Raiding the Stacks: From the Earth to the Moon, & Around the Moon, by Jules Verne

This week I've decided to delve back into the realm of incredibly old-school science-fiction by reading some Jules Verne. In this installment I've read two stories: From the Earth to the Moon, a story which details the creation of a giant cannon to launch a projectile at the moon and its eventual firing, and its sequel Around the Moon, which follows the misadventures of said projectile. Both of these stories are contained in one e-book available for free on Amazon.com. (However, I'm sure there are plenty of other places where you could obtain a copy as well.)

Overall this work is in many ways very classic Verne and actually remind me of both 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth. In the first respect, this novel is filled with an almost pedantic attention to scientific detail, much like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which makes these stories in some cases prophetic about our eventual endeavors to reach the moon. On the other hand, these novels are also filled with a lot of oddball science that, although seeming cutting edge in the late 1800's, seems downright laughable today, much like Journey to the Center of the Earth. I will admit that the more technical aspects are definitely more difficult to read through, but it shows the Verne was keeping abreast of the latest scientific thought of his day.

What is particularly uncanny about this set of novels is that Verne writes about the Americans raising money to launch a projectile towards the moon and furthermore launching it from a location in Florida near Tampa. (Granted Cape Canaveral is on the opposite side of the peninsula, but what's a hundred-odd miles between friends?) And there is, of course, a very good reason for this. As Verne predicted, the most efficient way to send something towards the moon is to launch it from somewhere within the 28th Northern and Southern parallels. Florida and Texas were the only two states at the time below the 28th Northern parallel. (Hawaii of course is almost entirely below the 28th parallel but would not be annexed until 1898.) What is equally impressive was Verne's ability to calculate the necessary escape velocity of 11.2 km/s given the information and methods available to him at the time. In these respects the novel was rather prophetic, but it definitely starts to break down from there.

When you get into the later parts of the novel the science definitely starts to break down, although I guess you can't really judge Jules Verne for relying upon what was their best working knowledge in the 1860's. After all, new discoveries in science are being made all the time, constantly revising our understanding of the universe around us. Ideas such as the moon being oblong-shaped like an egg, that it contains some traces of atmosphere, and that it must have been inhabited at some point, seem downright silly in retrospect, but they were probably considered cutting-edge in the day. I personally found the assumption by the characters that we would one day launch a mission to the surface of the sun and develop machines to straighten the earth's axial tilt particularly funny. It seemed to capture the essence of the belief of the late nineteenth century that there was absolutely nothing that science could not achieve, given sufficient time and resources.

Overall these two books were kind of funny with the insanely optimistic belief in science and technology, as well as the assumption that only the Americans would be brash enough to attempt to take a trip to the moon. However, the extreme focus on science and mathematics really takes away from the story in many respects and it actually takes away from the story.

- Kalpar

Raiding the Stacks: A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne

Well it's the last week of the month again, so that means I dig into the old and dusty public domain books to find something to talk about. This time I return to the works of Jules Verne and his fairly short novel, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, which is exactly what it says on the tin. There are some people, and they take a journey to the center of the Earth. As it's been mentioned on Wikipedia, this book really does not work as well as some of Verne's other stories. In the case of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Verne imagined a lot of what a modern submarine might look like with its electric appliances. In the case of Journey to the Center of the Earth the story relies on geological hypotheses which are definitively proven incorrect today and so it makes for a rather unbelievable story. As a work of science fiction, ignoring the inaccuracies, I am not sure if this story is strong enough to endure.

The story follows the adventures of Professor Lidenbrock, a renown German geologist who has obtained a note from an Icelandic alchemist of the sixteenth century who claims to have gone to the center of the world through an extinct volcano in Iceland. Taken along with Professor Lidenbrock is his nephew, Axel, and their Icelandic guide, Hans. (I should point out that in my translation Professor Lidenbrock's name to Professor Hardwigg and Axel's name to Harry.) Despite Axel fully expecting them to encounter terrific heat as they delve into the depths of the earth, they find countless tunnels and galleries which are all at a very comfortable temperature. Eventually they even find an entire ocean over a hundred miles beneath the surface of the earth and evidence that a number of creatures from previous time periods may still exist in the bowels of the earth.

