On her maiden voyage the newly constructed nuclear submarine, the Plonguer suffers a series of catastrophic mechanical failures and plunges past her safe diving depth. Convinced that they are going to die, the crew make peace with their gods and each other. As time passes they realise that not only are they still alive but that they are submerged into a sea which defies the known physical laws. Placed in an extreme situation some try to gain a scientific understanding of what is happing, some turn to god, but most give in to madness...

Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (2013 - 306 pages) is a new science fiction novel, written by Adam Roberts, with illustrations by Mahendra Singh. If Nemo’s plunge into the depths was based on personal desperation the Plonguer's journey is more akin to that of Dante in The Divine Comedy.

Although based on Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), it is neither a retelling of the tale, nor does it take the original tale's characters and inject zombies or turn them into vampire hunters. It is best described as a sequel, well sort of.

On one level it tells the tale of the Plonguer, Plonguer is the French for diver, it is also the name of the French submarine which was launched in 1863 and was the inspiration for the Nautilus. The fate of the Nautilus is unknown at the end of Verne’s book; presumably it fell through the same chasm as did the Plonguer.

Within this new realm Lebret meets Prince Dakkar and here Roberts connects his own novel with that of Verne’s by taking a fictional figure and placing him in his own fiction as a living character. When Lebret finally names the creature at the centre of this new universe, he deftly makes an important statement about what is happening. This then gives credence to the fact that the events of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea were based on fact or that the experiences of the new crew represent a fiction within a fiction.

You could, of course, just enjoy the book as a straightforward tale, but I think that the ambiguous ending does not support the impression that this was the author’s intention. This is a book which is open to multiple interpretations. The first, and one which is postulated by the crew, is that when they descended past their safe depth they, in fact, died. However this would not only be an unsatisfactory answer it would be an unpopular one. At one time this was applauded as clever in such films as Jacob's Ladder (1990), itself based on a Christian interpretation of an idea in the Torah, but as Lost (2001) showed audiences are intolerant of using death as a convenient deus ex machina.

The book touches on many aspects of the philosophical metaphysical nature of reality as experienced by the crew, the most extreme being the reaction of Billiard-Fanon who, believing that his rescue is a sign from God and that he has been chosen, goes so far as to set himself up as judge, jury and executioner of anyone who disagrees with him. A point of view not unknown in the non-fictional world.

It’s an impressive work of fiction which works on multiple levels and is a fitting homage to Verne’s work.

9

Charles Packer