I
imagine it’s something of a minor surprise to readers of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea to
finish the book without ever having dipped a mile or two beneath the surface. At least it was to me. (It’s worth noting, however, the adventures of
Captain Nemo and Aronmax onboard the mighty Nautilus
are more than enough to make the reader lose sight of the fact ‘across’ is the more suitable adjective.)
Apparently more inspired than surprised, in 2014 Adam Roberts dipped into the lexical
impasse by penning a waterverse adventure in honor of Verne that holds true to its
verbiage. Oh, and he added a few zeroes
to the depth meter—Twenty Trillion
Leagues under the Sea (2014 Gollancz UK, 2015 St. Martin’s Press US) where the
needle ultimately rests.
But in
what spirit these leagues are traversed is what gives Twenty Trillion Leagues under the Sea its character. Largely eschewing the hard sf mode of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
and utilizing the underworld adventure mode of Journey to the Center of the Earth, the combination results in an
underwater fantasy that pays homage to both Verne novels while telling its own
vintage-esque tale of imaginative fancy.
Thus, hard sf purists will undoubtedly call out Roberts for his less
than rigorous application of scientific knowledge when Verne went so far to
make his Leagues as realistic as
possible. But they would be missing the
point. Twenty Trillion Leagues is as much homage to the original novel as
it is Verne’s oeuvre and the era’s overall storytelling.
