VERNE, Jules (Gabriel)

(1828-1905)

   French playwright and novelist, generally thought of as one of the 2 founding fathers of sf - the other being H.G. WELLS - though neither claimed this status for himself or for the other, and nor did either of them claim to be originating a new genre. As sf scholarship began to emphasize only in recent decades, both Wells and JV wrote consciously within traditions of popular literature that already had large though diffuse reading publics; both were adept at picking up hints from inferior or earlier writers and turning out definitive versions of sf themes later to become central to the field as it took on shape with the 20th century, and both excelled in the imaginative density and (in Wells'scase, certainly) the shapeliness of their tales. Like Robert A. HEINLEIN for a later generation, they brought the instruments of sf into the home world.In some other ways as well, the linking of the two writers as founding fathers is deceptive. JV was a pragmatic, middle-class entrepreneur of letters, and at least during the first part of his career wholeheartedly espoused the clear-eyed optimism about progress and European Man's central role in the world typical of high 19th-centuryculture. Born almost 40 years later, and to lower-middle-class parents, Wells in his early work exuded and helped to define the doom-ladenfin-de-siecle atmosphere of the old century's hectic, premonitory climax. It should be noted, however, that JV was by no means insensible to moodsof change, and that the novels of his last decade were much darker in texture and more pessimistic in implication than the novels for which he is best remembered today, all of which were written by 1880.JV was born and raised in the port of Nantes, and it is probably no coincidence that the sea appears in a large number of his best and most romantic novels. His father was a successful lawyer and assumed that JV would eventuallytake over his practice, but from an early age the child rebelled against this form of worldly success (though, true to his time, his rebelliousness did not express itself in disdain for the things of the world). His first declaration of independence was an attempt to switch places with a ship's cabin-boy; he was extricated only after the vessel had actually left harbour. By young adulthood, however, JV's romantic flamboyance took a more productive course. He went to Paris on an allowance and, under the influence of such writers as Victor Hugo (1802-1885) and Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), wrote a good deal of drama (about 20 plays remain unpublished), romantic verse and libretti, several of which were produced, as well as engaging in mild, unsuccessful flirtations. (JV was never at ease with women, and his works are notably free of realistic portrayals of them; his Catholicism, which did not sit well with the Bohemian lifestyle he tried to imitate, may have contributed to this.) He soon discovered the works of Edgar Allan POE, somewhat misreading his solitary melancholy as a kind of romantic adventurousness, and under this influence published his first tale of sf interest, "Un voyage en ballon" ("A Voyage in a Balloon") (1851) - which was eventually republished in Une fantaisie du Docteur Ox(coll 1872; part trans George H. Towle as Doctor Ox and Other Stories 1874 US; different trans anon as Dr Ox's Experiment, and Other Stories 1874 UK) as "Une Drame dans les airs" ("A Drama in the Air") and then in book form under this latter title (1874). Also in Dr Ox's Experiment was the more interesting early story "Maitre Zacharius" ("Master Zacharius") (1854), an allegory about time, a clockmaker and the Devil. Both stories demonstrate from how early a date JV developed his characteristic technique of inserting quasiscientific explanations into a simply told adventure imbued with the romance of geography. This story-telling method proved from the first to be a singularly appropriate tool, legitimizing the love of adventure (or more specifically of travel, in this first age of the tourist) by infusing it with the sense that scientific progress (and hence national virtue) was being encouraged along with the thrill of voyaging.But, despite these early hints of the course he was to follow, JV felt himself only marginally successful as a writer and bon vivant, and with his father's help he soon turned to stockbroking, an occupation he maintained until 1862, when his singularly important association with Jules Hetzel (1814-1886), a successful publisher and writer for children,began. JV had come to him with a narrative about travelling in BALLOONS (it was apparently couched in semi-documentary form); when Hetzelsuggested that he properly novelize his story, JV did so eagerly and swiftly, and the renovated tale, published as Cinq semaines en ballon (1863; trans "William Lackland" as Five Weeks in a Balloon, or Journeysand Discoveries in Africa, by Three Englishmen 1869 US), began the long series of Voyages extraordinaires ("Extraordinary Journeys") which the firm of Hetzel published under that rubric from then until the end of JV's career. In this first tale, which was still comparatively primitive, 3 colleagues decide to try to cross Africa in a balloon, have numerous adventures as they go, and learn a great deal about Africa. But Five Weeks in a Balloon lacks the hectic, romantic intensity of JV's best work, those stories whose displacement from normal realities allowed him to transcend the element of illustrated travelogue which occasionally domesticated-in a negative sense - his fiction.His next novel, Paris au XXe Siecle ("Paris in the 20th