Chapter 0
Introduction and units of measure 20,000 leagues under the sea. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reporting by Chris Donnelly.
20,000 leagues under the sea by Jules Verne. Translated by F.P. Walter. Introduction and units of measure. The deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us, admits Professor Aronacs early
in this novel. What goes on in those distant depths? What creatures inhabit or could inhabit those regions 12 or 15 miles beneath the surface of the water? It's almost beyond conjecture.
Jules Verne, 1828 to 1905, published the French equivalents of these words in 1859, and little has changed since. 126 years later, a time cover story on deep sea exploration made much the same admission. We know more about Mars than we do about the oceans. This reality begins to explain the dark power and otherworldly fascination of 20,000 leagues
under the seas. Born in the French river town of Nantes, Verne had a lifelong passion for the sea. He worked as a Paris stockbroker, later as a celebrated author and yachtsman. He went on frequent voyages to Britain, America, the Mediterranean. But the specific stimulus for this novel was an 1865 fan letter from a fellow writer,
Madame George Sand. She praised Verne's two early novels, Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1863 and Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864. Verne added, Soon I hope you'll take us into the ocean depths, your characters traveling in diving
equipment perfected by your science and imagination. Thus inspired, Verne created one of literature's great rebels, a freedom fighter who plunged beneath waves to wage a unique form of guerrilla warfare. Initially, Verne's narrative was influenced by the 1863 uprising of Poland against Tsarist Russia.
The Poles were quashed with a violence that appalled not only Verne, but all Europe. As originally conceived, Verne's Captain Nemo was a Polish nobleman whose entire family had been slaughtered by Russian troops. Nemo builds a fabulous futuristic submarine, the Nautilus, then conducts an underwater campaign of vengeance against his imperialist oppressor.
But in the 1860s, France had to treat Tsar as an ally and Verne's publisher, Pierre Hetzel, pronounced the book unprintable. Verne reworked its political content, devising new nationalities for Nemo and his great enemy. Information revealed only the later novel, The Mysterious Island, in 1875. In the present work, Nemo's background remains a dark secret.
In all, the novel had a difficult gestation. Verne and Hetzel were in constant conflict and the book went through multiple drafts. Struggles reflected in several working titles over the period of 1865-69. Early on, it was variously called Voyage Under the Waters, Twenty-Five Thousand Leagues Under the Waters, Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Waters, and Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under
the Oceans. Verne is often dubbed in Isaac Asimov's phrase, the world's first science fiction writer. And it's true, many of his 60-odd books do anticipate future events and technologies, From the Earth to the Moon in 1865 and Hector Serbatic in 1877, Deal in Space Travel, while Journey to the Center of the Earth features travel to your score.
But with Verne, the operative word is travel, and some of his best-known titles don't really qualify as sci-fi. Around the World in Eighty Days in 1872 and Michael Strogoff in 1876 are closer to travel logs, adventure yards in faraway places. These observations partly apply here.
The subtitle of the present book is An Underwater Tour of the World, so in good travelogue style, the noddles' exploits supply an episodic storyline. Shark attacks, giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and other rip-roaring adventures erupt almost at random. Yet this loose structure gives the novel an air of documentary realism.
What's more, Verne adds backbone to the action by developing three occurring motifs. The deepening mystery of Nemo's past life and future intentions, the mounting tension between Nemo and hot-tempered carpenter Ned Land, and Ned's ongoing schemes to escape from the noddles. These unifying threads tighten the narrative and accelerate its momentum.
Other subtleties occur inside each episode. The textures sparkling with wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many angles. In the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogues that swirl past us like musical cascades.
In the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and out. In the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or make the Suez Canal. And Verne's marine engineering proves especially authoritative. His specifications for an open-sea submarine and a self-contained diving suit are decades
before their time, yet modern technology bears them out triumphantly. True, today's scientists know a few things he didn't. The South Pole isn't at the water's edge but far inland. Sharks don't flip over before attacking. Giant squid sport ten tentacles, not eight.
Sperm whales don't prey on their whale-bone cousins. This notwithstanding, Verne furnishes the most provocative portrayal of the ocean depths before the arrival of the Chauquistot Technicolor film. Lastly, the book has stature as a novel of character. Even the supporting cast is shrewdly drawn.
Professor Aronix, the career scientist caught in an ethical battle. Kansai, the compulsive classifier who supplies humorous taglines for Verne's fast facts. The harpooner Ned Land, a creature of constant appetites, man as heroic animal. But much of the novel's brooding power comes from Captain Zou. Inventor, musician, renaissance genius.
He's a trailblazing creation, a prototype not only for countless renegade scientists and popular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmes or Wolf Lars. However, Verne gives his heroes brilliance and benevolence a dark underside. The man's obsessive hate for his old enemy. This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions.
He's a fighter for freedom. Yet all who board his ship are imprisoned there for good. He works to save lives, both human and animal. Yet he himself creates a holocaust. He detests imperialism.
Yet he lays personal claim to the South Pole. And in this last action he falls into the classic sin of pride. He's swiftly punished. The novelist nearly perishes in the Antarctic and Nemo sinks into a growing depression. Like Shakespeare's King Lear, he courts death and madness in a great storm, then commits
mass murder, collapses in catatonic paralysis, and suicidally runs his ship into the ocean's most dangerous whirlpool. Hate swallows him whole. For many, then, this book has been a source of fascination, surely one of the most influential novels ever written, an inspiration for such scientists and discoverers as engineer Simon
Lake, oceanographer William Beebe, polar traveler Sir Ernest Shackleton. Likewise, Dr. Robert D. Ballard, finder of the Sunken Titanic, confesses that this was his favorite book as a teenager, and Cousteau himself, most renowned of marine explorers, called it his shipboard bible. The present translation is a faithful yet communicative rendering of the original French
text published in Paris by J. Edsel A.C. The hardcover first edition issued in the autumn of 1871, whole and softcover editions of the first and second parts, issued separately in the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870. Although prior English versions have often been heavily abridged, this new translation is complete to the smallest substantive detail.
Because, as that time cover story suggests, we still haven't caught up with Verne, even in our era of satellite dishes and video games, the sea keep their secrets. We've seen progress in sonar, torpedoes, and other belligerent machinery, but sailors and scientists say nothing of tourists have yet to voyage in a sudden mean the luxury and efficiency of the novelists.
F.P. Walter, University of Houston. Units of Measure. Cable Length. In Verne's context, 600 feet. Centigrade.
0 degrees centigrade equals freezing water. 37 degrees centigrade equals human body temperature. 100 degrees centigrade equals boiling water. A thallum is 6 feet. A gram is roughly 1 28th of an ounce.
A milligram is roughly 1 28 thousandth of an ounce. A kilogram is roughly 2.2 pounds. A hectare is roughly 2.5 acres. A knot is 1.15 miles per hour. A league is, in Verne's context, 2.16 miles.
A liter is roughly 1 quart. A meter is roughly 1 yard 3 inches. A millimeter is roughly 1 25th of an inch. A centimeter is roughly 2 fifths of an inch. A decimeter is roughly 4 inches.
A kilometer is roughly 6 tenths of a mile. A myriameter is roughly 6.2 miles. A metric ton is roughly 2,200 pounds. End of introduction and units of measure. Reporting by Chris Donnelly, Devon, Alberta, Canada.