This book is definitely a work from Verne. There are a couple of almost fanboy-glee passages dedicated to the wonders of electricity and its superiority over gas and coal which is a very distinct Verne fingerprint in the stories I have read. Furthermore, a lot of the story seems to focus on the fantastic and almost impossible things that Professor Lidenbrock, Hans, and Axel encounter on their journeys. Several chapters are dedicated to the wonders of Iceland (which is a pretty cool place and I think I'd like to go someday) to the countless mineral treasures observed within the bowels of the earth. Verne even works in what was some cutting-edge paleontology in 1864 with a number of fossils, including human fossils discovered rather recently in Europe. While much of this is rather fascinating it bears the very distinct marks of being from the nineteenth century and suffers as a result.

First of all, the premise is, of course, fanciful at best now because we know beyond a doubt that the center of the earth is filled with lots of lava at thousands of degrees in temperature which is impossible for humans to breach. Hell, we haven't gotten further than about 1.2 kilometers into the earth's crust and that still leaves roughly another four kilometers to get to the mantle, at its thinnest point! Getting further within the earth appears to be simply impossible because temperature increases to a point where humans cannot survive. As a result, Verne's story looks rather foolish by comparison. In regards to Verne's foray into paleontology he is, once again, proven wrong by the advance of time and research. Unfortunately Verne constantly refers to the Great Flood, you know, the one in the Bible with Noah. The one that didn't happen. I understand that Verne is merely a product of his times when people, well a larger number of people, thought Genesis really happened, but when your entire understanding of geology and paleontology is dependent on separating time between before and after the great flood, it casts some serious doubts onto your understanding of the fields.

Among the other issues was a mention of a race of giants apparently thought to exist in the fossil record during the 1860's and the characters discovering one such member of the species during their adventures. I am not really sure where such ideas originated but obviously such humans never existed, at least according to our knowledge of today, besides which twelve foot high humans are impractical because of the square-cube law. Finally there was the problem with our characters' escape through a volcano with the description that they were surrounded by boiling water during their ascent. Aside from the fact that lava is, as I mentioned, thousands of degrees in temperature, but if our characters were exposed to temperatures very close to water's boiling point they would very definitely be dead. It is an unfortunate misunderstanding on the part of Verne, but completely shatters any suspension of disbelief for the reader.

Ultimately I would advise passing this story up for my readers. It simply has not aged well and its scientific foundation is rocky at best. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is much better in comparison to how its research has stood the test of time and is probably the better of Verne's classics.

- Kalpar

Raiding the Stacks: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne

This week I want to talk about Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the classic novel by Jules Verne. I actually have a personal history with this book, first discovering it in the famous 1954 Disney movie adaptation at my local library back in the 1990's. When I was around ten or eleven I decided to read the original text of this novel and I remember it being a pretty good book. However, I'm afraid I had my nostalgia for this novel dampened with my re-reading.

Now, before I get into the book review proper, I want to admit that I may have gotten a bad translation which my good friend Anya suggested might be a problem with the book. If you do choose to go read Twenty Thousand Leagues I would suggest you explore a number of different translations.

My main problem with this book is it feels incredibly outdated in terms of its subject matter. Significant portions of this book consists of our narrator, Pierre Aronnax, detailing the various aquatic lifeforms he discovers during his adventures on the Nautilus. And I think for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this would be downright fascinating for the readers. Captain Nemo, Professor Aronnax, and the crew of the Nautilus go from the warm waters of the Pacific to the ice-choked waters of the South Pole and Aronnax provides incredibly detailed descriptions of the mammals, fishes, mollusks, and cephalopods they encounter. For an audience that has never before encountered the distant locations described in the novel and the strange lifeforms that live there, this has got to be fascinating stuff. However, this attention to detail becomes, in my opinion, a weakness for late twentieth and twenty-first century audiences. Today there are countless documentary films and television shows about the animals that live in the ocean and in Antartica which are widely available to modern audiences. I think that these far more visual mediums are a far better means of learning about the biological subject material covered in Twenty Thousand Leagues.

