Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

By: Jules Verne

Narrated by: Peter Husmann

Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

Jules Verne’s classic underwater tale.

A mysterious sea monster, theorized by some to be a giant narwhal, is sighted by ships of several nations; an ocean liner is also damaged by the creature. The United States government finally assembles an expedition to track down and destroy the menace. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a noted French marine biologist and narrator of the story, master harpoonist Ned Land, and Aronnax's faithful assistant Conseil join the expedition.

After much fruitless searching, the monster is found, and the ship charges into battle. During the fight, the ship's steering is damaged, and the three men are thrown overboard. They find themselves stranded on the "hide" of the creature, only to discover to their surprise that it is a large metal construct. They are quickly captured and brought inside the vessel, where they meet its enigmatic creator and commander, Captain Nemo.

Public Domain (P)2012 Trout Lake Media

The genius of Jules Verne that continues to inspir

Any additional comments?

The plot of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas is essentially simple: Three men set out to capture and explain the unexplainable. Instead they are captured and encounter a brilliant madman who travels the seas seeking revenge and beauty. The men cannot continue in such a manner, so they risk their lives to free themselves.
A good portion of this novel is mere entertainment. Verne spends paragraphs explaining geography and marine life. These descriptions do little to advance the plot except when characterization is revealed through their observation. The amazing thing of this and indeed all of his novels is Verne's ability to fortell inventions that had yet to be made. Electricity for power, the scuba tank, and the submarine were not to make their appearance for many years after the novel was published in 1870.
The pioneering submarine designer Simon Lake credited his inspiration to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,and his autobiography begins "Jules Verne was in a sense the director-general of my life." William Beebe, Sir Ernest Shackleton, and Robert Ballard found similar early inspiration in the novel, and Jacques Cousteau called it his "shipboard bible".
The aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont named Verne as his favorite author and the inspiration for his own elaborate flying machines. Igor Sikorsky often quoted Verne and cited his Robur the Conqueror as the inspiration for his invention of the first successful helicopter.
The rocketry innovators Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth are all known to have taken their inspiration from Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders, the astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission, were similarly inspired, with Borman commenting "In a very real sense, Jules Verne is one of the pioneers of the space age".
Polar explorer Richard E. Byrd, after a flight to the South Pole, paid tribute to Verne's polar novels The Adventures of Captain Hatteras and An Antarctic Mystery by saying "It was Jules Verne who launched me on this trip."
The preeminent speleologist Édouard-Alfred Martel noted in several of his scientific reports that his interest in caves was sparked by Verne's Mathias Sandorf. Another influential speleologist, Norbert Casteret, traced his love of "caverns, abysses and underground rivers" to his avid youthful reading of Journey to the Center of the Earth, calling it "a marvelous book, which impressed and fascinated me more than any other", and adding "I sometimes re-read it still, each time finding anew the joys and enthusiasm of my childhood".
The French general Hubert Lyautey took much inspiration from the explorations in Verne's novels. When one of his more ambitious foreign projects was met with the reply "All this, sir, it's like doing a Jules Verne", Lyautey famously responded: "Yes, sir, it's like doing a Jules Verne, because for twenty years, the people who move forward have been doing a Jules Verne."
Other scientific figures known to have been influenced by Verne include Fridtjof Nansen, Wernher von Braun, Guglielmo Marconi, and Yuri Gagarin.
The real genius of this work, besides its incessant entertainment, lies in its ability to present technological advancement as the potential demise of man. This is an unnerving subject for the 19th century world which was riding high on the effects of the spreading Industrial Revolution.

Good, but dry.

The narrator was very good, a bit monotone. I think this is mostly the dry aspect of the book.

Very Good

I definitely enjoyed this book, but something about listening to it made it feel incomplete

good story but...

When I was younger I thought this was a story of going down 20,000 leagues into the depths of the oceans. Shows how silly a youthful mind can be.

I enjoyed this story even though the sub never went very deep. But I was blown away with the number of animals that were described in the story. I think that about 1/5 off the story was spent on naming, classifying and describing the various aquatic creatures that reside in the various waters around the world.

I was ok with this info dump but I felt that, if this were a more recent work, readers would complain about the number of pages spent in this description.

The story reads like a travel log with a noticeable lack of conflict found in modern works.

I do recommend reading it but don't expect a swashbuckling adventure like I did. I blame my expectations on my childhood mind and memories of the movies.

i love this story! I listen to it over and over

i listen to this to help me fall asleep. The narration is done so well and brings you beneath the waves to tranquility

amazing

I loved it and hope to listen to more amazing stories like it in the near future.

great classic!

this is a great story, and the narration was excellent. certainly worth the price and time.

I love Jules Verne

First off, I love Jules Verne and his work. This book, especially, is amazing in that it so accurately predicted events to happen in the future. Almost nothing in it was inaccurate. Incredible!
I loved the narrator and he did a wonderful job of bringing the characters to life.

loved it!

It truly was a great book, and I enjoyed how Peter read each charter. This made the book come to life for me.

Excellent narration, great adventure

Narrator did a fantastic job of engrossing me in the story. Another great adventure from Jules Verne.