Century") (written 1863; 1994), caused a considerable stir on its eventual discovery in manuscript form and subsequent publication. Set in 1960, and depicting a dystopian corporate dictatorship in unrelievedly grim terms, the tale is remarkable on several counts. It contradicts any sense that JV's cultural pessimism came from the disappointments of old age, or that it was the whole-cloth creation of his son, Michel Verne (1861-1925), who was indeed wholly or partially responsible for storieslike"In the Year 2889" (1889 The Forum), originally published in English and variously modified, as described by Arthur B. Evans in"The 'New' Jules Verne" (1995 Science-Fiction Studies). The novel was also noteworthy forthe wide range and accuracy of its predictions - 1960 Paris boasts automobiles, pneumatic tube-trains, computers and faxes - all the more surprising, given the wide assumption that JV's almost total refusal to set his stories in the future demonstrated his inability to make proper sf extrapolations. Its 1994 publication also roused some suspicions about the date and actual authorship of the text; these suspicions are acutely analyzed by Evans, who treats them as natural but, in this case, unfounded. JV's next published novel, Voyage au centre de la terre (1863; exp 1867; trans anon as Journey to the Centre of the Earth 1872 UK), not only abandons futurity, but is the first to convey what became the trademark Vernean thrill - a congenial admixture of 19th-century moral clarity, the safety of numbers (multiple protagonists were usual), and a sense of coming very close to but never toppling over the edge of the known; in this novel 3 protagonists take part variously in an expedition into the core of a dormant volcano which leads them eventually into the dark hollow heart of the Earth itself. JV's highly visible wonderment at the world's marvels in tales of this sort goes far to explain the success he was beginning to achieve by this time; the Vernean thrill was conveyed with a childlike exuberance and clarity that give traditional PROTO-SCIENCE-FICTION devices, like the HOLLOW EARTH of this tale, anintensely memorable shape; and his tripartite division of protagonists (one a SCIENTIST, one an intensely active, athletic type, the third a moreor less ordinary man representative of the reader's point of view) sorted out didactic duties and narrative pleasures remarkably well.In the meantime, Hetzel was planning a children's magazine and JV seemed an ideal collaborator. There has been some misunderstanding about the contracts under which JV supplied material for Le Magasin d'Education et de Recreation, which Hetzel founded in 1864, and to which JV begancontributing with Les adventures du Capitaine Hatteras (in 2 vols as Les anglais au pole nord [1864; trans anon as The English at the North Pole 1874 UK] and Le desert de glace [1866; trans anon as The Desert of Ice1874 US; vt The Field of Ice 1875 UK]). He was required by Hetzel to provide a certain number of vols a year - initially 3, eventually 2 - but a single volume did not necessarily make a novel, some taking 2 or even 3 to run their course. JV's production, therefore, while large, was not phenomenal; he tended to publish about 1 novel a year, writing 64 in all, many of them not sf.JV's techniques for merging wonderment and didacticism became more refined with the books - his most famous - of the next decade. These include: De la terre a la lune (1865; trans J.K. Hoyte as From theEarth to the Moon, Passage Direct in 97 Hours and 20 Minutes 1869 US) and its sequel, Autour de la lune (1870; both trans Lewis Mercier and Eleanor King as From the Earth to the Moon Direct in 97 hours 20 minutes, and aTrip Around It 1873 UK; new trans Jacqueline and Robert Baldick 1970 UK); Les enfants du Capitaine Grant (1867-8; trans anon as In Search of the Castaways 1873 US); Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870; trans Lewis Mercier as Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas 1872 UK; vt Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea 1873 US; new trans Emanuel J. Mickel as The Complete Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea 1991 US), with its sequel, L'ile mysterieuse (1874-5; trans W.H.G. Kingston as The Mysterious Island 1875 UK); and, perhaps best known of all, Le tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours (1873; trans Geo. M. Towle as Around the World in Eighty Days 1874 US). These were the books of JV's prime, written with what one might calljubilant flow, but as a whole they were execrably translated, cut, bowdlerized and travestied. The reputation he long had in English-speaking countries for narrative clumsiness and ignorance of scientific matters was fundamentally due to his innumerate and illiterate translators who - along with the publishers who commissioned their work - remained impenetrably of the conviction that he was a writer of overblown juveniles and that it was thus necessary to trim him down, to eliminate any inappropriately adult complexities, and to pare the confusing scientific material to an absolute minimum. There are some newer translations, though even recent versions of these books are not untroubled by cuts and incoherence.A dominant and abiding note in the novels of JV's prime is a powerful sense of the ultimate rightness of the course of the 19th century, a note only strengthened by their author's fundamentally conservative, pragmatic imagination, for he almost never trespassed into futurity and never actually carried his protagonists off the edge of the known. His tales are geographies, not extrapolations. From the Earth to the Moon may seem an exception, with its huge cannon in Florida blasting passengers into space, but (questions of acceleration aside) the science of the story was firmly conceived, and the Moon, once safely circumnavigated, was left to its own resources. