I am Captain Nemo

 

So I decided to have some fun and asked ChatGPT some questions about Jules Verne´s fiction character Captain Nemo...

Is Captain Nemo´s "race" or ethnicity (Indian) revealed in "Twenty Thousand Leauges Under the Seas"? If not, is this a potential continuity error with "The Mysterious Island"?

Captain Nemo's ethnicity is not explicitly revealed in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870). Jules Verne intentionally kept his background vague, describing Nemo as a mysterious figure with deep antipathy toward imperialism, especially British imperialism, but without naming his origin.

However, in The Mysterious Island (1875), Verne explicitly identifies Captain Nemo as an Indian prince, Prince Dakkar, the son of a raja from Bundelkhand, who rebelled against British colonial rule during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. This backstory gives a clear political and ethnic identity to Nemo, aligning his hatred of imperialism with his personal history.

Continuity Consideration

Yes, this can be seen as a continuity retcon rather than a strict continuity error. When Verne wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues, he deliberately concealed Nemo's origins—partly due to political pressures (France's relationship with Britain at the time), which may have influenced his decision to make Nemo's animosity ambiguous. Only later, in The Mysterious Island, did Verne fully flesh out Nemo’s identity, likely taking advantage of a more favorable political climate to express his anti-imperialist message more directly.

Would you like a breakdown of textual clues from Twenty Thousand Leagues that hinted at Nemo’s identity before it was confirmed?

Yes, please.

Here are some of the key textual clues and thematic hints in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas that suggest Captain Nemo may be of Indian origin—even though Verne does not confirm it until The Mysterious Island:

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1. Nemo's Hatred of Imperialism (Especially British)

Throughout the novel, Nemo expresses a deep hatred for imperial powers, particularly the British Empire, which seems oddly personal for a supposedly detached scientific recluse.

• He attacks and sinks a warship identified only as belonging to a colonial power.

• His condemnation of oppression is emotional and passionate, not abstract or philosophical.

🡒 Interpretation: This intensity suggests a personal history with colonial violence—later explained in The Mysterious Island by his experience during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

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2. Use of Indian Art and Cultural Elements

Some passages describe decorations aboard the Nautilus that are Eastern or Asian in style.

• The library and salon feature artifacts and artworks from various non-European cultures.

• Verne never names India, but there's a noticeable inclusion of exotic (from a European perspective) or Orientalist elements.

🡒 Interpretation: These details hint at Nemo’s admiration for or belonging to a non-Western culture.

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3. His Use of Sanskrit and Other Non-European Languages

While not emphasized in detail, the crew of the Nautilus uses a unique language, neither clearly European nor easily identified.

• Some scholars argue this is a nod to Sanskrit or a constructed language influenced by Indian linguistic roots.

🡒 Interpretation: This foreshadows Nemo’s Indian identity by aligning him with ancient, sophisticated non-Western civilizations.

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4. His Name: “Nemo”

"Nemo" means "no one" in Latin, underscoring his desire to remain anonymous and unbound by national identity.

• However, this anonymity can also be seen as a disguise—he conceals his real identity (Prince Dakkar) due to political trauma and the fear of reprisal or judgment.

🡒 Interpretation: His refusal to be known is rooted in a backstory Verne hadn’t yet revealed, but which would make perfect sense in hindsight.

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5. Sympathy for Oppressed Peoples

Captain Nemo often expresses sympathy and solidarity with the oppressed.

• For example, he aids a pearl diver in India, saving the man from a shark and giving him a valuable pearl.

• His broader mission involves distancing himself from a world of injustice and war.

🡒 Interpretation: These gestures suggest personal identification with colonized people—consistent with his later identity as a former Indian prince who fought the British.

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Summary

All these details were subtle seeds that Verne would later clarify by making Nemo an Indian anti-colonial rebel in The Mysterious Island. What initially seemed like thematic ambiguity becomes a retrospective continuity—not a contradiction, but a reveal that recontextualizes earlier clues.

