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(29) Robur-le-Conquérant (Robur the Conqueror, aka The Clipper of the Clouds, 1886) (1 volume) 59K words


The 29th Extraordinary Voyage is the second one featuring air travel, after "Five Weeks in a Balloon" (I'm not counting the space travel ones here). It's a different kind of air vehicle, though: heavier than air. Much superior to a balloon, if the fierce members of the Weldon Institute will forgive me for saying so.


First read or reread?: First read for me, although many years ago I read the sequel (Master of the World).


What is it about?: Strange events are occurring around the world, involving lights, sounds and flags that are hung in seemingly impossible to get to locations. At the meeting of the Weldon Institute in Philadelphia, PA, Uncle Prudent (President) and Phil Evans (Secretary) and the membership debate about whether their balloon the Goahead, should have its directional screw located in the front or the back. A man called Robur interrupts and takes over their meeting; he insists that to master the skies, a flying vehicle must be heavier than air. His remarks infuriate the balloonists and after their meeting, Uncle Prudent and Phil are kidnapped and taken on an around the world trip in the Albatross, Robur's heavier than air "Clipper of the Clouds".


The first chapter sets up the mystery, and I was amused to see a mention to the events of "The Begum's Millions". Most of Verne's novels are standalones, and it's unusual, but not unknown, to find a reference to another of his stories.

Then we are introduced to the Weldon Institute, a boisterous club set up in Philadelphia by fans of balloons and other aerostats, who are obsessed with building a practical lighter-than-air craft than can be used for air travel without being subject to the whims of the wind. The club reminded me of the Baltimore Gun Club in "From the Earth to the Moon", filled with people who are so exceedingly devoted to their technological goals that they become a bit comical.

We also get one of those Vernian info dumps, this time about the history of the human efforts to conquer the air, going up to the 1880s when this novel was published.

The meeting of the Weldon Institute is interrupted by an arrogant stranger called Robur, who addresses the assembly, enraging the honorable members by ridiculing lighter-than-air crafts and claiming that the future of air travel is in heavier-than-air vehicles.

He is almost lynched by the crowd, and that night, in revenge, he kidnaps the president and the secretary of the Weldon Institute, along with the president's servant, and spirits them away on board the Albatross, a heavier-than-air ship that he has secretly built.

The Albatross is basically a ship where lift and thrust are supplied by a group of spinning rotors. A kind of very large proto-helicopter, one could say. Keeping the pair of irascible fans of lighter-than-air craft on board against their will, Robur takes them on a trip all over the world, taunting them as much as he can in the process.

Apparently, this lighter-than-air vs heavier-than-air debate was a real thing back then, and the fact that we have never heard about it is a testimony to how superior heavier-than-air craft turned out to be in the end, making any debate unnecessary. But, at the time, lighter-than-air craft had achieved more success. Once again, Verne was on the right side of the technological debate (ever the visionary). In fact, Verne was an active member of the Society for the Encouragement of Aerial Locomotion by Means of Heavier-Than-Air Machines, recently created in Paris.

This illustrates how, if Verne was a science fiction writer, he was a near-future kind of SF writer. He normally did not take big leaps of fancy, instead basing his ideas on technology that already existed or at least looked achievable based on current knowledge. He had a curious mind and looked ahead, but he was not a prophet. As a curiosity, a few years earlier Verne had been thinking about writing a novel where the heroes of several of his previous novels make an air trip in a heavier-than-air machine, but he abandoned it when another French writer, Alphonse Brown, who funnily enough was heavily influenced by Verne, published a novel with a similar premise (The Conquest of the Air, 1875).

I found this novel quite interesting from a proto-science-fiction point of view, but it's not one that you can normally find on any list of Verne's best novels. So... why is that?

Well, the novel has a few problems. For example, none of the characters are very sympathetic. The two kidnapped members of the Weldon Institute, who are the audience surrogates and discover the airship at the same time as the reader, are such fanatics about lighter-than-air crafts that they are unable to appreciate the wonders they are witnessing. They want to escape at any cost and, if possible, destroy the ship. Robur has his moments, but often he is not very sympathetic either. What, aside from his own arrogance and egotism, moves him to kidnap two fans of a technology that has been rendered obsolete by Robur's invention, just to rub their faces in it and gloat at them? It's implied that he does not intend to ever release them, too.

It is also fair to say that at times the novel becomes a travelogue. We are treated to descriptions of several parts of the world as the Albatross flies over them, and I can see how this may be boring for some readers. I think that the modern readers who complain about this are failing to put themselves in the place of a 19th century reader, though, and missing the sense of wonder of the whole thing. I didn't find it boring, and it was a short, quick read. There are also some adventures involved, related to the involuntary guests' attempts to escape and to other set pieces. These include the hunt of a whale for sport, which was probably thrilling to contemporary readers but now offends many readers.

Speaking of offending modern sensitivities, the servant of the president of the club is one of those comic-relief figures that Verne sometimes has. Cowardly, dumb and ridiculous. Add the fact that he is also black, and you can understand how this has aged like milk, as illustrated by the enraged reviews in Goodreads.

All this is valid criticism, but certainly not deal-breakers for me. Perhaps a bigger criticism is that it's too similar to another Verne novel. If you are familiar with "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas", you'll recall that it involves three people (one of them a servant) taken more or less against their will on board a marvellous vehicle owned by a mysterious maverick engineer, who takes them on a trip all around the world. That describes this novel perfectly too, except with an airship instead of a submarine. Some of the details are different, yes, but this still feels a bit derivative because of the similitude with the earlier, more famous novel.

Having said all that, after reading this novel and the user reviews at Goodreads, I felt this was underrated. I'm not saying I would put it in a Verne top ten, but I found it worth reading. I enjoyed how ridiculous all the characters were, in their own ways, and I could appreciate some of the sheer joy and wonder of it, even though it's harder for us modern readers, for whom air travel is a matter of routine.

This novel has a darker and better-known sequel, "Master of The World", published nearly twenty years later, near the end of Verne's life. But there will be time to comment on that when I get to that one. For the moment it's enough to say that "Robur the Conqueror" tells a complete, standalone story.

By the way, this was published in 1886, a year that some Verne scholars mark as the start of the second part of his career, when he began publishing darker works (although this is just a trend, it does not mean that all his work became dark after this point). Two traumatic events affected Verne's life that year. While he was doing revisions for this novel, Verne was shot in the leg by a mentally-disturbed nephew, giving him a permanent limp. Also, Hetzel, the editor who had been so influential on his work, died that year, being succeeded by his son.

As I have mentioned in other reviews, I'm reading these in Spanish, but if you want to read it in English, it is worth seeking a modern translation when possible (in this case, Alex Kirstukas' 2017 translation for Wesleyan University Press), because many contemporary English translations are questionable.


Enjoyment factor: Yes, I enjoyed it. I found it more dynamic than many contemporary reviewers, and the concept is great, if you can put yourself in the place of these 19th century characters. The depiction of one of these characters, judged by modern standards, can only be called racist, but then again reading such old literature is a chance to discover how standards and social attitudes have changed throughout the centuries, a chance to travel in time, more authentic than anything offered by modern historical fiction.


Next up: North Against South, aka Texar's Revenge