Showing posts with label Jules Verne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jules Verne. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (Scholastic, 1971)


The desperate men cling to the giant hulk in the water.  Suddenly its iron body begins to move - to sink!  They'll all be drowned!  But a panel slides open and the terrified men are drawn inside - inside Captain Nemo's incredible underwater ship.

Have you seen the exciting film based on this book?  (Walt Disney Productions)
Another version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea--this time abridged for young readers, and with the adventure aspects of the story played up.

(The "exciting film"  mentioned on the back cover of this book is the same film James Mason starred in in 1954.  It leads me to wonder how the children of 1971 were expected to watch it, long after the film's initial release but years before the advent of home videos.  Did Disney re-release at some stage?  Was it shown regularly on television?  I guess I'll never know for sure.)

Monday, July 4, 2016

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (Fontana, 1955)


A remarkable thing about 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA is that it forecast the submarine some thirty years before this class of warship was invented.  It is strange, too, that when Jules Verne wrote this book the world should be on the threshold of a new era of steam and electricity.  For now, as we enter the atomic age we find ourselves preoccupied with the same fascinating and frightening dilemma--the onslaught of science on Nature.

This exciting story, narrated with all the gripping realism of modern science fiction, opens with an eminent French scientist, his servant and a famous harpooner embarking on a U.S. warship in search of the unknown monster at large in the oceans.  In the disaster of their first encounter with it, the three men are washed overboard and are taken prisoners in what is revealed to them as a monster submarine, propelled by electricity generated from the sea itself.  They also meet the proud and mysterious Captain Nemo, whose grievance against mankind has caused him to seek solitude in the depths--a forceful character brilliantly portrayed by James Mason in the current film success.
Wow!   I have memories of reading this one many years ago as a child.  This edition is prefaced by a Very Serious Introduction to the work, touting its literary credentials, but I remember the book as an adventure story.  I wanted a submarine of my own after reading it!

(Interestingly, the back cover of this paperback mentions James Mason in the 1954 film adaption of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but there is no other hint that this might be a movie tie-in!)