Cephalopod size the original tissue samples—together with those of other similar carcasses—showed conclusively that they were all masses of the collagenous matrix of whale blubber (Pierce "et al.", 1995; 2004). Cephalopods of enormous size have featured prominently in fiction (see Garcin & Raynal, 2011; Barrère, 2017). Some of the best known examples include the giant squid from Jules Verne's 1870 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and its various film adaptations; the giant octopus from the 1955 monster movie "It Came from Beneath the Sea"; and the giant squid from Peter Benchley's 1991 novel "Beast" and the TV film adaptation of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea outlawry is decisively ended by the combination of an international task force and the rebellion of his French captives. Though also widely published and translated, it never attained the lasting popularity of "Twenty Thousand Leagues". More similar to the original Nemo, though with a less finely worked-out character, is Robur in "Robur the Conqueror"—a dark and flamboyant outlaw rebel using an aircraft instead of a submarine—and its sequel "Master of the World". The novel was first translated into English in 1873 by Reverend Lewis Page Mercier. Mercier cut nearly a quarter of Verne's original text and made hundreds of translation