***** - Excellent
**** - Good
*** - Okay
** - Bad
* - Terrible
+ - Half-star
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne
Sterling
Fiction, Sci-Fi
****
DESCRIPTION: In the late nineteenth century, a strange sea monster prowls the oceans of the world. Those who see it claim it is immense and glows with a blinding
light, while sending sprays of water hundreds of feet into the air. Suddenly, the monster becomes more than a curiosity - it becomes a danger, sinking ships in raging,
unprovoked attacks.
Professor Pierre Arronax and his faithful companion, Conseil, are visiting America from the Museum of Paris, and end up on a warship bound to hunt and destroy the beast. With
them travels the famed harpoonist Ned Land, who is reluctant to admit such a bizarre beast exists, that can ram through a steel-hulled ship like tissue paper. After months of
fruitless searching, the ship finds the impossible beast. The monster attacks, and the three are thrown overboard into the ocean - only to find themselves rescued and captured
by the "monster" itself! It is actually an underwater vessel, led by the mysterious Captain Nemo. Now that they know of him and his ship, Nemo refuses to let them leave, to
tell the rest of the world of him and his plans. He takes Pierre, Ned, and Conseil on an unforgettable journey around the world in his magnificent submarine, the Nautilus.
REVIEW: I originally read a hacked-up version that was published as part of the cheap Great Illustrated Classics series. I then read the real version. No contest on
which was the better story... Though Verne's writing is from a different age, it can still be appreciated today for its foresight and descriptiveness. I admit that parts grew
tedious, not just from the archaic English but from Verne's insistance on throwing out so many scientific terms that lay readers (like myself) weren't familiar with offhand. But,
then, half the point of sci-fi - or any good literature - is to ask the reader to step up up to the tale now and again, rather than consistently watering it down. On the whole,
it's a decent tale, still well deserving its reputation as a classic.
You might also enjoy:
The Alexander Cold trilogy (Isabel Allende, YA Fiction - An American teen finds lost wonders and hidden dangers in the remote corners of the world)
A Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fiction - A Civil War veteran finds himself transported to the dying, hostile planet Mars)
The Lost World (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Fiction - A professor leads an expedition to a remote South American plateau, where prehistoric animals still roam)
The Sword and the Cross (Fergus Fleming, Nonfiction - Two extraordinary men explore the fierce, unknown Sahara Desert)
The Dinotopia books (James Gurney, YA? Fiction - The illustrated adventures of a professor and his son in a lost word of sapient dinosaurs)
With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A.D. (Rudyard Kipling, Fiction - A journey aboard a postal dirigible in a blimp-dominated future)
Ringworld (Larry Niven, Fiction - Two humans and two aliens explore a vast habitable ring built around a distant star)
The Airborn books (Kenneth Oppel, YA Fiction - In an alternate-history earth where "hydrium" airships rule the skies, a brave boy and a headstrong girl have wild adventures)
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson, Fiction - The epic tale of humanity's colonization of the red planet)
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (James Rollins, YA Fiction - Two modern kids find themselves in a lost world of living dinosaurs, extinct cultures, and a terrible enemy)
Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson, YA Fiction - An English boy finds himself caught up in the hunt for a dead pirate's treasure)
The Invisible Man (H. G. Wells, Fiction - A scientist discovers the key to invisibility, losing his mind and humanity in the process)
The Leviathan trilogy (Scott Westerfield, YA Fiction - World War 1 in an alternate-history Earth pits German "Clanker" machinery against Allied "Darwinist" fabricated animals)
Mysterious Places (Jennifer Westwood, editor, Nonfiction - Strange and unexplained relics from earlier ages)
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A Journey to the Center of the Earth
Jules Verne
Sterling
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+
DESCRIPTION: Henry recounts a story from his days as a young man with Professor Hardwigg, a German geologist who stumbles upon the secret to a
passage to the center of the Earth. Tracing the route mapped out by an earlier explorer, Henry, the professor, and an Icelandic guide named Hans enter the crater of an
extinct volcano... and descend into a lost world beneath the planet's crust.
REVIEW: Verne's stories are considered classics, often categorized as science fiction because, at the time, they predicted many things that had not yet been invented.
This particular story only counts as sci-fi because of the lost world aspects. It was written for a much earlier era, where much different things were expected of stories.
Verne takes the reader on a rather simplistic trip through the wonders beneath the world and a series of somewhat thrilling adventures and encounters before returning
the characters to the surface. Some of the explorers' adventures are almost comical in their improbability, especially in light of modern research on preshistoric lifeforms,
but on the whole it provides some nice imagery.
You might also enjoy:
The Alexander Cold trilogy (Isabel Allende, YA Fiction - An American teen finds lost wonders and hidden dangers in the remote corners of the world)
A Princess of Mars (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fiction - A Civil War veteran finds himself transported to the dying, hostile planet Mars)
The Lost World (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Fiction - A professor leads an expedition to a remote South American plateau, where prehistoric animals still roam)
The Sword and the Cross (Fergus Fleming, Nonfiction - Two extraordinary men explore the fierce, unknown Sahara Desert)
The Dinotopia books (James Gurney, YA? Fiction - The illustrated adventures of a professor and his son in a lost word of sapient dinosaurs)
Dinosaurs (Carl Mehling, editor, Nonfiction - A good entry-level guide to prehistoric life forms, from trilobites to woolly mammoths)
Ringworld (Larry Niven, Fiction - Two humans and two aliens explore a vast habitable ring built around a distant star)
The Airborn books (Kenneth Oppel, YA Fiction - In an alternate-history earth where "hydrium" airships rule the skies, a brave boy and a headstrong girl have wild adventures)
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson, Fiction - The epic tale of humanity's colonization of the red planet)
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (James Rollins, YA Fiction - Two modern kids find themselves in a lost world of living dinosaurs, extinct cultures, and a terrible enemy)
The Power of Gemstones (Raymond J. Walters, Nonfiction - The properties, real and legendary, of gems and other stones)
The Leviathan trilogy (Scott Westerfield, YA Fiction - World War 1 in an alternate-history Earth pits German "Clanker" machinery against Allied "Darwinist" fabricated animals)
Mysterious Places (Jennifer Westwood, editor, Nonfiction - Strange and unexplained relics from earlier ages)
Leepike Ridge (N. D. Wilson, YA Fiction - A river's current washes a boy into a hidden cave linked to an ancient secret and ruthless modern treasure hunters)
Journey to the Center of the Earth
(1959 movie DVD - far truer to the spirit of Verne's original than the more recent FX-ridden remake)
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