Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Islands In The Net

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea Verne both bores and fascinates us with endless listings of the sea life peculiarities that meet the visitors aboard Captain Nemo’s Nautilius, but the heart of story of the story is the ship itself and its enigmatic captain, a man who sees a necessity, not in new continents, but new men, “nautical towns, clusters of submarine dwellings which, like the Nautilus, would rise to the surface every morning to breathe – free towns, independent cities, if ever there were!” (A comparison with Stephenson’s marine platform clusters in Snow Crash could be at its place here. More interesting than to see this book as a revered classic – a piece on a museum – is to see it as a still vital source for ideas and fantastic impulses. That’s the way it must have been viewed by Robert Anton Wilson; Hagbard Celiné from the Illuminatus-trilogy reminds us more than a little of Captain Nemo.)

As I read about intricate coral reefs, giant jellyfish, sunken ships frozen in time at the ocean floor, the majestic icebergs of the poles, societies of walrus, immense species of whale and the menacing, perfectly built killing machines known as sharks I can’t help but once more think about the sea these days and the weird, rapid changes that must be taking place in its waters due to global warming. SF will surely have reasons to visit the seven seas more frequently in the future.

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