Reading Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires

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Originally Posted by JSWolf

Nicely written reviews. Thank you.

You are welcome! I hope they are useful to someone wanting to choose a Verne novel to read.

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(42) Face au drapeau (Facing the Flag, 1896) (1 volume) 55K words


The 42nd Extraordinary Voyage takes us to a small island in the Antilles, although it's not a travel story, but a techno-thriller and a cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advance, when it comes to the creation of more powerful weapons. With this novel, along with "The Begum's Millions", Verne anticipated the creation of weapons of mass destructions.


First read or reread?: A reread for me. I read it a long time ago and enjoyed it, without it being one of my favorites.


What is it about?: Thomas Roch, a French inventor, claims he has designed the Fulgurator, a weapon so powerful that "the state which acquired it would become absolute master of earth and ocean." However, because of his unreasonable demands and refusal to demonstrate the power of his invention, he is unable to sell his idea to France and, later, to any other government. Losing his grip on sanity, Roch becomes increasingly bitter, megalomaniacal and paranoid. Eventually, the United States Government imprisons him at a luxurious asylum in New Bern, North Carolina. There, his caretaker is a man called Gaydon, who is secretly a French engineer called Simon Hart, trying to prevent the secret of Roch's discovery from being lost. As the novel starts, a wealthy foreigner calling himself the "Count d'Artigas" visits the asylum and its famous inmate, with suspicious intentions.


After "Propeller Island", which had elements of interest but also some rather dull parts, Verne is back to his usual narrative good form. This is a short and fast novel (fast for a Victorian era novel, anyway). Most of it is told in first person from the point of view of the engineer Simon Hart, kidnapped along with the inventor Thomas Roch. Amid a sensation of constant danger, the story moves at a nice pace.

The novel is linked to a part of Verne's later career characterized by dark, misanthropic themes and pessimism about scientific progress. Later, we will have more examples of this, like his novel "Master of the World". However, as I have mentioned in other reviews, you can't really say "during this period, Verne's novels are pessimistic". It's a theme that appears occasionally in his work, more often in the later part of his career, but we have clear examples of it as early as "The Begum's Millions", and he also wrote traditionally optimistic tales later on.

Another point I'd like to make is that "pessimistic" does not mean by any means that this story is a downer and everything in it is depressing. Just that this gleeful belief in science and human resourcefulness that permeates a lot of his work is replaced by a more wary, cautionary attitude. I personally enjoy his "optimistic" stories more, but this was a good read.

In the novel, we find elements that Verne had explored in previous works: the use of submarines ("Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"), ballistics ("From the Earth to the Moon", "The Begum's Millions"), patriotism (playing a larger role here than in any previous Verne novel), the enigmatic person using a figured name (Nemo, Robur, Mathias Sandorf), madness ("Mistress Branican" and some later novels with mad scientists, like "Master of the World", "The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz" and "The Barsac Mission"), volcanism ("Journey to the Center of the Earth" and several others), etc.

Despite all the recurrent Vernian themes, I feel the author kept things fresh throughout his career by occasionally trying genres and plots different from the ones usually associated with him. "Facing the Flag" certainly did not invent the mad inventor (see Frankenstein, for example), but it's one of the early examples (curiously, this novel was published the same year as "The Island of Doctor Moreau" by H. G. Wells, then at the beginning of his career). But beyond that, I think the James Bond stories owe a lot to "Facing the Flag".

As a curiosity, after the publication of this book, Verne and his publisher were sued by French chemist Eugène Turpin, inventor of the Melinite, who recognized himself in the character of Roch. To be fair, Turpin was not a madman, and had not gone around the world offering his invention to the highest bidder (only to France). Nevertheless, I'm glad the lawsuit was unsuccessful, because if writers are not allowed to be inspired by real people, without using their names, we would lose a lot of novels. Another possible inspiration for Roch was Alfred Nobel, inventor among other things of the dynamite, who later regretted having brought such destructive force into the world (Nobel actually was accused of high treason against France for selling ballistite to Italy).


