Book Review | Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea by Adam Roberts

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, 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. And on board the crew succumb to madness, betrayal, religious mania and murder. Has the Plongeur left the limits of our world and gone elsewhere?

***

The Plongeur was a first for France: "an experimental vessel," verily, "powered by a new design of atomic pile, and boasting a number of innovative design features. Its very existence was a national top secret. Accordingly, its melancholy fate went entirely unreported." (p.2) Or it did till today, half a century since its mysterious disappearance. Now, though, its story can be told. And who better than Adam Roberts to do the reporting?

West of the continental shelf, the skeleton crew of the Plongeur—the plunger, if you must—set about stress testing what was then a particularly progressive vessel. In the process, its engineers expect to identify some small problems; instead, the submarine simply sinks.

Something has obviously gone catastrophically wrong, and as the Plongeur is drawn inexorably towards the ocean floor, a collision with which is apt to collapse it—though by that depth the immense water pressure will have long since spirited away the several souls aboard—its crew of courageous countrymen prepare themselves for the inevitable: the end.

But the end did not come. Instead, and gradually, the shaking calmed, and the deep buzz of vibration quietened. It was a very long drawn out diminuendo, the noise and the shaking withdrawing itself incrementally until both had almost disappeared. Impossible to believe that the implacable wrath of the ocean was diminishing—it was against all the laws of physics. (p.28)

Unbelievably, this is but the beginning of the Plongeur's story: the end is set in what seems to be a different dimension, and it's years ahead yet.

Coming Attractions | Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea and Me

It was only when I came to wonder which forthcoming books to blog about for my contribution to Smugglivus that I realised I had no notion whether or not there'd be new novels from some of my favourite authors.

China Mieville's minions have been frustratingly quiet since the release of Railsea, say. As have Orbit regarding the great K. J. Parker. Can we look forward to new books from either of the above in 2013? 

Don't look at me! I haven't the foggiest, I'm afraid.

What I do know - and credit where it's due: I came across this nugget of news via Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews - is that Adam Roberts, esteemed author of Yellow Blue Tibia, By Light Alone and Jack Glass (which I'm currently considering for Top of the Scots 2012) will indeed have a new novel out in the coming year.

It's called Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea, and we already have cover art:

And a blurb to boot!

"It is 1955. Funded, in part, by a reclusive Swiss millionaire and working - it is claimed - from Nemo's actual blueprints discovered in India, the French Navy build a replica Nautilus. Crewed with sailors and scientists, and commanded by the short-tempered Captain Mason, it is launched in great secrecy from Bayonne.  Almost as soon as it is underwater, however, and having passed beyond the Continental Shelf, an accident (or sabotage!) sends it plummeting towards the ocean floor. The crew desperately attempt repairs as the pressure builds, threatening to crush the entire craft. But then something very strange happens: despite the fact that they are still descending, the pressure equalises. 

"The descent continues for days; soon passing the 5000m depth that ought to mark the bottom of the ocean. As days turn to weeks, the mystery of their plight only grows deeper: for they pass hundreds and soon thousands kilometres of 'depth' with no ill effects. Other constraints press upon them: particularly the need to find food, and conserve fuel. Pressures amongst the all-male crew intensify as well, approaching breaking point as weeks pass, and the depth becomes measurable in millions of kilometres. Are they dead, trapped in an eternal descent to Hell? Have they passed through some portal into a realm of infinite water? Or have they somehow stumbled upon - or been deliberately lead to, via the mysterious Indian blueprint - some truth about the world too profound even to be measured in trillions? 

"Then, when they think all hope is lost, and as they approach the trillionth kilometre of depth, they see light below them..."

Doesn't that sound fantastic?

Gollancz are on track to publish Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea in October 2013 — a little later than usual vis-a-vis the pattern Adam Roberts has established. But the best things in life take time, and this book looks stupidly cool.

Or is that just me and my insatiable appetite for aquatic survival narratives?