Herbert George Wells supported himself with teaching, textbook writing, and journalism until 1895, when he made his literary debut with the now-classic novel The Time Machine. He followed this before the end of the century with The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds—books that established him as the first original voice since Verne in the genre of scientific fiction. However, while Verne dealt with realistic scientific phenomena—for example, the submarine Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea predates the modern submarine—Wells was interested in, as Jorge Luis Borges put it, “mere possibilities, if not impossible things.” Time travel, interplanetary warfare, invisibility—these are the stuff of Wells’s conceptual fiction.
Wells disliked being compared to his literary ancestor. In a letter to J. L. Garvin, editor of Outlook, Wells refused to attack Verne publicly, though in a letter he openly denied having been influenced by him: “A good deal of injustice has been done the old man [Verne] in comparison with me. I don’t like the idea of muscling into the circle of attention about him with officious comments or opinions eulogy. I’ve let the time when I might have punished him decently go by.” Wells was a prolific and diverse writer, tackling social philosophy and criticism, history, utopian and comic novels, literary parodies, and even feminism; but he is best remembered for his auspicious beginnings as a science fiction writer.
Film
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was adapted into film as early as 1905, with an eighteen-minute silent. A feature-length silent adaptation, directed by Stuart Paton and released in 1916, includes plot elements from Verne’s later novel The Mysterious Island, which delves into Captain Nemo’s past as the Indian Prince Dakkar. Paton’s film features elaborate underwater photography that is impressive for its time.
A wave of Jules Verne film adaptations appeared in the 1950s, including Around the World in 80 Days (1956), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), directed by Richard Fleischer, showcases many of the day’s biggest stars: Kirk Douglas as Ned Land, James Mason in the role of Captain Nemo, and Paul Lukas as Pierre Aronnax. Despite its camp flavor, this version stands as the definitive adaptation of the novel, the standard to which all others are compared. After more than half a century, the squid attack scene, accomplished solely though the use of puppets, remains intense and compelling. The film won Academy Awards for special effects and art direction. Though key plot elements differ, it remains true to the spirit of the book and faithfully conveys Verne’s ideals of science, brotherhood, and vengeance.
A Hanna-Barbera animated version of the novel appeared in 1973, and two live-action television versions were broadcast in 1997. Rod Hardy’s version runs four hours and stars Michael Caine as Captain Nemo, Patrick Dempsey as Pierre Aronnax, Bryan Brown as Ned Land, and Mia Sara as Nemo’s reclusive daughter Mara. Michael Anderson’s television version, which stars Richard Crenna as Pierre Aronnax, Ben Cross as Captain Nemo, and Paul Gross as Ned Land, adds new elements: Rather than utilizing the traditional male assistant, in this film Professor Aronnax smuggles on board his young daughter disguised as a man. Captain Nemo and the Nautilus enter later, allowing time for the film to develop before the show-stopping seacraft and its captain appear.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Artist and comics author Alan Moore, a fan of nineteenth-century adventure yarns, assembled an all-star cast of Victorian-era protagonists in his two-volume graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2000, 2003). Moore teamed Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea hero Captain Nemo with Allan Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines; Hawley Griffin, a.k.a. H. G. Wells’s Invisible Man; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and his alternate persona Mr. Hyde; and Mina Murray (née Harker) from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (The 2003 film adaptation takes many liberties with the original comic, adding Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer to the cast.) Allan Quatermain leads this motley band of heroes as they try to stop a notorious villain from firebombing London’s East End. Captain Nemo provides the team with his unprecedented mode of transport, the Nautilus, which he pilots through the channels of Venice, among other exotic environs. In the end, the villain turns out to be none other than Professor Moriarty—Sherlock Holmes’s arch nemesis. In the second volume of Moore’s comic book, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars expert John Carter (from John Carter of Mars) helps the band of heroes as the interplanetary conflict of Wells’s The War of the Worlds unfolds.
Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
R. H. SHERARD
“The great regret of my life is that I have never taken any place in French literature.”
As the old man said this his head drooped, and a ring of sadness sounded in the cheerful and hearty voice.
“Je ne compte pas dans la litterature Française,” he repeated. Who was it who spoke thus, with drooping head, and with a ring of sadness in his cheerful voice? Some writer of cheap but popular feuilletons for the halfpenny press, some man of letters who has never made a scruple of stating that he looks upon his pen as a money-getting implement, and who has always preferred to glory and honor a large account at the cash office of the Society of French Men of Letters? No; strange, monstrous, as it will appear, it was none other than Jules Verne. Yes, Jules Verne, the Jules Verne, your Jules Verne and mine, who has delighted us all the world over for so many years, and who will delight the world for generations and generations to come.
It was in the cool withdrawing-room of the Société Industrielle at Amiens that the master said these words, and I shall never forget the tone of sadness in which he said them. It was like the confession of a wasted life, the sigh of an old man over what can never be recalled. It was to me a poignant sorrow to hear him speak thus, and all that I could do was to say, with no unfeigned enthusiasm, that he was to me and millions like me, a great master, the subject of our unqualified admiration and respect, the novelist who delights many of us more than all the novelists that have ever taken pen in hand. But he only shook his gray head and said: “I do not count in French literature.”