Enjoyment factor: I enjoyed this. Quite short, and I'm glad Verne was back to form after a rather boring novel "Propeller Island". As I said, I prefer Verne novels with more optimistic themes. They capture my imagination better. But this one was good and entertaining. It's not exactly science fiction, but I would call it a Victorian near-future techno-thriller.


Next up: Clovis Dardentor

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(43) Clovis Dardentor (Clovis Dardentor, 1896) (1 volume) 58K words


The 43rd Extraordinary Voyage takes us to the Mediterranean Sea and the north of Africa. The locations more extensively described are the city of Palma de Mallorca in the Balearic Islands, and the province of Oran, in Algeria.


First read or reread?: First read for me.


What is it about?: Two recently orphaned cousins (Jean Taconnat & Marcel Lornans) are traveling from Cette, France to Oran, Algeria to enlist in the French army (5th Chaussers d'Afrique). On their trip across the Mediterranean, they meet the Désirandelle family and their friend Clovis Dardentor. Dardentor is accompanying the family on their trip to Oran, where the son (Agathocle) is to meet a girl (Louise Elissane) whom it was arranged long ago that he would marry. A discussion on board ship gives Jean Taconnat the idea that either he or his cousin should save the life of Clovis (from fight, flood or flame), so that legally they can be adopted. On a tour of the Algerian countryside, Jean waits for an opportunity to save Clovis, and Marcel becomes enamored with Louise.


Rather than an intense adventure, this novel is a gentle, character-based comedy. There are a few moments of adventure and danger (it wouldn't be Verne otherwise), but mostly it describes a sightseeing trip, first by ship through the Mediterranean and later by land inside Algeria.

So this is part travelogue, part light comedy based on the dialogues and the personalities of the characters, some of them eccentric, some good-humored and some rather ridiculous. It is more character-oriented than most Verne novels, which tend to be more plot-oriented.

There is a romance, which, for all of Verne's reputation for writing about men going on adventures, happens with some frequency in his works ("The Green Ray", "The Archipelago on Fire", "The Lottery Ticket", "Mathias Sandorf"...). As I commented in my review of "The Green Ray", writing about romance is not Verne's forte, so it's a good thing that the emphasis is more on the comedy, and the travel descriptions/adventure elements.

It's not a novel that takes itself very seriously, and it's another example of Verne's pleasant sense of humor, with a slightly burlesque tone in the narration and dialogues. For other examples of Verne novels with an element of comedy you could check "Godfrey Morgan" and "Captain Antifer", among others.

This story was inspired by two plays, Verne's own one-act comedy "Un fils adoptif", and a four-act comedy titled "Le Voyage de M. Perrichon", by Eugène Labiche. Between those two, a lot of the premise of this novel is covered. Even though this is the only one of Verne's novels that is inspired by a play, Verne loved theater. In fact, before starting his career as a novelist, he wrote some plays, with modest success. Later, after making his name with the Extraordinary Voyages, he actually made more money from plays based on his most famous novels than from the novels themselves.

This theatrical influence and the relaxed tone of the narration is shown in the last line of the novel: "But, it will be said, our story ends like a vaudeville. Well, what is it if not a vaudeville, without songs, but with the inevitable finale of marriage?"


Enjoyment factor: Not among my favorites, but not an unpleasant read either. It helps that I enjoy Verne's sense of humor. A few parts might strike some readers as too uneventful. They might ask, what's the point of describing the touristic highlights of Palma de Mallorca? But such is Verne's style, telling his readers about the locations visited in his books so that they, too, may travel with their imaginations. It does get a bit more intense in the interior of Algeria, but one has to admit that the trip here is touristic rather than exploration, and only occasionally there are moments of real danger. If you are looking for a good Verne adventure, you will probably enjoy the next book in the series more than this one.


Next up: An Antarctic Mystery, aka The Sphinx of the Ice Realm

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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allan Poe (1838) 71K words


Verne wrote the 44th book in his Extraordinary Voyages ("An Antarctic Mystery", aka "The Sphinx of the Ice Realm", 1897) as a sequel and homage to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket". In preparation for reading Verne's book, I first read Poe's work, the only novel the American author wrote.