The other main fascination of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea seems to be with the technology contained within the Nautilus. Again, I think this is a result of time and technology advancing past the novel. The Nautilus is powered entirely by electricity provided by sodium-mercury batteries and is capable of out-performing the conventional steam-powered ships of the era. With electric power still in its infancy, I can understand how a nineteenth century audience could be fascinated by the idea of electric ovens and electric lighting. However, for a twenty-first century audience electric appliances are considered commonplace. Heck, we have submarines powered by nuclear fission now, something that would probably astound Verne's original audience. It's really not Verne's fault that the book has become less fantastic as time progressed, and I am impressed he believed electricity could be harnessed for such every day purposes in the future, but it definitely takes away much of the original wonder in Twenty Thousand Leagues.

There is one comment which I would like to make about this book, and it centers around the character of Captain Nemo. Throughout the novel we learn that Captain Nemo provides funding to various rebel groups fighting against imperialist forces in the nineteenth century. In specific we see Nemo provide a vast sum of money to Cretan rebels fighting against Ottoman occupation and it is heavily implied he provides such support to other rebel groups across the globe. Captain Nemo takes his campaign of vengeance even further and actively attacks the warships of imperialist powers. What is perhaps most important about this conflict is that we are never told where Nemo is from or who the imperialists he fights are. (Granted, in the sort-of sequel The Mysterious Island it is revealed that Captain Nemo was originally an Indian Raj, but we receive no such information in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.) In the climatic battle where Nemo attacks and sinks a warship with the Nautilus it is explicitly stated that the ship is flying no flag. Since both parties have ambiguous origins it remains powerful commentary against European imperialist practices in general and a warning of how far oppressed peoples will go to avenge the injustices suffered at the hands of their oppressors.

Overall, I would say it is best to pass Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by, but not because the book is in any way flawed or badly written. Instead I think that the technology and biological discoveries that were so fascinating to nineteenth century audiences have become incredibly commonplace to twenty-first century audiences. As a criticism of European imperialist and colonial practices, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea simply does not go into sufficient depth and I feel that theme takes a decided back-seat to the biological and technological wonders of Nemo's world. I must sadly consign Verne's work to the category of works informative of past perspectives, but less relevant to modern audiences.

- Kalpar

Raiding the Stacks: Around the World in Eighty Days

So as promised, here is  my review of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, first published in 1873. What makes this novel unique for Jules Verne was it lacked in the more fantastical elements of his other works, such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth. However it is one of Verne's more famous books and has inspired numerous people to travel across the world and attempt to beat the record. The first person to do so was female reporter Nellie Bly, working for the New York World in 1889. Ms. Bly managed to complete the journey in 72 days, proving that such a feat was possible. (Special thanks goes to my friend fuzzypickles for reminding me about Ms. Bly.)

To the twenty-first century reader the challenge of crossing the world in eighty days seems unremarkable. With daily intercontinental flights by numerous companies across the globe, it's possible to cross the world in less than eight days, never mind eighty. However, it is important for a twenty-first century audience to remember the time period in which this book was written. It was the combination of a number of recent developments, intercontinental railroads, the Suez canal and regular oceanic steamship travel which enabled such a feat to be undertaken. It proved that the world, which previously could have taken a year to travel by ship, could now be done in a quarter of the time. In a way the world had shrunk as well. Raw materials from Africa and India would be used in Europe and shipped back as manufactured goods. News could travel by telegraph across the United States in a matter of minutes rather than days. Eventually people from places as far off as Australia and Kenya would find themselves fighting in a war over the assassination of an Austrian Archduke. In a way, Around the World in Eighty Days is a harbinger for the global market and political stage of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

