The Quest for Jules Verne's Amazing Machines

THE PERFECT CHRONOGRAPH

The Quest

for Jules Verne’s

Amazing

Machines

Jul rnees Ve , 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,

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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. the novelist’s heart really lies. The book If Hetzel seems to have initially ac- was set a decade in the future, a sure sign cepted the book about travel to the Scottish that Verne did not really believe it to be Highlands, only changing his mind at proof plausible. In the event, just as the novel was stage, his reaction to *Paris in the Twenti- coming out, Lincoln was shot, meaning that eth Century* (written in 1860 and 1863) the book’s iconoclastic description of a stub- was more clear-cut. In this book set in born ageing president had to be changed, as 1960, more than any other, Verne presents well as the date of the action. a world submerged in scientific and tech- Verne himself had doubts about the nological innovation of every sort: a huge book. In his original version the travellers, canal linking Paris to the sea, overhead once launched in the general direction of trains, cars, faxes, industrialised education, the moon, have no thought of return and the increasing dominance of Mandarin, are indeed described as martyrs to explo- pollution, the Americanisation of the lan- ration. Having seemingly been made to guage and lifestyle – in a word, the loss of substitute an ending which, absurdly, emits France’s soul. The hero, a romantic, a wri- the hope that two-way communication with ter depressed by the disappearance of his earth can somehow be established, the poor literary heroes, hates his job churning out author then has to belatedly imagine some superficial vaudevilles. He apparently dies way of getting the spacemen home again. at the end from cold, hunger and a bro- The idea of a sequel may have been the ken heart. This anti-science fiction novel, publisher’s; certainly the novelist himself warning of the dangers of technology, was never accepted it, repeatedly insisting that brutally and dogmatically rejected by Het- *Around the Moon* (1869) was merely the zel; it was translated into English in 1996, second volume of the Moon novel, although when it became the most successful French in the event his view was ignored by all and novel ever in the United States. sundry. In any case, when it finally came out, this new volume seemed to betray the FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON non-consensual nature of its conception by

1:16 0:83 being much less inspired and good-humou- perhaps trying to conform to his own increa- red than its older brother. sing public reputation for “anticipation”, finally designs a machine with slightly more TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES technical detail. Having realised, ever since UNDER THE SEA *Five Weeks in a Balloon*, the weaknes- Scores of forests have been laid waste to ses of the lighter-than-air, namely the dif- describe and depict Verne’s famous sub- ficulties of going where you want, Robur’s marine, but it must be pointed out that the design for the Albatross, despite its name, vessel is hardly innovative. Both the name comes decisively down on the side of the *Nautilus* and the concept of underwater heavier-than-air. Its cabins, deck, shape and navigation were clichés at the time, leading two huge propellers are directly copied from the novelist himself to state: “I am not in any seagoing vessels, with even a lifeboat and way the inventor of submarine navigation.” a bosun. Its lift comes from seventy-four Captain Nemo’s description of his vessel is horizontal rotors – which do not ruffle the generous with information about its length passengers’ headgear in the corresponding and width, but says only that its electrical illustration. Rotors and propellers, produ- power is “not the commonly used sort”, en- cing a speed of a hundred and twenty miles hanced by “a system of levers”! an hour, are driven by electricity, which The shape of the submarine has similar- comes from accumulators, which gets it in ly spawned an entire industry, constructing turn from batteries “of extraordinary capa- immensely detailed models, more often city” and “virtually infinite horsepower”. As than not, however, based on the erroneous to how the batteries themselves work, this is Hollywood version. What Verne himself a closely-guarded commercial secret! wrote was of an approximately cylindrical Verne provides plenty of information form with conical ends and a flattened about previous attempts to fly, about the platform, together with a pilot’s dome and internal layout, the shock absorbers, the a couple of hatches – although this is hard shape, size and direction of the rotors and to reconcile with the triangular profile the propellers, the manoeuvrability, the low *Nautilus* cuts in one of the ships it tangles centre of gravity, the instruments and with. The original French illustrator clearly equipment, or the fine food and drink. All also had difficulty with this point, wisely in all, it is an impressively credible sailing not attempting to show the whole ship very ship, where Verne employs to the utmost clearly. his highly-developed common sense and The real control room of the *Nautilus* considerable reading on the subject. The is the library and museum, in chapters un- narrator rushes the reader past the holes in fortunately only too often cut by unscrupu- the substructure and the leaks in the super- lous publishers. It is here that the enigmatic structure to concentrate on the picturesque, captain comes closest to revealing his soul, the exotic, the anecdotal, and the human. and that Verne opens up the most about That the description is largely tongue in his artistic and literary preferences. Or at cheek, self-consciously a literary machine, least he does until the editor cuts a swathe is shown by the ship’s construction material: through the books and paintings on show, “paper, nothing more, nothing less”. Or, as before dumping large numbers of tedious Verne remarked to Hetzel: “Just between scientific works on the now largely empty you and me, I’d advise you never to board shelves. such a machine.” The submarine is the true hero of the novel, with its own personality and habits, MASTER OF THE WORLD its constant desire to thrust its way into In *Master of the World* (1905), Robur narrow passages, to rub against its fellows, returns, now on the Terror, a combination even penetrate them. It constantly defies of motorcar, aeroplane, surface vessel and the natural forces, braving the worst hurri- submarine, compared variously to a gigan- canes, venturing fearlessly into the ice fields tic bird of prey, an aerial monster and the of the Antarctic and the superheated water devil’s chariot. Electrically driven, made of of Atlantis. We feel a decided pang when aluminium, cylindrical but with the front the *Nautilus* finally disappears, perhaps more pointed than the rear, with wire voluntarily, into the dreaded Maelstrom wheels and wings of “a mysterious substan- whirlpool. ce”, it can fly at a hundred and fifty miles an hour. Robur himself has now become a ROBUR THE CONQUEROR paranoid megalomaniac. In *Robur the Conqueror* (1886), Verne, Like all the other vehicles, the *Terror*

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