What is it about?: Young Arthur Gordon Pym stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall him, including mutiny, shipwreck and cannibalism. Later, after miraculously surviving, Pym continues his adventures further south, aboard the ship Jane Guy. As they get closer to the South Pole, their ship encounters scheming natives and strange phenomena.


Poe's novel is far from perfect, but it possesses an energy and intensity that kept me glued to my ebook device. In that sense, it reminded me of the best pulp adventure stories from the beginning of the 2oth century. It's a ripping yarn, a real page-turner, with the virtues and flaws of such excessive tales. It has many elements in common with other 19th century adventure stories about sea voyage, but at the same time it's a very personal work, full of Poe's obsessions and terrors.

When published, this novel was not successful, neither critically nor commercially, and Poe himself called it "a very silly book", but at the same time it has influenced and earned the admiration of writers like Herman Melville, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Baudelaire, Henry James, H. P. Lovecraft and Jorge Luis Borges.

The novel is composed of two very different parts, with different tones and only linked by the title character's sea voyages and by a certain self-destructive tendency he has that pushes him into terrible situations.

The first half is a more traditional sea adventure, with mutineers, shipwrecks, privations... but this does not give you an idea of how terrifying, dark, extreme, gruesome and claustrophobic the story is. It's a relentless narration, never giving the characters or the reader a respite. Poe really was very different from Verne. Verne's mind is rational and well-ordered, while Poe's mind is twisted, full of dark corners.

The second part, starting at chapter XIV, is such a sudden change of tack that it leaves some readers disconcerted and disgruntled. The pace here is less frantic and oppressive. It now feels like a 19th century sea exploration story. Poe imitates the non-fiction travel narratives of his century, much like Verne will do later in his own novels, describing the islands the ship visits and giving their coordinates. Poe even gives us a long overview of the Antarctic exploration that had been done at the time, which is something that Verne will also do in his stories of polar exploration.

Of course, beyond a certain point, the Antarctic regions were unknown at the time, a large blank area on the maps. And Poe fills it with his fantasy. The so far realistic story of exploration becomes increasingly fantastic.

And then there's the ending. What an ending. Infuriating, a disconcerting cop-out, unsatisfactory... Yes, it's all that, but also, how memorable and intriguing, suggesting so many things and leaving the reader wondering. Verne would write about it "Who shall continue it? Someone braver than me, someone more willing to enter the domain of impossible things." Twenty years after writing that, Verne must have felt brave enough to make the attempt, and the result was "An Antarctic Mystery" (aka "The Sphinx of the Ice Realm"). But that's a different book, to be discussed elsewhere.

Coming back to Poe's novel: it's too gruesome and truculent. It's not well-structured as a novel, feeling like a fix-up of two novellas, very different in tone. Also, it lacks a proper ending. It is deserving of criticism. But at the same time it's so vivid, its imagery so powerful, that it is still read much after its critics are gone and forgotten.


Enjoyment factor: I enjoyed it a lot. A lot of elements in common with Verne's stories, but at the same time so different...

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(44) Le Sphinx des glaces (An Antarctic Mystery, aka The Sphinx of the Ice Realm, 1897) (2 volumes) 114K words


The 44th Extraordinary Voyage takes place inside the Antarctic Circle, deep into the unexplored regions surrounding the South Pole. It's not the first time the series takes us near the South Pole, since we visited that area in "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas", but in that case it was just a quick visit, taking only a small part of the novel. The Extraordinary Voyages have also taken us deep into the Arctic regions, in "The Adventures of Captain Hatteras". Novels like "The Fur Country" and "César Cascabel" also took us inside the Arctic Circle, but not very deep inside it.

"An Antarctic Mystery" was written as a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket". It is the first out two times that Verne wrote a sequel to a novel by another writer. The second one will be "The Castaways of the Flag", a sequel to Johann Wyss' novel "The Swiss Family Robinson".


First read or reread?: This one is a reread for me. I loved it when I read it as a kid.


