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A cultural history of living in the undersea, both fictional and real, from Jules Verne's Captain Nemo to NASA's ECC02 project.In Memo for Nemo, William Firebrace investigates human inhabitation of the undersea, both fictional and real. Beginning with Jules Verne's Captain Nemo—an undersea Renaissance man with a library of 12,000 volumes on his submarine—and proceeding through aquariums, undersea photography, artificial seas on land, nuclear-powered submarines, undersea film epics, giant squid, and NASA satellites, Firebrace examines the undersea as a zone created by exploration and invention. Throughout, the history of undersea life is accompanied by an imagined undersea, envisioned by cultural figures ranging from Verne and Herman Melville to Orson Welles and Jimi Hendrix. Firebrace takes readers though the enormous sequence of rooms (impossible in real life) in Nemo's submarine, recounts the competition among nineteenth-century cities to build the most spectacular aquatic world, and explains the workings of the bathysphere—an early underwater vessel modeled on a hot-air balloon. He considers the aquarium's function in films as a sort of viewing lens, describes the chlorine-proof artificial sea life seen by passengers on the submarine ride at Disneyland, and reports that Jacques Cousteau's famous underwater documentaries were in fact highly staged. The oceans of today are not those imagined by Verne; they are changing from both natural processes and human influence. Memo for Nemo documents the power of the undersea in both art and life.

Wie die Eisenbahn oder das Automobil stellt auch das U-Boot ein Fortbewegungsmittel dar, das Ambitionen, Hoffnungen sowie gleichsam die Hybris der Moderne vereint. In ihm verdichten sich militärisches Expansionsstreben und Pioniergeist, weswegen die Zeugnisse, in denen es präsent ist, kaum heterogener ausfallen könnten. Sie reichen von Jules Vernes Klassiker'20.000 Meilen unter dem Meer'bis zu spätmodernen Kriegsfilmen und -serien. Mit dem U-Boot verbinden sich klaustrophobische Erfahrungen und zugleich das Streben, die Gesetzmäßigkeiten der Natur zu überwinden. Der Mensch erweist sich dabei nicht nur als ein Fremder in einem für ihn tödlichen Milieu, sondern darüber hinaus auch als Fremder im eigenen Selbst. Die Fahrt unterhalb der Wasseroberfläche bedeutet indessen ein sinnbildliches Eintauchen in die Untiefen der humanen Seele, wo sich Triebe, Träume und Verdrängtes vorfinden lassen. Um den vielfältigen Dimensionen des Motivs nachzugehen, dessen Aufarbeitung noch immer ein Desiderat in der Forschungslandschaft ist, versammelt der von Björn Hayer und Janin Aadam herausgegebene Band polydisziplinäre Zugänge, die das U-Boot insbesondere in Literatur und Film beleuchten. Mit Beiträgen von Michael Bahn, Friederike Ehwald, Dagmar Heißler, Maike Jokisch, Anne D. Peiter, Monika Preuß und Gabriela Scherer.

'Underhand and damned un-English'was the view of submarines in Edwardian Britain. Yet by the 1960s the new nuclear powered submarines were seen by the Royal Navy as being the'hallmark of a first class navy'. In this book Duncan Redford, a retired Royal Navy submarine officer, explores how - and why - attitudes to the submarine changed in Britain between 1900 and 1977.Using a wide array of previously unpublished sources, Redford sheds light on what the British thought about submarines, both their own and those that were used against them. Rather than providing an operational history of Britain's submarines, this book looks at naval and civilian conceptions of what submarine warfare was imagined to be like in the context of unrestricted submarine warfare, the world wars and the development of nuclear weaponry. With chapters on the coronation and jubilee reviews at Spithead, the submarine in novels and films, as well as coverage of the Royal Navy's and civilian views of submarines and submarine warfare this book gives a comprehensive view of the British regard - or lack of it - for the submarine. Through the examination of the British relationship with submarines since 1900 it is possible to see changing patterns in acceptance and tensions between different sub-cultures, both civil and maritime. Since 1900 the meaning constructed around submarines has changed as the submarine has progressed along a road from perdition as the weapon of the weaker power (and morally weaker power too) to a form of redemption as a major capital unit. This book will be essential for naval historians, students and those interested in aspects of submarine development and use.

Basing his study on some two-hundred-and-fifty German novels, memoirs, fictionalized histories, and films (including Das Boot), Michael Hadley examines the popular image of the German submarine and weighs the values, purposes, and perceptions of German writers and film makers. He considers the idea of the submarine as a war-winning weapon and the exploits of the'band of brothers'who made up the U-boat crews. He also describes the perceptions of the German public about the role of the U-boat in the war effort and the hopes that it carried for victory in two world wars against the Allied forces. Analysed in context, the U-boat emerges as a central factor and metaphor in Germany's ongoing struggle with its political and military past. In Count Not the Dead Hadley explores the complex relationships between political reality and cultural myth, and draws important conclusions about the way in which Germans have interpreted their past and how present concerns change these views.