Jules Verne: Father of Science Fiction? John Derbyshire

2 2 Jules Verne: Father of Science Fiction? John Derbyshire ules Verne (1828-1905) is con- bibliographers under the heading Les ventionally regarded as the Voyages Extraordinaires. These were Jfather of science fiction. Some works of fiction whose plots either literary historians may dispute this, hinged on some extrapolation, or asserting that sci-fi goes all the way untried application, of the science back to the early moderns or even of Verne’s time, or at a minimum the ancients (via, of course, Bacon’s used some unresolved scientific issue “New Atlantis”...), (and here you have with the boldest Books by Jules Verne in the to include geogra- spirits even claim- “Early Classics of Science phy among the sci- ing Homer’s Odyssey Fiction” series from ences) as a “hook” Wesleyan University Press for the genre. That on which to hang an seems to me a stretch. The Mysterious Island adventure story. Since science, as we 2002 ~ 728 pp. A handful of those now understand the $24.95 (paper) books, all from the term, did not really first dozen or so of begin until the sev- The Begum’s Millions those 42 years, are enteenth century, 2005 ~ 308 pp. known, at least by surely science fiction $29.95 (cloth) name, to any person cannot have existed literate in modern any earlier. The Mighty Orinoco Western culture. 2003 ~ 448 pp. Reserving the $29.95 (cloth) $19.95 (paper) Twenty Thousand right to offer some Leagues Under the qualifications of my Invasion of the Sea Sea was made into own, “father of sci- 2001 ~ 288 pp. a fine early special- ence fiction” will do $27.95 (cloth) effects movie by very well as a start- Disney in 1954. Two ing point for discussing Verne and years later, producer Mike Todd made his works. Between 1863 and 1905, Verne’s Around the World in Eighty this very bourgeois French gentle- Days into a cast-of-thousands, cos- man—Verne was the son of a lawyer, tume-and-scenery extravaganza that and his only paid employment outside won five Oscars. My ten-year-old son literature was a brief spell as a stock- owns, and has read, an abbreviated broker—wrote 65 books grouped by young-reader’s edition of Journey to SPRING 2006 ~ 81 Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. JOHN DERBYSHIRE the Center of the Earth, and at least one cially successful but in other respects recent movie, the rather dire 2003 unsatisfactory, and are rather resent- The Core, can claim to be distantly ed by Verne’s more serious admirers. descended (so to speak) from that Because the books were considered book. The names of Verne’s first pub- to be for children, and therefore to lished novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, have no literary importance, trans- and his third, From the Earth to the lators felt free to abridge, amend, Moon (generally issued together with or even rewrite them. Translation its sequel, Around the Moon) ring a work was in any case (and still is) bell with some of us, though I do not badly paid and otherwise unreward- think they are much read nowadays, ing. Furthermore, the metric system except perhaps in abridged children’s Verne used was unfamiliar to his versions. The rest of Verne’s titles are British and American translators, so now little known. that the conscientious calculations he Verne’s biographers generally sometimes included in his text were, acknowledge that the quality of his when not omitted altogether, fre- books fell off after the mid-1870s, quently garbled in English-language and that many of the later ones, editions, leading the more attentive though some contain interesting or reader to think that Verne was care- original notions, are little more than less or innumerate. pot-boilers. At the time of Verne’s With the growth of college English death in 1905, sales of these later departments in recent decades, and books were at unimpressive levels. the acceptance of science fiction as a The Mighty Orinoco, for example, had proper field of study for literary the- a first-print run of only 5,000 at its orists and cultural historians, some publication in 1898, and unsold cop- salvage work has been undertaken. ies remained in the publisher’s stock- This is the context for the publica- room years later. Some of the later tion by Wesleyan University Press novels, including that one, were not of four new English translations of translated into English. The fault Verne novels, with annotations and here does not lie entirely with Verne. introductions by scholars. These The very success of his early works four translations came out between inspired numerous imitators, so that December 2001 and November 2005, by the end of the nineteenth century and apparently they will be followed a reader seeking “scientific romanc- by others. The four originals span es” in the style of Verne had plenty a period from the high summer of of authors to choose from. Verne’s fame and popularity, in the The first English-language trans- mid-1870s, to the very end of his lations of Verne’s work appeared in career in the year of his death, 1905. the early 1870s. They were commer- For that reason it seems to me best 82 ~ THE NEW ATLANTIS Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. JULES VERNE: FATHER OF SCIENCE FICTION? to deal with them in the order of the Civil War and a dog belonging original publication, rather than in to one of them. All are trapped by the order of Wesleyan’s translations, various circumstances in Richmond, the dates of which I shall note only Virginia in March 1865. During a in passing. tremendous storm they make their escape from the city in a balloon, he Mysterious Island was pub- which is then swept far across the Tlished in installments through world to the empty wastes of the 1874 and 1875. It can, I think, fairly southwest Pacific. The balloon fails be described as the best-known of at last, and the five are washed up on Verne’s lesser-known works. It was an uncharted island. translated into English twice in the Desert-island stories, or “Robinson- 1870s, and all the other English- ades” as they were known in publish- language editions available prior to ing circles of the time (after Robinson this one from Wesleyan were derived Crusoe, of course, the granddaddy of from the first of those transla- them all), were a staple of nineteenth- tions, usually much abridged. This century popular fiction. Writing of Wesleyan edition of January 2002 is another specimen, Charles Reade’s a completely new and full translation Foul Play, which was published five of the French text, and includes the years before The Mysterious Island, original illustrations (as do the other George Orwell remarked: “Some three books in this series). The trans- desert-island stories, of course, are lator is Sidney Kravitz, billed on the worse than others, but none is alto- book’s cover as a “retired scientist gether bad when it sticks to the actu- and engineer.” The introduction and al concrete details of the struggle endnotes are supplied by literary to keep alive. A list of the objects in scholar William Butcher, who has a shipwrecked man’s possession is also published translations of Verne, probably the surest winner in fiction, though not in the Wesleyan series. surer even than a trial scene.” Verne’s One of the young Jules Verne’s castaways have one of the shortest own favorite books was The Swiss such lists: the clothes they are wear- Family Robinson, a children’s classic ing, a single match, two watches, the from the early nineteenth century, dog’s metal collar, and one grain of in which the energetic and capable wheat. They are Americans, though, family of the title are marooned on and this was the beginning of the a desert island, which they soon era—it ended with the Apollo pro- transform into a little Switzerland. gram—when the U.S.A. was seen by The Mysterious Island builds on the foreigners, certainly by Verne, as the same idea. Verne’s castaways are five can-do nation, populated by ruggedly Americans from the Union side in self-reliant types who could turn SPRING 2006 ~ 83 Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information. JOHN DERBYSHIRE their hands to any practical task. able boat—no mere raft, of course, The personification of this national but “a vessel of 250 to 300 tons.” In stereotype is Cyrus Smith, leader of the meantime, we have been taken the castaways, “an engineer and a through subplots about a stranger scientist of the first rank,” and also rescued from a neighboring island, “courage personified,” who “had been a ship full of escaped convicts, and in all the battles of the Civil War.” some inexplicable occurrences, all to Under Smith’s direction, in next to the castaways’ advantage, that sug- no time the castaways have a forge, gest the presence of a hidden bene- a brickworks, a pottery kiln, and a factor watching and helping them. glassworks up and running. When At the end of the book this benefac- they need to remove a rock barrier tor turns out to be none other than to lower the water level of a lake, Captain Nemo of Twenty Thousand Smith manufactures nitroglycerin. Leagues Under the Sea. Nemo dies; the The various chemical processes are island explodes; the castaways are carefully described.

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