Now I'm sure my readers are sitting down and saying, "Oh well that's all very well and find, but Kalpar! What is this book really about?" Well I would first respond by saying that it's about a group of people who travel around the world in eighty days. After you stopped punching and yelling at me, I would explain it is more specifically about the attempts of an English gentleman, Phileas Fogg, and his French valet, Passepartout to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. Mr. Fogg is an extremely meticulous gentleman who operates like clockwork, leaving his house at eleven thirty every day and returning at midnight. His only activities consist of going to the Reform Club and playing cards with his gentleman friends. It is during one such card game that they discuss the possibility of traveling around the world within eighty days. Phileas Fogg, because he likes a challenge, wagers half of his fortune that he can perform the act and sets off immediately. Fogg and Passepartout run into a number of adventures along the way, mainly because of Mr. Fix a detective of Scotland Yard. Mr. Fix pursues Fogg across the globe because Fogg matches the description of someone who stole a considerable sum of money from the Bank of England and puts numerous obstacles in Fogg's way. Fogg and Passepartout also rescue a woman named Aouda during their adventures in India and she follows her rescuers as they continue around the globe.

Map of their route taken from Wikipedia.

The book also offers intriguing glimpses of the British Empire and America from an outsider's perspective, although being a nineteenth century novel it makes numerous generalizations on various nationalities. Regardless I find it a great window into the late nineteenth century world ranging from Europe to Japan, if only from a historical perspective.

Sadly, as a novel, I feel like the book failed to engage me. Phileas Fogg as a character is described as utterly devoid of emotion and so little remains known about him that I had a hard time connecting to him as a character. As the deadline for completing the race draws closer and closer and the remainder of Fogg's fortune continues to dwindle I feel...nothing. The book itself describes Fogg as little more than a robot, at least as far as the narrator and other characters are concerned. If he's worried about losing what's left of his fortune, the reader is given no sign so I find it almost impossible to become emotionally invested in him as a character. Passepartout, who I have to admit is the chief cause of numerous setbacks on their journey, is at least a character and gets emotional over their advantages and setbacks. As for the romance between Aouda and Fogg it feels practically forced. Yes, Fogg helped rescue her from a religious sacrifice and has seen to her every need from that point but the book describes Fogg doing this in an automatic fashion. When someone's as emotionally distant as Fogg it's usually hard for anyone to become emotionally attached to them so Aouda becoming infatuated with Fogg seems odd to me. Granted this is no better than my opinion but whatever.

Ultimately unless you're really really interested in reading about the nineteenth century, I'm going to have to suggest passing this book by. I felt like the characters lacked a certain depth and it was very hard for me to get invested in the race against time. Finally there's a plot hole that kind of bugs me at the end, so I'll go ahead and spoil it because the book's over 100 years old so you can't yell at me for that.

Okay, so as my readers may know, out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is the International Date Line.

This motherfucker right here.

For those of you unfamiliar with the IDL, basically it separates today from tomorrow and how it makes it possible for me to be writing this article on a Friday evening while my friend in Liverpool, England is for some reason awake at 4:13 in the morning on Saturday. Prior to the nineteenth century human transportation wasn't fast enough for time zones and the date line to matter much, but with the advent of steam-powered transportation trains suddenly could arrive before they left. As a result the world was divided into twenty-four different time zones each representing twenty four hours of the day, however except for one hour the entire world is going to be split between two days. To make this entire mess somewhat tidier they invented the International Date Line which divides the use of two calendar days on the earth. Anyway, if you cross the line from east to west, for example traveling from the United States to Tokyo, you add one day to the calendar and jump forward to tomorrow. However, if you travel from west to east, departing China and heading for Mexico, you subtract one day and repeat yesterday.

The reason I go through all of this is because Fogg and company cross the Date Line on their travels and end up being able to meet the deadline because they gained an extra day crossing the line. Now while the International Date Line would not be established until after when the novel is supposed to take place, it was at least informally in effect. Now Fogg and company aren't really affected by this during their journey in America because the trains leave on a daily basis but the ship they were supposed to take from New York to Liverpool left on a specific date and the book clearly states they miss the ship by fifteen minutes. Except if they gained a day, which is what saves them in the end, shouldn't they have arrived in New York a day early? I wouldn't make such a big deal if it wasn't the plot point that saved them in the end of the novel.

Ultimately I like this book for its historical value but otherwise it's unremarkable as a book in my opinion. If you really want to see this adventure I'd suggest looking at one of the many adaptations of the book into movie form.

Except for this one. This one's just dumb.

- Kalpar.