“The deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us,”
admits Professor Aronnax early in this novel. “What goes on in those
distant depths? What creatures inhabit, or could inhabit, those
regions twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water? It’s
almost beyond conjecture.”
Jules Verne (1828-1905) published the French equivalents of
these words in 1869, 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 know about the
oceans.” This reality begins to explain the dark power and
otherworldly fascination of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Seas. Born in the French river town of Nantes, Verne had a lifelong
passion for the sea. First 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.
