David Meakin, in his 1995 book Hermetic Fictions; Alchemy and Irony in the Novel is unusual in categorizing stories as alchemic even if they do not mention alchemists or alchemy, nor include alchemic allegory or imagery, so long as they include elements which obliquely remind him personally of alchemy. For instance, he considers any book about a writer alchemic, because "writing is a kind of alchemy." Captain Nemo's submarine the Nautilus is "alchemic" because it is a "hermetically closed cell" (all submarines are airtight, ergo "hermetically closed").