Would you like me to find or provide translated excerpts from those scenes as supporting evidence?

Is Nemo´s skin color or physical features ever described in the novels? Couldn´t this be a continuity error, since it would be difficult in real life to hide an Indian ancestry?

Excellent question—and you're right to raise this as a potential continuity issue.

Does Verne describe Captain Nemo’s physical appearance?

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Captain Nemo is described, but Verne’s portrayal is brief, ambiguous, and somewhat racialized by 19th-century European standards. Here's a key description from the book:

“He was a man of about forty, a tall and strong figure, with a proud head, a high forehead, straight nose, a well-marked mouth, fine teeth, thick black hair, and a long beard. His eyes were dark, and had a melancholy expression, full of intensity.”

Notably:

• He is described as dark-eyed with thick black hair and a long beard.

• His skin color is not explicitly stated, but the general tone of his features is often interpreted as “exotic” or “Eastern” in European literature of the time.

• There are no strong clues that would clearly identify him as European or non-European by skin color alone.

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Does this create a continuity error with The Mysterious Island?

Possibly, but not necessarily, depending on interpretation.

Reasons it might be a continuity issue:

• In 19th-century Europe, a man of clearly South Asian (Indian) appearance would likely stand out, especially to European characters like Professor Aronnax.

• Aronnax does not note Nemo’s ethnicity as unusual, which could suggest he assumed he was European.

Reasons it might not be:

• Aronnax describes Nemo's features with a certain romantic vagueness, focusing more on his demeanor and character than on racial specifics.

• Verne might have intentionally avoided racial descriptors to preserve Nemo’s mystery—he wanted the character to be a universal rebel against tyranny, not defined by race alone.

• In The Mysterious Island, Prince Dakkar is said to have received a European education and spent time abroad—possibly aiding his ability to pass in cosmopolitan or concealed environments.

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So, is it a retcon or a plothole?

It’s best viewed as a retcon (retroactive continuity) rather than a hard continuity error:

• Verne concealed Nemo’s origins in the first book for political reasons (his publisher pressured him not to make Nemo openly anti-British).

• When political conditions changed, Verne gave Nemo a defined backstory that aligns with his anti-imperialist views.

So yes, while a realistic portrayal might make it difficult to completely hide Indian ancestry from European characters, Verne sidestepped this by writing Nemo as racially ambiguous until he was ready to reveal the truth.

Would you like a comparison between how other 19th-century authors handled non-European characters?

Were the novels illustrated? How was Nemo depicted in the illustrations?

Yes, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and The Mysterious Island were both illustrated in their original French editions, and Captain Nemo was depicted in those illustrations—most notably in the 1871 edition of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel, with illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou.

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How was Captain Nemo depicted in the original illustrations?

In the original 19th-century illustrations, Captain Nemo is typically portrayed as a European-looking man:

• Light-skinned, with European facial features.

• Wearing naval-style or military attire, sometimes elaborate and exotic, but not overtly Indian.

• He has a long beard and flowing dark hair, consistent with Verne’s written description.

• His general appearance is that of a stern, intellectual, and commanding figure, often shown in dramatic poses aboard the Nautilus.

Here’s an example from the Hetzel edition (1871), showing Nemo:

• In full beard and elegant dress, resembling a European noble or naval officer.

• No turban, Indian attire, or visual markers of South Asian ethnicity.

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Is this a continuity issue with The Mysterious Island?

Yes—visually, it is. The original illustrations reflect how Nemo was initially imagined: as racially and culturally ambiguous, but visually European, in line with what Verne had written at the time. Once Nemo was later revealed to be Prince Dakkar of India in The Mysterious Island (1875), this created a visual inconsistency:

• The textual retcon of Nemo's Indian identity was not matched by a redesign in visual portrayals.

• Even later illustrations often ignored or downplayed his Indian heritage, especially in European editions.

