilles best writing is contained in the more technical chapters, but this is not always the case with Verne, although there is evidence of scholarly work to put it all together. His knowledge of geography, meteorology and chemistry is impressive, but this reader wonders if some of it is little more than a demonstration of knowledge, I do not get the same feeling with Moby-Dick. The fact that I am able to compare both books in the same review says much for their value as important books in the literary canon. If I was a member of the crew of the Pequod or the crew of the Nautilus and was given an ultimatum by their respective captains of re-reading one of the books or else! I know which one I would choose, but I also know which one I would prefer to read again. 5 stars of course.
    • 4/5
      This book was constantly mentioned in another book i read (_All_The_Light_we_Cannot_See_ by Anthony Doerr). So I decided to read it since it's a classic. The book seems to be set in the 1860's just after the US civil war. The book is about a mysterious entity causing damage to sailing vessels. At frist it's thought to be some kind of sea monster and a specially designed US navy ship is sent to find and kill the monster. The story is told in the first person by the narrator who is a scientist. He along with two companions are thrown overboard and are taken in by the "monster" which turns out to be a submarine run by Captain Nemo and his crew. Nemo takes them all around the globe (under water, of course). It's a fun read and i recommend it. The one thing i didn't like was a constant listing of the scientific names of sea life. Over a quarter of the book is just that which gets to be a little tedious.