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The Quest for Jules Verne's Amazing Machines

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The Quest for Jules Verne's Amazing Machines THE PERFECT CHRONOGRAPH The Quest for Jules Verne’s Amazing Machines JUL ES VERNE, THE SCIENCE FICTION WRITER AND INVENTOR OF NUME- ROUS MECHANICAL WONDERS... OR WAS HE? OMEGA LIFETIME ASKED JU- LES VERNE SPECIALIST WILLIAM BUTCHER TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE MACHINES AND AMAZING TALES OF JULES VERNE. Jules Verne’s name is inextricably linked decade of the twenty-first century, remain with innovative machines, but I have several the most unknown of men, certainly the reservations about this. Indeed, if asked classic author whose popular reputation is exactly what machines Verne describes, the the least well-founded. Only by going back person in the street may flounder a little. to primary sources, by stripping away the He or she may easily come up with Captain onion layers of mistruths that have grown Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus, probably around his name, can we hope to near an based on the inaccurate Hollywood ver- understanding of the man and his works. sion, but will then often be at a loss for a His machines, too, will require careful follow-up, at best mentioning balloons or study. We clearly need to remove from our flying machines. He/she will somehow try minds any subliminal imprint of the films, to work *Journey to the Centre of the Earth invariably far from Verne’s real thinking. or Around the World in Eighty Days* into But surely the volumes in the world’s the conversation, while frantically trying to bookshops contain an authoritative account remember a single advanced machine in any of his machines? Unfortunately, this ap- of the numerous films supposedly based on parently attractive view contains two more these books. traps. First, the translations of his books have generally been middling; those in THE REAL VERNE English, now the universal *lingua franca*, The authentic Verne may still, in the second have ranged from reasonable to calamitous, 1:10 0:79 the worst attempts — unfortunately those a ship, albeit of exceptional size. Regretfully, most often reprinted — cutting a quarter or then, this satire on the lifestyle of rich reti- more of the text and sometimes inventing rees cannot really be included. Even in the whole chapters. technological-sounding *Lighthouse at the And how about the increasing number End of the World* (1905), there is no inno- of faithful translations, or better, the French vation whatsoever, the design of the lenses editions? Even here we are some distance being about sixty years old at the time of away from finding the real Verne. For a writing, and the book being instead an un- start, the French editions, both the mo- putdownable pirate and sea yarn. dern reprints and the original nineteenth- The real thrust of Verne’s writing, century publications, have suffered from where he puts his heart and soul, is instead poor copyediting and contain a fair number the unexplored areas of the globe or, oc- of misprints, grammatical mistakes and casionally, below and beyond. The novels factual errors. More seriously, the novels, of the first decade all involve discovery of as brought out between 1863 and 1905 by unknown parts, with machines coming into the publishing house of Pierre-Jules Hetzel, play only when there is no alternative. For were not what Verne actually wrote. The the remainder of his career, Verne, having publisher himself wrote sections of some of exhausted the virgin domains, is reduced to the books; he deleted innumerable pages the already known, as reflected in the series and quite a number of chapters; he insisted title, *Extraordinary Journeys in the Known that the author change the meaning of and Unknown Worlds*. many of his novels; and he generally impo- His method of getting his characters to sed his own vision on the works, camoufla- the interesting parts of the universe is to use ging in the process that of the author. While the means at hand. Eminently pragmatic, the letters Verne and Hetzel exchanged do obsessed with realism, or rather plausibi- provide some indirect information about lity, he scoffs at HG Wells for straining the these changes, their scope – and, crucially, credibility of the reader, for simply snap- the original versions – can only be appre- ping his fingers and saying, in effect, let’s ciated by deciphering the manuscripts of have an anti-gravity device or a time-travel the novels, a task sadly and inexplicably machine. Verne always opts for low- or ill-addressed to date. no-tech solutions, when given the choice. Landslides, footpower, volcanic eruptions or PLANES AND BOATS AND TRAINS wind-driven wheelbarrows are his preferred So what do we mean by Verne’s machines? means of transport. Only when the destina- Let’s agree, for the purpose of this article, tion