Since science, as we now understand the term, did not really begin until the seventeenth century, surely science fiction cannot have existed any earlier.
Between and , this very bourgeois French gentleman — Verne was the son of a lawyer, and his only paid employment outside literature was a brief spell as a stockbroker — wrote 65 books grouped by bibliographers under the heading Les Voyages Extraordinaires. A handful of those books, all from the first dozen or so of those 42 years, are known, at least by name, to any person literate in modern Western culture.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was made into a fine early special-effects movie by Disney in Some of the later novels, including that one, were not translated into English. The fault here does not lie entirely with Verne. Because the books were considered to be for children, and therefore to have no literary importance, translators felt free to abridge, amend, or even rewrite them.
Translation work was in any case and still is badly paid and otherwise unrewarding. Furthermore, the metric system Verne used was unfamiliar to his British and American translators, so that the conscientious calculations he sometimes included in his text were, when not omitted altogether, frequently garbled in English-language editions, leading the more attentive reader to think that Verne was careless or innumerate. With the growth of college English departments in recent decades, and the acceptance of science fiction as a proper field of study for literary theorists and cultural historians, some salvage work has been undertaken.
This is the context for the publication by Wesleyan University Press of four new English translations of Verne novels, with annotations and introductions by scholars. These four translations came out between December and November , and apparently they will be followed by others. T he Mysterious Island was published in installments through and It was translated into English twice in the s, and all the other English-language editions available prior to this one from Wesleyan were derived from the first of those translations, usually much abridged.
This Wesleyan edition of January is a completely new and full translation of the French text, and includes the original illustrations as do the other three books in this series. The Mysterious Island builds on the same idea.
All are trapped by various circumstances in Richmond, Virginia in March During a tremendous storm they make their escape from the city in a balloon, which is then swept far across the world to the empty wastes of the southwest Pacific.
The balloon fails at last, and the five are washed up on an uncharted island. They are Americans, though, and this was the beginning of the era — it ended with the Apollo program — when the U.
When they need to remove a rock barrier to lower the water level of a lake, Smith manufactures nitroglycerin. The various chemical processes are carefully described. He actually does so.
The youngest of the castaways, a boy of fifteen, is a walking encyclopedia of botany and zoology, so that our heroes encounter few difficulties in provisioning themselves, and in seeking out construction materials like those juncus fibers. It is all a bit implausible, and one finds oneself wondering whether people in their situation, and of their energy and abilities, would not bend their efforts to escaping from the island rather than making it a home away from home.
Nemo dies; the island explodes; the castaways are rescued by a passing vessel out of one of the subplots, and all ends happily. The translators, it must be acknowledged, were right: this is kid fiction, or at best young-adult fiction. Jules Verne hit his stride as a writer after meeting publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who nurtured many of the works that would comprise the author's Voyages Extraordinaires.
Often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction," Verne wrote books about a variety of innovations and technological advancements years before they were practical realities. Although he died in , his works continued to be published well after his death, and he became the second most translated author in the world. Verne was born on February 8, , in Nantes, France, a busy maritime port city. There, Verne was exposed to vessels departing and arriving, sparking his imagination for travel and adventure.
While attending boarding school, he began to write short stories and poetry. Afterward, his father, a lawyer, sent his oldest son to Paris to study law. While he tended to his studies, Verne found himself attracted to literature and the theater. He began frequenting Paris' famed literary salons, and befriended a group of artists and writers that included Alexandre Dumas and his son. After earning his law degree in , Verne remained in Paris to indulge his artistic leanings.
The following year, his one-act play Broken Straws Les Pailles rompues was performed. Verne continued to write despite pressure from his father to resume his law career, and the tension came to a head in , when Verne refused his father's offer to open a law practice in Nantes.
In , Verne met and fell in love with Honorine de Viane, a young widow with two daughters. In , Verne's father arranged for him to practice law in Nantes, but Verne decided to pursue life as a writer instead. Verne's time in Paris coincided with a period of intense political instability. The French Revolution of broke out soon after Verne moved to the city to study law. Verne managed to stay out of the political upheaval during those years, but his writing later explored themes of governmental strife.
In his novella The Count of Chanteleine: A Tale of the French Revolution , Verne wrote about the struggles of ordinary and noble French people during the French Revolutionary Wars, while his novel The Flight to France recounted the wartime adventures of an army captain in In May , Verne was the best man at his best friend's wedding in Amiens, a city in northern France.
During the wedding festivities, Verne lodged with the bride's family and met Honorine de Viane Morel, the bride's sister. He developed a crush on Morel, a year-old widow with two kids, and in January , with the permission of her family, the two married.
There was one big problem. Verne had been writing plays for Paris theaters, but being a playwright didn't pay the bills. Verne needed a respectable income to support Morel and her daughters. Morel's brother offered Verne a job at a brokerage, and he accepted, quitting his theater job to become a stockbroker at the Paris Bourse.
Writing was never too far from Verne's mind, though. He woke up early each day to write and research for several hours before heading to his day job. Modern readers probably think of Verne's most famous books as distinct entities, but his adventure novels were actually part of a series.
In the early s, Verne met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, an established publisher and magazine editor who helped Verne publish his first novel , Five Weeks in a Balloon. This novel served as the beginning of Voyages Extraordinaires, a series of dozens of books written by Verne and published by Hetzel. Most of these novels—including famous titles like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea —appeared in installments in Hetzel's magazine before being published in book form.
Starting in , Verne agreed to write two volumes per year for Hetzel, a contract that provided him with a steady source of income for decades. Between and , Verne published 54 novels about travel, adventure, history, science, and technology for the Voyages Extraordinaires series.
He worked closely with Hetzel on characters, structure, and plot until the publisher's death in Verne's writing wasn't limited to this series, however; in total, he wrote 65 novels over the course of his life, though some would not be published until long after his death. Measure content performance.
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