What is it about?: In the remote Kerguelen Islands, near the Antarctic Circle, a wealthy American geologist called Mr. Jeorling finishes his studies and takes passage in the ship Halbrane, on its way to Tristan da Cunha. The captain, Len Guy, turns out to be the brother of William Guy, commander of the Jane, the ship whose story is told in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket". To Joerling's surprise, the story told in that book turns out to be true, as a newfound clue allows Captain Len Guy to trace the fate of his brother's lost ship. Through the efforts of Mr. Joerling, the crew of the Halbrane is enticed to make the trip to Antarctica to search for any survivors of the Jane.


Since this is a sequel, the first question that comes to mind is "do I need to read Poe's book to understand this one?" The answer to that question is "no", because Verne gives the reader all the necessary information. In fact, chapter 5 is a detailed summary of the events of Poe's novel. Since I had just read it (see my review), I skimmed through this chapter. Nevertheless, I would recommend reading Poe's novel first, as it is quite a reading experience, and it combines well with Verne's novel to tell a complete epic. Two different styles, but they do complement each other. Besides, having read the first story, it's easier to get invested in the quest to discover what happened and rescue the survivors, if any.

While Verne greatly admired Edgar Poe, as he calls him, he also realized that they were rather different writers. Frustrated by the abrupt, mysterious ending of Pym's narrative, Verne would write "Who shall continue it? Someone braver than me, someone more willing to enter the domain of impossible things." Decades later, Verne took that task upon his shoulders.

So what about those "impossible things", the fantastic, extraordinary events observed by Arthur Gordon Pym near the South Pole? How does the rational Verne deal with that? Well, while most of the story told by Poe according based on Pym's diaries turns out to be true, some of the most fantastic effects described at the end of it are not observed in this sequel, and it is implied that some of them may be hallucinations due to Pym's mental state at that point, or perhaps embellishments added by Poe himself.

This leads some reviewers to complain that Verne takes the magic out of Poe's story. I personally do not share that complaint, because while the vividness and exuberance of Poe's imagination is wonderful, I also appreciate Verne's more rational worldview. This sequel is a great, epic adventure in its own right, and it doesn't lack some extraordinary, although rationally explainable, phenomena.

I do not want to give spoilers here, so I can't discuss the details, but the fate of the Jane's expedition will be discovered and the narrative circle closed. According to Verne's story, while Pym's narration is mostly true, there were things he did not know and we discover Pym's fate, different from what Poe told us. We also meet some survivors from the previous story.

I do not know why, but I really enjoy Verne's stories set in polar regions. I suppose it's because these were truly unexplored regions at the time, and any expedition there is a risky adventure. As modern readers, we know what's in the poles, but at the time Verne was writing they were unknown, so in his stories we never know what we are going to discover there. It's like we are in an alternate Earth, an imaginary geography, where we can be as surprised by what the characters find as the characters themselves.

On the minus side, there are a few details that are hard to believe, like what happened with the dog Tiger in the island Tsalal, and also some unlikely coincidences. Verne does telegraph some of the plot twists, not only here, but also in other novels. Funnily enough, the narrator in this one apologizes to the reader for not having seen an obvious twist before it was revealed, saying that the reader probably realized it much earlier.

This a fast-paced adventure, fast-paced for Verne's 19th century standards, anyway, but it's longer and not as frenetic as Poe's novel. It gives you more time to breathe and enjoy the interaction between the characters. The interest of the adventure is reinforced by the mystery of what happened to the previous expedition, which I, as a reader, was as eager to know as the characters.

By the way, for those reading in English: the original, public domain English translation is abridged, so if you want a complete English translation you should get the 2012 Frederick Paul Walter translation titled "The Sphinx of the Ice Realm" (with Verne's English translations this is a common advice: when possible, get the modern one).


Enjoyment factor: Very high. Verne was close to 70 when he wrote this and, although in the latest part of his career some of his novels were not as fresh and exciting as the ones written in the beginning, he still had a gift to tell great adventure stories, with that personal scientific touch that you don't find in other contemporary adventure writers.


Next up: The Mighty Orinoco

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(45) Le Superbe Orénoque (The Mighty Orinoco, 1898) (2 volumes) 102K words


The 45th Extraordinary Voyage is the second one devoted to a river journey (after "Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon") and also the second one taking place exclusively in South America (again, after "Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon"). We had also been in South America in the novel "In Search of the Castaways", but only for part of it.