This reflects both:

1. The political caution under which Verne initially wrote Twenty Thousand Leagues (especially regarding British sensitivities), and

2. The Eurocentric visual conventions of 19th-century French publishing, which often depicted foreign or “exotic” characters through a Western lens.

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In summary:

• Yes, the novels were illustrated.

• Nemo was shown as white or European-looking, with no overt visual signs of being Indian.

• This creates a continuity inconsistency with his backstory as Prince Dakkar in The Mysterious Island.

• The dissonance reflects both literary retconning and the colonial-era visual norms of the time.

Would you like me to show you some of those original illustrations? 

The Eternal Adam

“The Eternal Adam” is a French science fiction story, originally published in 1910. It´s attributed to Jules Verne, but many now believe that the real author was Verne´s son Michel, who greatly expanded on a draft left behind by his father (who died in 1905). The story is still very short, but has an intriguing message.

Set on planet Earth but in an indefinite future, the main character Zartog Sofr-Ai-San is an archeologist living in a society resembling that of Verne´s own time (i.e. the late 19^th century). After millennia of barbarism and war, humans have finally created a single world empire (but that too took a savage war to accomplish) and for the first time, something like universal peace, prosperity and constant scientific progress seems possible. Most people still believe in old superstitions, such as the idea that all of humanity is descended from a single primordial pair named Hedom and Hiva, created out of nothing by God. Sofr and the other “zartogs” (scientists or philosophers) know better, having arrived at something resembling Darwin´s theory of evolution. However, Sofr – who is a surprisingly honest scientist – admits that the theory (mostly developed by himself) has one major flaw. Humans don´t seem to fit into it. Archeological digs suggest that humans were just as advanced millennia before the establishment of the Empire of the Four Seas (Sofr´s own time). Even worse, humans seem to have *regressed* from an ancestral form with an even bigger brain than that of the zartogs, after which progress began anew. Animals and plants fit the evolutionary picture admirably, but not the human species.

One day, Sofr-Ai-San makes a sensational discovery literally in his own backyard. An aluminum casket thousands of years old surfaces, and after years of labor, the zartog finally manages to translate the mysterious documents inside it. It turns out to be a diary written in French during the 21^st century (although the technology seems to suggest 19^th century). It tells a dramatic story of a great human civilization (ours) which vanishes within hours after a world-wide cataclysmic earthquake during which all land is submerged by the sea. The few survivors manage to reach a new land arising out of the sea – the same land at which the Empire of the Four Seas would eventually be established – but within just one generation, most of their scientific and philosophical knowledge is lost, the people reverting to a primitive lifestyle. They walk around nude, sleep on the ground, think mostly of food collection, etc. The French castaway tries to salvage the scientific knowledge of his lost civilization, but these manuscripts are long gone when Sofr find the aluminum container near his residence. In passing, the survivor also mentions that another great civilization, known as Atlantis, once disappeared under the ocean…

The story ends with Sofr realizing the meaning of “Hedom” and “Hiva” (it´s Adam and Eve, of course), while also reaching the disturbing conclusion that “Adam” is eternal, every round of human civilization being a product of a few survivors from a previous one which was destroyed. Sofr is profoundly unsettled by the implications: there is no evolution or progress, but instead an eternal return (a concept presumably borrowed from Nietzsche).

I have no idea whether Verne (the father) believed in this or not, but I´m almost sure few other people did at the time (1910). I used to be a strong believer in Eternal Progress myself, so stories like this would have filled me with existential dread only 20 years ago or so. Which may even be the point – perhaps “The Eternal Adam” is intended as horror? Today, I have to say that the story doesn´t feel like science fiction at all. It´s the true human story, accidentally or otherwise stumbled upon by Jules and Michel Verne.

We are all Eternal Adams. And, dare I add, Eves.

Lincoln Island

MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

“The Mysterious Island” is one of Jules Verne's better known novels, and forms a kind of trilogy together with “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “In Search of the Castaways”. I consider “The Mysterious Island” to be the most boring of the three.

