Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea by Adam Roberts
St. Martin’s Griffin/January 2015
Goodreads
It is 1958 and the 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? Contains 33 full page pen and ink illustrations by Mahendra Singh, who previously illustrated an edition of The Hunting of the Snark. In collaboration with acclaimed artist Mahendra Singh has revisited Jules Verne’s classic SF novel. Together they have come up with a unique vision.