is out of this world, does he, in the very to include only his large machines, essen- last resort, consent to bring in exceptional tially those used for transport purposes, and vehicles. hence to exclude, for example, the timepi- Verne’s life is another area where his eces and scientific instruments, despite their reputation as a writer of science fiction – es- L’île à Hélice (Les Voyages Extraordinaires) importance. We should concentrate on the sentially false, I would claim – has distorted vehicles that, at the time, displayed advan- nearly all publication on the subject. Even ced or innovative features. At a stroke, we the encyclopaedias continue to derive much have greatly narrowed down our search, as of their material from the first major bio- Verne’s balloons, sailing-ships, steamships graphy (1928), written by a certain Margue- or trains, even in the nineteenth century, rite Allotte de la Fuÿe. They not only repeat already seemed slightly *passé*. her mistakes, but continue to propagate Surely the Steam House, in the novel of inaccuracies about the novelist’s attitude to the same name (1880), must constitute an advanced technology. They thus twist his re- innovative vehicle? On closer examination, putation to a degree that he himself would however, the Steam House turns out to have objected to – and indeed did so, vocife- be simply a road-going steam locomotive. rously and at every possible opportunity. Admittedly, it is disguised as an elephant, If we look instead at the reality of Ver- with the trunk serving as chimney and eyes ne’s life, we discover that science *per se* as headlamps; it hauls two cars, one for the never really interested him. From his earliest passengers and one, as is appropriate, for years, his dreams were of journeying to exo- the servants. By some sleight of hand, Verne tic places, by decidedly conventional means. manages to get its massive weight up into No science was included in his education at the Himalayas. primary and secondary level in Nantes, or Similarly, Propeller Island, again in the in his training to be a barrister in Paris, his novel of that name (1895), is essentially just favourite subjects being Latin and Greek, 1:13 1:12 French and geography. The first writing where Verne shows any va- If we really wish to understand Verne’s gue liking for futuristic machinery is *From attitude to technology, the place to start the Earth to the Moon* (1865). In this no- is his early writings, before pressure from vel, American warmongers, pining for the publishers and the public came into play. weapons of the Civil War (1861-5), turn to His first known attempts, at the age of six launching a projectile as a way of proving or seven, in swaying treetops on his favou- they still have the biggest and the best guns. rite uncle’s bucolic country estate, involve Only at a second stage do they think of tra- dreams about travel. The earliest eyewitness velling in it themselves, inspired by a late account, in poems published by his father, addition, the Frenchman Michel Ardan. A emphasise the boy’s love of the River Loire twelve-foot-long projectile, complete with and yearnings for escape from humdrum manhole entrance and removable portholes, reality. In the young Verne’s scores of is duly made of aluminium, a construction poems, dozens of completed plays, single material recently perfected by one of Verne’s unfinished novel, handful of short stories, friends. The interior, designed for three men book of art criticism, autobiographical ac- and two dogs, is a delight of high-Victorian, counts of journeys to Scotland (1859) and Walter-and-Gromit-style comfort, with Norway (1861), balloons, trains and boats leather-lined walls, full cooking facilities sometimes appear, with a few dramatic and gas lighting. The air is replenished by descriptions, but there are no futuristic chemical means, but there are no toilet machines. Amongst the books he submitted facilities. The vessel is to be launched by to Hetzel, the three that were not rejected two hundred tonnes of explosives crammed continue this pattern – after undergoing re- at the bottom of a nine-hundred-foot-long moval of what we today might find amongst cannon hollowed out of the ground. Verne the most interesting parts. In *Five Weeks himself fully realised that the basic idea was in a Balloon* (1863), *The Adventures of ridiculous, for the acceleration from the Captain Hatteras* (1864-6) and *Journey to explosion would instantaneously crush the the Centre of the Earth* (1864), the travel passengers to smithereens, but he had no is the whole point of the venture; the only other method of getting them away from the machinery used, the burner for the balloon, earth’s pull. is well past its sell-by date. Even dogs are But even here – as the reader may have considered too unreliable to get Hatteras to realised – I have reservations about where the North Pole.
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