20,000 Leagues Under the Water
Authors: Kalashnik Nataliia 
Published: August 2024

Jules Verne was an author who broke the rules. By the beginning of the 20-th century his tales emerged as mainstays of the screen. Verne’s influence has led to more than three hundred films and television versions of his stories around the globe (and another hundred films have told about his life in documentary form). Hollywood setting the tone and standard in the best known adaptation, the Hollywood treatment on Verne in turn has had global ramification and influence. Nowadays, a film script is created to bring the literary form to the screen, and nothing can replace the mystique of the spirit of the visual sphere, but first of all, cinema! Verne, Nemo and the Nautilus have entered the world’s collective memory!
His major works, which were adapted for film many times, remained popular into the 21st century, and the “scientific romance” became a permanent fixture of Western popular entertainment. The writer discovered the poetry of science and scientific creativity for literature, brought to perfection the artistic form of the adventure novel, enriching it with new content and subordinating it to scientific and educational purposes and pedagogical intent.
The author explains, why both French and American consciousness regard Jules Verne as a popular writer of “hard” science fiction. What are the heroes of J. Verne’s novels like? Among the descriptions of the heroes and scientists, we note one: a 40-year-old man, a famous geographer, who has many scientific titles and is a member of many scientific societies, whose full name is Jacques Eliacin François Marie Paganel, who became the prototype of the literary type of the “scientific eccentric.” Thus, it is fair to note that in every Verne novel there is such an image of a scientist - such a popularizer of science, who explains a lot in the course of the novel’s actions, who makes the events in the novel useful and exciting. Quoting Vern’s contemporary scientist Paganel, the author develops a demonstrative idea of the science of the sea and ocean.
In the second chapter of the trilogy article: “Personalities: Albert 1’s contribution to the development of oceanography”, the author gives the meaning of the definition of oceanography.
Being in love with the ocean and sea voyages, as in Verne’s novels, in keeping of his “everything from the sea” theme, implying that knowledge is mined at the bottom of the ocean, with using deep love of science and technology, with a good dose of their potential for human endeavor in action, we start to get acquintence with the heritage of Prince Albert I of Monaco.
In general, on the initiative of Prince Albert I (“Scholar Prince” or the “Navigator Prince”), such scientific and humanitarian institutions were created as: the Oceanographic Institute with two branches (Oceanographic Museum in Monaco and the House of Oceans in Paris); International Hydrographic Organization; International Peace Institute; Institute of Human Paleontology in Paris; Museum of Prehistoric Anthropology of Monaco; Science Center of Monaco; Multimedia Library of Monaco; princely foundations dedicated to preserving the oceans and planet for future generations.
Since 1889, one hundred and ten volumes have been published, printed in Monaco. The president summed up his attitude towards the scientific community as follows: “And I represent the Oceanographic Institute, where scientists from all countries can work, investing their efforts. The laboratories with the museum are located in Monaco in a palace worthy of intellectual humanity; the center of dissemination dedicated to this new culture is in Paris in the academic world.”
In the third chapter: “From Oceanography to Climate Change in Cli-Fi”, the author talks about Jules Verne as the founder of a new genre in literature. Like Jules Verne, Prince Albert 1 has the gift of prediction. The seer, Prince Albert I, predicted some of the troubles facing the ocean today.
Finally, for both the Vernians and the followers of Albert I, it is a particularly fitting tribute to these explorers, who sought to popularize, through fiction and their scientific discoveries, both the wonders and dangers of the modern world, technologies that focus on questions of scientific consensus about the role of human activity in modern climate change that continue to arise in the public sphere both historically and now.
The narrator goes on to analyze novels that share the same idea, such as: Eric Brown’s The Phoenix Guardians, referring to Kim Stanley Robinson (sometimes called a science fiction genius), his series of three independent books called Science in the Capital brings together The problem of environmental disasters and global warming of the planet is also recounted as prominent examples: Janette Winterson, British writer J. G. Ballard, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Janette Winterson. The author is interested in a survey of readers of fiction novels about climate change and comes to the conclusion that many people buy books to read because of the pleasure of reading previous novels by a particular writer or because of recommendation for reading.
In our conclusions, she argues, that Zen-like playfulness of reading fictions, prepare us for entering the knowledges like reading poetry helps to enter a state of mindfulness and intentionality, which is so necessary for the exhausting thrilling scientist`s work!
The author of the publication also introduces the reader to the work of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco both its therapeutic oceanic function and the benefits of the ocean for its visitors, including ocean art- therapy like developing direction of psychotherapy, leading to harmonization of the internal state. The reverence for creative expression and wilderness preservation has led narrator to the art-works of Cody Roberts and Greg Lecoeur.T han the author returns to historical origins and asks the rhetorical question, what if oceanography began with Homer?
The author resumed, that not only the writers and scientists of all of the times were interested of the climate changes but also United Nations. One of the prospects for resolving the issue in the context of climate change was the report, which was adopted in 2016 at the request of governments, observer organizations, including the government of the Principality of Monaco, the Prince Albert II Foundation and their partners and published in Monaco in 2019. Thus, we can conclude, that ocean pollution is an important, but insufficiently recognized and inadequately controlled component of global pollution. “To make the Ocean known, loved and protected”, that is historic mission of the Institut océanographique under the impetus of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco. ‘’To love the sea! The sea is everything! It covers seven tenths of the globe. His breath is pure and life-giving. In its vast desert, a person does not feel lonely, because around him he feels the beat of life... The sea is eternal movement and love, eternal life, as it was said in “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” by J. Verne.