First read or reread?: This is a reread for me. This one was not among my favorites when I read it as a kid.


What is it about?: Three Venezuelan geographers, M. Miguel, M. Felipe and M. Varinas argue amongst themselves about the location of the headwaters of Venezuela’s majestic Orinoco River. They decide to make a journey up river to study the situation on the terrain and settle their disagreement. At the same time, Sergeant Martial and his nephew Jean are also making this same journey, although for a different purpose. They are seeking out Jean’s lost father, who they hope may still be found living somewhere far upriver. The two parties meet and travel together and are soon joined by another French party, composed of the explorer Jacques Helloch and his friend the naturalist Germaine Paterne. The parties on their travels upriver overcome many obstacles and dangers, both from natural causes and from a savage band of outlaws. More secrets than the source of the Orinoco will be discovered before this trip is over.


The book starts with the three geographers arguing like stubborn children over the Orinoco. Unlike the sources of the Nile in "Five Weeks in a Balloon", the headwaters of the Orinoco, although located in very remote areas, far from civilization, are not unknown. The disagreement is actually about which river in the upper Orinoco deserves the name Orinoco: the Parágua, commonly known as Orinoco, or one of its several important tributaries. One of the geographers believes that the river Guaviare, connecting the Orinoco to Colombia and the Andes, and surpassing the Parágua in length and water flow, deserves to be considered the main current of the upper Orinoco basin and therefore should rightly be called Orinoco. Another of the trio believes that the river Atabapo, connecting the Orinoco basin with the Amazonas basin through the Rio Negro is the one which deserves the name Orinoco. The third geographer, more orthodox, believes that the river Parágua is the upper Orinoco, as it is commonly believed.

I enjoy this kind of geeky disagreement between scientists, which is not uncommon in Verne's work, while the rest of the characters are thinking "what does this even matter?". The three learned men resolve to travel to San Fernando de Atabapo, where the Parágua, Guaviare and Atabapo join, and settle their argument there.

After the first part of the journey, which is made by steam ship, a longest journey, thousands of kilometers, has to be made by large canoes, guided by expert native boatmen. Continuing the journey with the three geographers, there is an irascible and overprotective old soldier called Sergeant Martial and his young nephew Jean, who are in search of the boy's father, disappeared in the upper Orinoco. These two become the main characters and are keeping a secret of their own.

The group is later completed by two French explorers and the expedition continues the journey along the middle Orinoco and later into the upper Orinoco.

This is one of the Verne books with a strong travelogue element. This is not at all uncommon, but perhaps in this one there's more level of detail than usual. Verne was using as his source the account published by Jean Chaffanjon, who had recently done extensive explorations of the Orinoco basin for several years. In fact, in the novel, the youngster Jean has a copy of that account and uses it as a travel guide to help them in their journey.

The novel has the usual Verne adventures, but the pace for most of the novel is slower than usual, and that's what prevented my younger self from enjoying this one as much as other Verne novels. Reading it now, I appreciate it more for the complete depiction it gives of this mighty river. In this sense, it's a better travelogue than "Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon", probably because of the sources being so thorough. The pacing is slower, however. Because of this, your enjoyment as a reader will depend on how much you appreciate the travelogue element. It's certainly one where I enjoyed following the characters' progress on the map.

I wouldn't want to give you the impression that this is just a travel narrative. There's an adventure, with some twists and surprises (which often are not difficult to guess, since Verne always gives a lot of hints). The novel becomes more focused on that adventure plot towards the end, and there's also a romance. I enjoyed the characters, typical of Verne, and their motivation and associated drama.

I don't bother to comment on this most of the time, since I would just be repeating myself, but this is another example of Verne's 19th century attitudes towards colonialism and race. He makes some comments that would not be acceptable today, like saying some particular tribe was at the lowest end of the human scale (because of them being uncivilized and aggressive), but also depicts indigenous people in positions of authority, managing things in a very capable manner.


Enjoyment factor: I enjoyed it, with some reservations because of the slower pace, at least during the first part. Because of that, it would not be one I would recommend to a novice Verne reader, unless particularly interested in the travelogue element or in the Orinoco river. Beyond that reservation, I didn't lack things to enjoy here.