Verne had a tendency to fill his novels with a lot of essay-like digressions on scientific and technical subjects, when not stopped from doing so by his editor, and this makes “The Mysterious Island” a hard read, as we learn in painstaking detail how the castaways on an unknown island somewhere in the Pacific manage to build a thriving little community. In a sense, they are cheating, since a mysterious benefactor (who later turns out to be Captain Nemo from “Twenty Thousand Leagues”) constantly aids them, sometimes with advanced technology unknown when the novel was written.

The novel has a “progressive” slant, the heroes being Americans from the Union side in the Civil War (they actually name the uncharted island after Lincoln), while Nemo turns out to be an Indian prince fighting the British colonial occupation of his country. The virtues of science and technology are extolled, sometimes through Nemo (who pilots a submarine), sometimes through the Yankee engineer Cyrus.

Years ago, I actually read a Marxist analysis of the story, trying to claim it for the far left, which argued that the community created by the Union castaways on Lincoln Island is a form of utopian socialism! I'm not an expert on Verne, but the idea isn't entirely farfetched, since Verne did cooperate with reform socialists and often described “utopian” communities in his novels (he became more pessimistic later).

Personally, I prefer “In Search of the Castaways” of the books in the sort-of-trilogy, but your Vernian mileage may vary…

Calling it

“The Begum's Millions” is an intriguing novel by Jules Verne, the 19th century “science fiction” writer. The plot revolves around two scientists, one French and the other German, who create utopian communities in the American wilderness. Ville-France is a virtual wonder of scientific progressivism and optimism, while the German Stahlstadt (City of Steel) is a Nazi-like dystopia devoted to world supremacy and racial purity. On one level, the novel is simply a caricature of the Franco-German conflict, with the Germans (of course!) in the role of villains, Verne himself being French. It's intriguing that the stereotypes were pretty much set in stone already in 1879, when the novel was originally published! I suppose the devastating Franco-Prussian War eight years earlier had something to do with it.

However, the story may have other dimensions, too. Verne often warned about the negative consequences of technological development, and there is some discussion whether he was ever a “progressive” himself, or simply adapted to the needs of the market. What is clear is that his early novels are more optimistic, while there is a clear tendency towards dystopia and techno-pessimism in the later ones. Sometimes, Verne's earlier heroes return in the later stories, only to be revealed as villains and mad scientists! “Begum's Millions” seem to be somewhere in between the two extremes, with technology being capable of bringing both improvement and destruction, depending on who is calling the shots.

Above all, “Begum's Millions” is one of those futuristic novels which somehow called it. The striking similarities between Verne's fictional City of Steel and the much later Nazi regime in Germany have often been pointed out. Was this the first time somebody “predicted” the totalitarian-industrial system of Nazism? Verne, an avid reader of scientific and engineering journals, also predicted WMDs. One of the weapons described in the novel is similar to an atomic bomb, while another could be compared to a neutron bomb, which kills people but doesn't destroy buildings and infrastructure!

I haven't read Verne's novel for years, and had to refresh my memory by reading Wiki's summary of the plot. An ironic detail I didn't remember is that even the enlightened Ville-France had a dark side, specifically excluding Chinese! The United States did pass the Chinese Exclusion Act just a few years after the novel was published, although this hardly counts as a “prediction”.

Well, it seems not even Jules Verne was 100% perfect…

Revolutionary revenge

CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS

“Mathias Sandorf” is a novel by French 19th century adventure and science fiction writer Jules Verne. I read it as a teenager, and haven't reread it for years! I've also seen a TV series based on the novel (it had a less gruesome ending). Verne explicitly intended the novel to be a tribute to Alexandre Dumas and “The Count of Monte Cristo”, but this is actually somewhat unfortunate, since it reveals a central part of the plot in advance.