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (the vt is now universal) may likewise seem to stand somewhat outside the normal canon, though it is perhaps JV's most deeply felt novel; carefully and slowly composed, it introduces Captain Nemo and his elaborate submarine, the Nautilus, in a tale whose easy, exaggerated sombreness agreeably conflates the domesticated Byronism of the time and expressive marvels of science. Nemo (it turns out in the sequel) is an Indian prince whom British injusticehas turned misanthropic, hence his life under the seas in his submarine, amply and comfortingly furnished in Second Empire plushness. But throughout both volumes Nemo's exploits hover just at the edge of the technologically possible; his prophetic gloominess is encased within a narrative frame which clearly represents his mood as aberration and his science as attainable. Around the World in Eighty Days is not sf at all (The Other Log of Phileas Fogg [1973] Philip Jose FARMER's sequel,rectifies this mundanity), for JV conceived his protagonist's journey around the world entirely in terms of travel arrangements then existing, basing Fogg's trip on a real journey by the US entrepreneur, traveller and eccentric George Francis Train (1829-1904).From the 1870s on, JV's work tended to repeat itself in gradually darkening hues, though he never lost the sense of the fundamental usableness of science and technology, a sense vital to much 20th-century sf, where - as with JV - usableness tends to serve as its own justification. It is notable, for instance, that JV's several ROBINSONADES - which include The Mysterious Island, L'ecole des Robinsons (1882; trans W.J. Gordon as Godfrey Morgan: A CalifornianMystery 1883 UK; vt Robinson's School 1883 US) and the late, nostalgic Deux ans de vacances, ou un pensionnat de Robinsons (1888; trans anon as Adrift in the Pacific 1889 UK) - all exploit the romantic implications of being cast alone or with a few companions into the bosom of a bounteous Nature; JV's robinsonades are carefully socialized, and their small groupsof protagonists always make do very well together. Even so, JV's later work was increasingly painted from a grimmer palette. Robur le conquerant (1886; trans anon as The Clipper of the Clouds 1887 UK; vt Robur theConqueror 1887 US) and its sequel, Maitre du monde (1904; trans anon as Master of the World 1914 UK), together demonstrate the process. In the earlier book the steely, megalomaniacal Robur, inventor of an impressive flying machine, though rendered less favourably than earlier romantic misanthropes like Nemo, is still allowed by JV to represent the march of scientific progress as he forces the world to listen to him; but in the second book, JV's last work of any significance, Robur has become a dangerous madman, blasphemous and uncontrollable, and his excesses - like those of Wells's Dr Moreau - seem to represent the excesses of an unfettered development of science. Science and a subservient, bounteous Nature are no longer seen-in late JV or early Wells - as benevolentlyunited under Man's imperious control.JV's life was externally uneventful from the 1860s on. He married, prospered mightily, lived in a large provincial house, yachted occasionally, unflaggingly produced his novels for the firm of Hetzel and became an exemplary 19th-century French middle-class dignitary. While his works inescapably reveal the boyish, escapist dream-life of that class, they can also be read as an ultimate requiem for the dream of his astonishing and transformative century, that waking dream of the daylight decades so effectively fleshed in his early work; but in 1900 that vision - that dream that the world was illimitable and obedient, and that Man could only improve upon creation - seemed to have begun to fade, as demonstrated perhaps most clearly in a remarkable post- HOLOCAUST tale, "The Eternal Adam" from Hier et demain (coll 1910; trans I.O. EVANS as Yesterday and Tomorrow 1965 UK), in which a far-future historian discovers to his dismay that 20th-century civilization was overthrown by geological cataclysms, and that the legend of ADAM AND EVE was both true and cyclical. (No manuscript in JV's hand exists of this story, which may have been written by his son, Michel Verne [see above]; but it clearly reflects JV's late state of mind, and has more than once been treated as a thematic summation of his career.)JV's work has always been attractive to film-makers, and as early as 1902 Georges MELIES loosely adapted From the Earth to the Moon to make Le VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE. It was not until JV's work came out of copyright in the 1950s, however,that the real rush started, beginning with Walt Disney's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA in 1954. Other JV adaptations were Around the World in 80Days (1956), FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON (1958), JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959), MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961), MASTER OF THE WORLD (1961) and Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962). The Czech film VYNALEZ ZKAZY (1958), released in the USA as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, was a blend of live action and animation. JV's characters have been revived in various, sometimes embarrassing guises, as in CAPTAIN NEMO AND THE UNDERWATER CITY (1969).

