Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius [Mass Market Paperback]

It's a pastiche of Verne's life, intercut with the adventures of "Andre Nemo" who wanders around the world, involving himself with incident after incident drawn from the pages of Verne's novels, and minor character, after minor character named after Verne's characters

My biggest gripe however is the vision of Nemo presented, this is not the mysterious stranger of the 20,000 leagues under the sea, or the technocratic Indian Prince, driven from his home after a failed rebellion against colonial masters as presented in Mysterious Island. Having all the works of Verne to draw from, and KJ Anderson, instead chose to draw his Nemo from the wide screen, he has drawn his "Dark Genius" from the vision of Walt Disney, and Harper Goff

The result is what you expect, a poor adaptation of an adaptation, true neither to the original, or the film.

Why? Well, "Nemo" is a pseudonym, for one. It comes from The Odyssey. When Odysseus blinds the Cyclops, the creature roars out a demand for the name of the man who has done this to him. The answer is "Nemo", or "No man", which is how Odysseus tricks the Cyclops into lying to his brethren. "Who did this to you?" they ask. "Nobody. Nobody did this to me."

So, Verne has his unnamed Captain adopt the name "Nemo" to show that he has separated from the world of men, and their greed and abuse. The idea that it is a true surname is absurd.

At the end of "The Mysterious Island", Verne reveals that Nemo is an expatriate Indian, which makes it even more unlikely that he would be around to befriend the boyhood version of Verne.

Of course, Verne could have made that bit up.

Tie it all to dull writing and a drab storyline and what you get is a dreary, dreary book that will make your blood boil with annoyance.

The reviews sprinkled on the back cover were selected to impress suckers (like me), and although the novel's premise sounded like fun, believe me, it wasn't. If you are looking for a dull, plodding story with nonsensical science, ungrammatical English, zero-dimensional characters, switching (and confusing) viewpoints, embarrassing name-dropping from Jules Verne's stories, contextually meaningless action scenes, and every other amateur mistake a writer could make, then read CAPTAIN NEMO. As a kid, I read pulp magazine space-opera better written than this!

Anderson should either go to writers' school or retire. There are so many truly outstanding sci-fi/fantasy writers to choose from -- contemporaries like Charles Sheffield, Terry Pratchett, Orson Scott Card, Gene Wolfe, Octavia Butler, Greg Bear, and Ursula LeGuin; older ones like Alfred Bester, Bob Heinlein, Fredric Brown, Sprague DeCamp, Jack Vance, Samuel Delaney, J.R.R. Tolkien, etc., etc., including of course Jules Verne. Why should anyone bother with drivel like CAPTAIN NEMO? You're much better off spending your money to see the cartoon movie about a little fish named Nemo.