Thank you, Rie, for the opportunity to steam into your blog. I’ll try to leave the place looking as shipshape as I found it.

I know Rie and her fans love pirates, so allow me to brag about a new anthology featuring the first man to conduct his piracy underwater. About a year ago, I realized Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea would turn 150 years old in June 2020. I decided to commemorate that sesquicentennial by creating an anthology of stories paying tribute to Jules Verne’s proto-steampunk classic.

Along with Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing, I co-edited 20,000 Leagues Remembered, which contains 16 stories by modern authors, each written in honor of the first submarine novel. Here’s a taste of what you’ll read:

• Author Stephen R. Wilk merges Twenty Thousand Leagues with another Verne novel, The Blockade Runners, in his lively ship chase, “A Game of Hare and Hounds.”

• If you pit Nemo’s Nautilus against Mark Twain, an ironclad, and an airship, you get submariner M. W. Kelly’s rollicking story, “Farragut’s Gambit.”

• What if John Strock, Verne’s American detective in Master of the World, was assigned to investigate strange maritime reports from Baltimore? Find out what happens in J. Woolston Carr’s “The Ghost of Captain Nemo.”

• In Eric Choi’s riveting adventure tale “Raise the Nautilus,” British salvagers attempt to recover the Nautilus and its technology, but they may not be the only interested party.

• Older English translations of Verne’s novel were horrible, and in “The Silent Agenda” by Mike Adamson, you’ll find one fascinating explanation why.

• Suppose Professor Aronnax were to meet Cyrus Smith, the leader of the castaways in Verne’s The Mysterious Island, years later. Read “An Evening at the World’s Edge” by Alfred D. Byrd to discover how both their lives change forever.

• Maya Chhabra explores Captain Nemo’s origin in Bundelkhand, India and how it affected his interactions with Pierre Aronnax in her thought-provoking story, “The Maelstrom.”

• Nemo assembled his loyal crew somehow, and must have found a way to replenish their depleted numbers by some secret method. In Andrew Gudgel’s “Recruiter,” you’ll read how that might have happened.

• What if the Nautilus existed today, and contained mysteries that could alter us and our planet forever? Enjoy “Nemo’s World” by James J.C. Kelly and uncover Nemo’s long-hidden secrets.

• Nikoline Kaiser wrote a poignant coming-of-age story we couldn’t resist, a tale set in Greenland, of all places. “Last Year’s Water” explores a young girl’s grieving process.

• If a diving mishap left you trapped inside an extinct volcano, could you escape? Read “Homework Help from No One” by Captain Demetri Capetanopoulos to discover a particularly Vernian solution to that problem.

• 150 years can seem like nothing, if you ride in the right kind of vehicle. The protagonist of Corrie Garrett’s “A Concurrent Process” might wish she’d not spent her time investigating that strange UFO over Chicago.

• What happened just after the Nautilus entered the maelstrom at the end of Verne’s novel? Thanks to Jason J. McCuiston, you can find out what bizarre sights Nemo and one unusual crewman encounter “At Strange Depths.”

• Could a band of misfit criminal oddballs hope to steal the gold and treasures rumored to be aboard the Nautilus? Author Allison Tebo will leave you laughing out loud when “Fools Rush In.”

• Nemo described sperm whales (cachalots in French) as nothing but “mouth and teeth.” To know what a sperm whale might think of the Nautilus, you’ll have to read “Leviathan” by Michael D. Winkle.

• Twenty thousand leagues in outer space? We travel there, too, in Gregory L. Norris’s tender story “Water Whispers.”

20,000 Leagues Remembered is available in ebook form at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, and several other distributors. The paperback is available at Amazon as well, and check Pole to Pole Publishing for news about the other outlets.

Thanks again, Rie, for the chance to surface my sub in the waters of your blog. I’m leaving now. Cast off all lines! Dive! Dive!

Steven R. Southard