   JC

   Other works: Here we list those Voyages extraordinaires not discussed above; many are not sf. Most of the better-known titles present a bibliographical nightmare, and unauthorized editions proliferate; we have normally attempted to list first translations only, and have not traced paths through the jungle of (usually pirated) vts.Une ville flottante suivi Les Forceurs de blocus (coll 1871; trans anon as A Floating City, and the Blockade Runners 1874 UK);Aventures de trois russeset de trois anglais dans L'Afrique australe (1872; trans Henry Frith as Meridiana: The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in SouthAfrica 1873 US);Le pays des fourrures (1873; trans N. D'Anvers as The Fur Country 1873 UK);Le "Chancellor" (1875; trans Ellen E. Frewer as Survivors of the Chancellor 1875 UK);Michel Strogoff, Moscou-Irkoutsk (1876; trans W.H.G. Kingston as Michael Strogoff, the Courier of the Czar 1877UK);Hector Servadac (1877; trans anon as Hector Servadac: Travels and Adventures through the Solar System 1877 US);Les indes-noires (1877; trans W.H.G. Kingston as The Child of the Cavern, or Strange Doings Underground 1877 UK);Un capitaine de quinze ans (1878; trans anon as Dick Sand, or A Captain at Fifteen 1878 US);Les cinq cents millions de la begum (1879; trans W.H.G. Kingston as The 500 Millions of the Begum 1879 US; vt The Begum's Fortune 1880 UK) (based on a manuscript by Andre LAURIE);Lestribulations d'un chinois en Chine (1879; trans anon as The Tribulations of a Chinaman in China 1879 US);La maison a vapeur (1879-80; trans Agnes D. Kingston as The Steam House 1881 UK); La Jangada (1881; trans W.J.Gordon as The Giant Raft 1881 US);Le rayon vert (1882; trans J. Cotterell as The Green Ray 1883 UK);Keraban-le-tetu (1883; trans J. Cotterell as The Headstrong Turk 1883-4 US);L'etoile du Sud (1884; trans anon as TheVanished Diamond: A Tale of South Africa 1885 UK; vt The Southern Star 1885 US) (based on a manuscript by Laurie);L'Archipel en feu (1884; trans anon as The Archipelago on Fire 1885 US);Mathias Sandorf (1885; trans anon 1885 US);Un billet de loterie: Le Numero 9672 (1886; trans Laura E.Kendall as Ticket No. "9672" 1886 US);Nord contre sud (1887; trans Laura E. Kendall as Texar's Vengeance, or North Versus South 1887 US);Le chemin de France (1887; trans anon as The Flight to France 1888 UK);Famille-sans-nom (1889; trans anon as A Family without a Name 1889US);Sans dessus dessous (1889; trans anon as Topsy-Turvy 1890 US; vt Purchase of the North Pole: A Sequel to "From the Earth to the Moon" 1891 UK);Cesar Cascabel (1890; trans A. Estoclet 1890 US);Mistress Branican (1891; trans A. Estoclet 1891 US);Le Chateau des Carpathes (1892; trans anon as Castle of the Carpathians 1893 UK);Claudius Bombarnac (1892; trans anon 1894 UK);P'tit-bonhomme (1893; trans anon as Foundling Mick 1895 UK); Les mirifiques aventures de Maitre Antifer (1894; trans anon as CaptainAntifer 1895 UK);L'ile a helice (1895; trans William J. Gordon as Floating Island, or The Pearl of the Pacific 1896 UK);Clovis Dardentor (1896; trans anon 1897 UK);Face au drapeau (1896; trans Mrs Cashel Hoey as For the Flag 1897 UK; vt Facing the Flag 1897 US);Le Sphinx des glaces (1897; trans MrsCashel Hoey as An Antarctic Mystery 