Twenty thousand leagues under the sea
by Jules Verne · first published 1977
35% recommend65% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Adventure science fiction with a strong sense of scientific wonder, often cited as a childhood favorite that sparked interest in oceanography and engineering; suits fans of classic adventure and inventive characters.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2007–2025The mysterious island
Jules Verne
Recommended by 32 · mentioned by 5132 recommend · 51 mention32 recommend · 5132 recommend
2010–2024Around the World in Eighty Days
Michael Palin
Recommended by 5 · mentioned by 75 recommend · 7 mention5 recommend · 75 recommend
2014–2020Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Jules Verne
Recommended by 5 · mentioned by 75 recommend · 7 mention5 recommend · 75 recommend
2010–2024Around the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne, George Makepeace Towle
Recommended by 6 · mentioned by 96 recommend · 9 mention6 recommend · 96 recommend
2008–2026The Voyage of the Beagle
Charles Darwin
Recommended by 7 · mentioned by 187 recommend · 18 mention7 recommend · 187 recommend
2010–2025Amber
Roger Zelazny
Recommended by 11 · mentioned by 2011 recommend · 20 mention11 recommend · 2011 recommend
2011–2024Journey to the center of the earth
Jules Verne
Recommended by 8 · mentioned by 248 recommend · 24 mention8 recommend · 248 recommend
2010–2026The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells
Recommended by 4 · mentioned by 234 recommend · 23 mention4 recommend · 234 recommend
Jules Verne. I'm currently reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and it is fantastic. Originally written in French.
on “The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit)” ↗Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea- Jules Verne (1870). Also many other novels by the same author.
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books or essays written at least 100 years ago?” ↗For an author who loved his engineer protagonists, none are more skilled than Cyrus Harding. This is the OG competency porn novel, and highly recommended – especially if you have also read (and enjoyed) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
on “NASA: Tonga blast was 10 megatons, more powerful than a nuclear bomb” ↗…(iamgopal) and I grew up reading adventure/science fiction books by Jules Verne; shared love of these books was the reason we became best friends in matter of days, and were a huge influence for us - reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island and the like were a huge influence during our formative years. Even today I have a mild obsession with submarines that probably links back to reading 20k leagues. Now that both…
on “Ask HN: Sci-Fi book recommendations for kids?” ↗…books that I could find after that and it was my introduction to geology ("Journey to the Center of the Earth"), geography ("In search of the castaways", "Around the world in eighty days"), oceanology ("Twenty thousand leagues under the sea"), Astronautics ("From the Earth to the Moon", "Around the moon"), dystopian/utopian world building ("The Begum's fortune") and so on and so forth. EDIT: fixed the name of the book, thank you bradyd.
on “Jules Verne’s Most Famous Books Were Part of a 54-Volume Masterpiece” ↗…Symposium, Phaedrus, Apology and Republic. Then there are many books that I've read at least twice, almost all considered classics (from 1984 to LoTR, Great expectations to Tom Sawyer, Crime and punishment to Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, etc).
on “Ask HN: Which books have you read more than once?” ↗Just want to mention Jules Verne. Some of the stuff[0] he wrote felt scaringly accurate even though the exact implementations differed quite a bit. [0] :"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" from 1870 was one of my childhood favourites.
on “What people in 1900 thought the year 2000 would look like” ↗…Foundation" (1942) is about the collapse of an empire and the birth of a new empire. Social science turns out to be more powerful than spaceships but it has some pretty serious failure modes. 2. Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (1869) is largely about a rebel. Technology doesn't seem to be fixing problems. 3. H.G. Well's "Time Machine" (1895) has the end of all human civilization and "The Shape of Things to Come" (1933) while…
on “The Cyberpunk Sensibility (2016)” ↗…reminds me of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island, which was the first adult book I ever read. It featured a catastrophic underwater volcanic explosion. Great book, it’s a Robinson Crusoe-style sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Interestingly, Verne wrote the book nine years before the Krakatoa explosion. He must have been thinking of Tambora, though I’m not sure that eruption was well recognized at the time.
on “How big was the Tonga eruption?” ↗Has anybody read modern[^1] science fiction that uses "scientific and technological breakthroughs"? Or, something close in thoroughness to Jules Verne "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" or "The Mysterious Island"? Is it just me, or modern writers are terrified of getting wet with that sort of scientific level, or the general public that buys and reads fiction is not up for reading…
on “Scientific and Technological Breakthroughs Created a New Kind of Fiction” ↗It's been a long time since I read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but one of the things that struck me at the time was how concerned the narrator was with how everything tasted. It was released 10 years after On the Origin of Species, so I imagine we had yet to develop…
on “Charles Darwin Ate One of Everything He Discovered” ↗…Capitalism, Anne Case - The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic, Joe Miller - Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, John Green - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne and Gary Gianni (Illustrator) - El Deafo, Cece Bell - Acts of God, Kanan Gill - Marvels of Modern Science, Paul Severing - Empire of AI, Karen Hao
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗Interestingly, there is an estimate of the size of a sphere containing the water of the world's seas in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the sea: "THE PART OF THE planet earth that the seas occupy has been assessed at 3,832,558 square myriameters, hence more than 38,000,000,000 hectares. This liquid mass totals 2,250,000,000 cubic miles and could…
on “Perspective: All of Earth's Water in a Single Sphere” ↗That's actually quite impressive and it ties into why I started the project. When I was a teenager I read a paper that talked about the drive used by Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The magneto-hydrodynamic drive† basically tries to push seawater through a set of coils and, as you've said, it's very, very inefficient and currently impractical. Reading that paper inspired me to…
on “BlueRobotics – T100 Underwater Thruster” ↗I am also thinking Captain Nemo from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, or his updated compatriot Hagbard Celine from the Illuminatus! trilogy. Somewhat more seriously, this is an interesting turn in events when compared to space policy too. We have conquered the land of…
on “Richard Branson Announces Virgin Oceanic Submarine ” ↗