Cussedness
The natural cussedness of things in general.
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Five Weeks In A Balloon by Jules Verne
Five Weeks In A Balloon, the very first Voyage Extraordinaire, was incorporated into the series retroactively after Hatteras was published, but is most definitely of a piece with the other early Voyages. The themes of exploration and adventure are as strong here as in any of Verne’s other well known works. An extensive knowledge of African exploration is on display, with discussions of famous 19th century treks, such as those of Burton, Speke and Grant in search of the source of the Nile - Verne’s characters, borne above the vast terrestrial difficulties that nearly killed those men, make short work of this question, one which in reality exercised the best abilities of the Victorian era’s bravest. The Nile is traced from Lake Victoria to Gondokoro in one short chapter, before the balloon moves on to the unexplored interior. (more…)
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Ticket No. 9672 by Jules Verne
Also known as The Lottery Ticket, as the British translation was entitled, Ticket No. 9672 is one of Verne’s mid-period Voyages Extraordinaire, and is one of those rare things, a Verne novel with female characters. But despite having pivotal roles in the plot, neither of the two main women stand out from the page after the first chapter. (more…)
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The Moon Voyage by Jules Verne
As I’m sure you’re aware, De la Terre à la Lune supposedly inspired the famous, entertainingly bonkers Georges Méliès film Le Voyage Dans La Lune, which apparently began the great cinematic tradition of completely ignoring the source material upon which films are based. It has a moon in it, and a gun-launched space vehicle, but there the similarities end.Verne’s light-hearted vision of lunar exploration is much closer to the reality than H. G. Wells’s take on a moonshot, which relied on the hypothetical antigravity material Cavorite. Whilst it is not really possible to use a huge gun to propel a projectile to the moon without turning any passengers into astronaut soup, the principles of ballistics employed by Verne are much closer to the methods of rocketry used in real space-flight than Wells’s nebulous physics-defying alloy. Verne’s story also concludes that whilst the moon may have once been inhabited, it is now devoid of life, whereas The First Men In The Moon details the fantastic Selenite beings inhabiting the interior of the satellite. All in all, Verne’s much earlier speculations on the subject of exploring our nearest neighbour were nearer the mark. (more…)
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Facing The Flag by Jules Verne
The latest novel in my now slightly obsessive quest to read as much Jules Verne as possible, Facing The Flag is a typical Voyage Extraordinaire. We encounter high-tech weaponry and transport, nefarious pirates bent on mayhem and destruction, and a hyper-intelligent eccentric inventor, all seen through the eyes of a slightly dopey French narrator. It even has an island submarine base hidden within the empty magma chamber of an extinct volcano, the third such example I have encountered in the Voyages so far. The story is well paced and culminates in a satisfying conclusion: classic Verne, and thoroughly enjoyable. (more…)
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The Adventures of a Special Correspondent by Jules Verne
This anonymous translation of Claudius Bombarnac, entitled The Aventures of a Special Correspondent may not, I suspect, be the most faithful rendering of Verne’s original text. The eponymous narrator travels from Tbilisi to “Pekin” via the Trans Caspian Railway and assorted other rail and boat connections in search of a story to send back to his newspaper in Paris, and as far as the basic story is concerned, the novel is entertaining and enjoyable. (more…)
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Master Of The World by Jules Verne
Like Lighthouse at the End of the World, Master of the World was one of Verne’s last works; it was published not long before his death in 1905. Unlike Lighthouse, it’s not very good. I don’t know any of the details regarding the writing of this story, or about the English translation available on Project Gutenberg, but Verne clearly wasn’t testing his abilities with this Voyage Extraordinaire. A sequel to Robur the Conqueror, it is flimsier that that already lighthearted work, with little to recommend it beyond a sketch of a fantastical vehicle, named the Terror, capable of high-speed travel on land, on and under water, and in the air.
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Robur The Conqueror by Jules Verne
Robur The Conqueror lives aboard the Albatross, an “aeronef” - a platform suspended from thirty-seven electrically powered dual-propeller rotors, driven and steered using further propellors at the front and rear of the vessel - and spends his time taunting and flummoxing the rest of the world from above. He is a man of mystery, both in his origins and his motives, who arrives unannounced at a meeting of balloonists in order to point out how superior his own means of aviation is. Upon a less than enthusiastic reception, he kidnaps the president and secretary of the club, as well as the president’s valet. His reasons for abducting the members of the Weldon Institute balloonist club are unclear. Perhaps he wishes to educate them, to show them by example the folly of their ways, pursuing as they do the ridiculous avenue of “lighter than air” travel. If this is his aim he fails, and the kidnapped men do their best to thwart him and make their escape. The whole thing plays out like a flippant version of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, but above the clouds, with Robur a sketched caricature of Nemo and the three abductees a comic version of M. Arronax. Apart from the patronising, racist treatment of the black servant Frycollin, which is very irritating but par for the course in 19th century literature, it is an enjoyable, lighthearted novel, perfect for reading when one has significant distractions to contend with.
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The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
Verne’s The Mysterious Island is a cracking adventure story featuring a volcano, pirates, castaways and even some orang-utans. Set during the American Civil War, four Union soldiers and their dog find themselves stranded on an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean, after a daring escape from a Confederate prison in a makeshift balloon, and a terrifying ride over thousands of miles carried in the teeth of possibly the fastest moving and largest storm in literature. Forced to fight for survival, the stranded soldiers start out with next to nothing, scattered across the island by their crash landing, but slowly gather resources and bootstrap their way up, determined to make their new home a self-sufficient colony of the USA. (more…)
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Lighthouse at the End of the World by Jules Verne
Lighthouse at the End of the World was pretty much the last book Verne sent off to his publisher before he died, and William Butcher’s translation comes with an excellent introduction and compendious notes which explain the various problems engendered by this. Verne revised heavily at the proof stage, but Lighthouse never had the benefit of this process, and was instead knocked into shape by his son Michel as part of a settlement with Verne’s publisher Hetzel. (more…)
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Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne
Paris in the Twentieth Century is one of Verne’s earliest efforts, written just after Five Weeks in a Balloon, and rejected by his publisher as unbelievable, and for having “a real goose” as a hero. Hetzel wasn’t wrong about Michel, who has all the appeal of a whining sixth-former, but his judgement of the plausibility of Verne’s creations was less perceptive. (more…)