The story is set in Austria-Hungary and around the Mediterranean. Verne was fairly “progressive” and this is reflected in the novel, with the heroes being Hungarian democratic revolutionaries in the tradition of 1848 rising up against the Austrian monarchy and the Hungarian aristocracy. The revolutionary cell, led by Mathias Sandorf, is betrayed and its members killed. 15 years later a mysterious character named Dr Antekirtt starts to systematically hunt down and kill those who betrayed the patriotic resistance. If you know your Dumas, you know exactly how the story ends: Antekirtt turns out to be none other than Sandorf himself, back from the dead and bent on revenge of the “cruel and unusual” kind.

Although strongly inspired by Dumas, the novel also has typical Vernesque themes. In keeping with Verne's “pro-technology” perspective, Dr Antekirtt is a scientist roaming the Mediterranean in an advanced submarine. He also disposes of his enemies in surprisingly high tech fashion. Antekirtt is obviously based on Captain Nemo of Verne's earlier novels “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Mysterious Island”. Both the doctor and the captain are liberation fighters driven by personal hatred and endowed with u-boats.

If you like near-epic adventure novels, this might be for you. Also interesting if you are a Verne aficionado, or like “Eastern” and Southern Europe. If it beats the Count of Monte Cristo is perhaps another matter entirely…

Topsy turvy

I haven't seen this particular edition of Jules Verne's ironic novel, or perhaps novella, "The Purchase of the North Pole" (also published under a few other titles). I read a Swedish translation years ago. This is therefore a review of the novel as such, not this edition.

Verne's early novels were techno-optimistic, as behooved a 19th century writer for the commercial market. His later stories, by contrast, were often pessimistic and rather emphasized the damage that technology could do in the wrong hands (read: the hands of people as they actually are). Sometimes, Verne's heroes staged a come-back in sequels in which they were depicted as insane. One example is Robur, the (somewhat ambivalent) hero of "Robur the Conqueror", who turns out to be the mysterious megalomaniac of the later novel "Master of the World". A more obvious example is the novel I'm presently reviewing, in which the heroes from Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Around the Moon" turn out to be mad scientists gone bonkers!

The shadowy company Barbicane & Co, co-owned by Barbicane, Maston and Nicholl from the Moon novels, purchases the North Pole, but are unable to reach it and claim it. They therefore hatch a daring plan: "if we can't get to the North Pole, the North Pole would have to come to us". By launching a huge projectile from an enormous drilled-out tunnel in the Kilimanjaro, Barbicane & Co hopes to change the tilt of the Earth's axis so that the North Pole ends up being in North America! That millions of people will die in the process is of no consequence...

I won't reveal the plot twists, except that the story is written in the form of satire, making it less depressive than it perhaps should be. Yet, we are certainly left to wonder why Verne saw fit to "kill" his heroic characters in this manner. I suppose he realized, earlier than most of his scientistic admirers, that the world is indeed...topsy turvy.

Zéphyrin Xirdal. Need I say more?

Michel Verne 

Ah, "The Chase for the Golden Meteor", another pessimistic Jules Verne classic! Apparently, the canonical edition is actually rewritten by Verne's son Michel, to the point of introducing a new main character, the amusing "mad scientist" Zéphyrin Xirdal. Monsieur Xirdal must have the weirdest name in the history of science fiction (apart from Jar Jar Binks, I suppose). The story itself is a semi-humorous criticism of greed, vanity and (perhaps) mad scientists, in keeping with late Verne's turn to pessimism about the human condition.

A golden meteor is about to impact on Earth, and all nations of the world (if I remember correctly, even Andorra) want to claim it. So do the two rival astronomers who discovered the space valuable, but they are all worsted by Zéphyrin, who has invented a mysterious device which makes it possible for him to control the meteor and its trajectory. I won't reveal how the story ends, except that Jar Jar, er, Xirdal turns out to be a somewhat more sympathetic person in the end...

Verne's original manuscript have been found, published and translated as "The Meteor Hunt". I haven't read the original version, but it seems that Michel's changes actually improved the story. I think. I mean, I only read it once...about 30 years ago!

:D