Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea: An Illustrated Science Fiction Novel

by Adam Roberts, Mahendra Singh (Illustrator)

Overview

Adam Roberts's Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea revisits Jules Verne's classic novel in a collaboration with the illustrator behind a recent highly acclaimed edition of The Hunting of the Snark
It is 1958 and France's first nuclear submarine, Plongeur, leaves port for the first of its sea trials. On board, gathered together for the first time, are one of the Navy's most experienced captains and a tiny skeleton crew of sailors, engineers, and scientists. The Plongeur makes her first dive and goes down, and down and down. Out of control, the submarine plummets to a depth where the pressure will crush her hull, killing everyone on board, and beyond. The pressure builds, the hull protests, the crew prepare for death, the boat reaches the bottom of the sea and finds nothing. Her final dive continues, the pressure begins to relent, but the depth gauge is useless. They have gone miles down. Hundreds of miles, thousands, and so it goes on. Onboard the crew succumb to madness, betrayal, religious mania, and murder. Has the Plongeur left the limits of our world and gone elsewhere?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466861695
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/13/2015
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

ADAM ROBERTS is a writer of sci-fi novels and stories, as well as Professor of Nineteenth-century Literature in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. Salt, Gradisil and Yellow Blue Tibia were nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. By Light Alone has been shortlisted for the 2012 BSFA Award.

MAHENDRA SINGH is a freelance illustrator whose Melville House illustrated edition of The Hunting of the Snark was praised by Library Journal, the New Yorker, Salon.com, and Shelf Awareness.

ADAM ROBERTS is a writer of sci-fi novels and stories, as well as Professor of Nineteenth-century Literature in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. Salt, Gradisil and Yellow Blue Tibia were nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. By Light Alone has been shortlisted for the 2012 BSFA Award.
MAHENDRA SINGH is a freelance illustrator whose Melville House illustrated edition of The Hunting of the Snark was praised by Library Journal, The New Yorker, Salon.com, and Shelf Awareness.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Adam Roberts: 

"Our most intellectually engaged and literary SF author, crafting sentences the equal of any by Ian McEwan or Kazuo Ishiguro." - The Financial Times

"[Roberts is] an accomplished sculptor of prose and a cunning satirist, all that SF should be, packed with brilliant ideas and clever examinations of the human condition."  - Deathray

"Psychological depth in a picaresque protagonist: most unusual and very welcome...in line with Proustian concerns of memory, Cavala remembers not only himself but much of the central matter of the '50s satirical SF of Sheckley, Bester, Pohl and Kornbluth...very pleasing." - Nick Gevers, Locus

From the Publisher

01/01/2015
In 1958, France's new nuclear submarine Plongeur is on a test voyage when it inexplicably plunges into depths far beyond anything previously deemed possible. Onboard the crew share shameful secrets and expose weaknesses when it looks like death is near, but the Plongeur just keeps diving. They pass through waters filled with strange creatures and face dangers without and within the sub as they head for a rendezvous with the unknown. VERDICT Both old-fashioned in its homage to Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and modern in its sf aspirations, the latest work from Roberts (Jack Glass) is a strange reading experience. He is a talented crafter of words, so in no way is the book ever not a pleasure to read; however, there are real issues with pacing and cohesion in this uneven and unusual undersea tale. This odd little novel, which includes Singh's (The Hunting of the Snark) 20 black-and-white illustrations, will probably best appeal to fans of Tim Powers or Christopher Priest. [Library marketing.]

Library Journal