1898 UK) (also published with its source [by Poe] as The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and Le Sphinx des glaces [omni 1975 UK]);Le superbe Orenoque ("The Superb Orinoco") (1898);Le testament d'un excentrique (1899; trans anon as The Will of anEccentric 1900 US);Seconde patrie (1900; trans Cranstoun Metcalfe in 2 vols as Their Island Home 1924 US and Castaways of the Flag: The Final Adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson 1924 US);Les histoires deJean-Marie Cabidoulin (1901; trans I.O. Evans as The Sea Serpent: The Yarns of Jean Marie Cabidoulin 1967 UK);Le village aerien (1901; trans I.O. Evans as The Village in the Tree Tops 1964 UK);Les freres Kip ("The Kip Brothers") (1902);Bourses de voyage ("Travelling Grants") (1904);Un drame en Livonie (1904; trans I.O. Evans as A Drama in Livonia 1967 UK);L'invasion de la mer ("The Invasion of the Sea") (1905);Le phare dubout du monde (1905; trans anon as The Lighthouse at the End of the World 1923 UK);Le volcan d'or (1906; trans I.O. Evans as The Golden Volcano 1962UK);L'agence Thompson and Co. (1907; trans I.O. Evans in 2 vols as The Thompson Travel Agency 1965 UK);La Chasse au meteore (1908; trans Frederick Lawton as The Chase of the Golden Meteor 1909 UK);Le pilote du Danube (1908; trans I.O. Evans as The Danube Pilot 1967 UK);Les naufrages du Jonathan (1909; trans I.O. Evans as The Survivors of the "Jonathan" 1962 UK) (partly by Michel Verne);Hier et demain (coll 1910; trans I.O.Evans as Yesterday and Tomorrow 1965 UK);Le secret de Wilhelm Storitz (1910; trans I.O.Evans as The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz 1963 UK);L'etonnante aventure de la mission Barsac (1919; trans I.O. Evans as The Barsac Mission 1960 US) (mostly by Michel Verne).L'epave du Cynthia (1885; trans anon as The Waif of the "Cynthia" 1886 US) (almost all by Laurie) is an interesting novel not among the Voyages extraordinaires.

   About the author: Jules Verne (1940) by Kenneth ALLOTT; Jules Verne: une lecture politique (1971; trans as The Political andSocial Ideas of Jules Verne 1972 UK) by Jean Chesneaux; Jules Verne (1973; trans Roger Greaves as Jules Verne: A Biography 1976 UK) by Jean Jules-Verne, JV's grandson, particularly valuable for its bibliography;Jules Verne: Inventor of Science Fiction (1978) by Peter Costello; Jules Verne: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1980) by Edward J. Gallager, Judith Mistichelli and John A. Van Eerde; Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Novel (1988) by Arthur B. Evans;Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Self (1990) by William Butcher; The Mask of the Prophet: The Extraordinary Fictions of Jules Verne (1990) by Andrew Martin.

   See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; ASTRONOMY; ATLANTIS; AUSTRIA; BENELUX; BIOLOGY; BOYS' PAPERS; CHILDREN'S SF; DIME-NOVEL SF; DISCOVERY AND INVENTION; DYSTOPIAS; EVOLUTION; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FRANCE; GOTHIC SF; HISTORY OF SF; ISLANDS; LOST WORLDS; MACHINES; MOON; MUSIC; NEAR FUTURE; OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM; POWER SOURCES; PREDICTION; SCIENTIFIC ERRORS; SPACE FLIGHT; SPACESHIPS; TECHNOLOGY; TRANSPORTATION; UNDER THE SEA; WEAPONS.