Next up: The Will of an Eccentric

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(46) Le Testament d'un excentrique (The Will of an Eccentric, 1899) (2 volumes) 119K words


The 46th Extraordinary Voyage takes us to the United States. We had been there in the "From the Earth to the Moon" duet, and in "North Against South", as well as, in passing, in multiple novels of the series. However, this one is particularly devoted to exploring the geography of the country, its cities, states and natural wonders.


First read or reread?: First read for me.


What is it about?: William J. Hypperbone, an eccentric millionaire from Chicago, has left his fortune to the first person to reach the end of "The Noble Game of the United States of America." The game he devised is based upon the board game "The Noble Game of Goose". However, in his version, the game board is the United States, and the players are the tokens who will be sent to different parts of the country according to the whims of the dice, with a limited time to get there. The contestants, chosen randomly among the adult citizens of Chicago, are Max Real (an artist, accompanied by his servant and companion Tommy); Tom Crabbe (a boxer, accompanied and led by his trainer John Milner); Hermann Titbury (a miser and usurer, accompanied by his wife Kate); Harris T. Kymbale (a journalist, on his own); Lizzie Wag (a cashier, accompanied by her friend Jovita Foley); Hodge Urrican (a retired commodore of explosive temper, with his companion Turk, of even more explosive temper) and the mysterious player only known as "XKZ." And who is this mysterious "XKZ" who was added to the game by a codicil to the will? Time and completion of the game will tell.


After a couple of more serious adventure novels, Verne explores again his more light-hearted streak in this book. As he often does when depicting the citizens of the USA, he regards them with a half-admirative, half-ironic frame of mind. Verne clearly admired the energetic, can-do attitude of that country, but at the same time finds the funny side of that attitude, which can become satire when taken too far.

The premise, silly as it sounds, is not a bad setup for a story. Many other later fiction works have followed this idea of an eccentric millionaire who makes his prospective heirs take place in some kind of competition if they want to inherit.

The game here consists in turning the country into a game board inspired by the Game of the Goose, with each state being a square of the board. The late millionaire's solicitor rolls the dice in a public ceremony for each move, and given the stakes, the newspapers and the whole country's attention is on the game. It becomes a great national event, the players become celebrities, and lots of people bet money on the outcome, and some of them help or hinder the players accordingly. There are game obstacles such as the Inn, the Bridge, and Death, but in this case also real-world obstacles. The United States, of course, was a civilized country and there were suitable communications into most places, but at the time (near the end of the 19th century) in some of the remotest corners the train did not always reach and the game could turn more into an adventure, particularly given the time limit to reach the destinations.

Verne obviously uses this premise to describe different parts of the country and the means of transportation available at the time. In 1897, the first Baedecker guidebook for the U.S. was published, and Verne used this as his main source. I have commented in some of these reviews that some of his novels, such as this one, could be described as part adventure and part geography documentary. Of course, there was no TV to compete with books at that time. The danger with this kind of novel is that the descriptions may become boring and slow down the pace of the story. This happens here, but only on a few occasions. Mostly, having multiple characters and moving from one to the other makes for a decent pace. Of course, I'm used to Verne's style and I enjoy it, so a different reader may find these descriptions annoying. It offers a glimpse of the US in a different time, though, so in that sense it's interesting.

In some ways, this story reminded me of "Around the World in Eighty Days", with a bunch of travelers forced to make a race against the clock, but in this case the destinations are chosen randomly, so the characters have no control over them.

One problem of this story is that, for many of the players' trips, there is not much tension, since there's no doubt that the player will be able to reach the desired destination on time. But the colorful nature of some of the players, the ups and downs of the game and the occasional dangers and delays help maintain the interest. Verne, for all that he is normally more focused on the plot than on the characters, could use his characters to good effect when he needed.

We also have a romance between two of the players and a mystery regarding the anonymous player. The final twist is rather unlikely, but as Verne playfully says at the end of the novel, if this seems difficult to believe, the reader should remember that this happened in the United States, where anything and everything is possible.


Enjoyment factor: I enjoyed it, although I wouldn't place it in a top ten Verne list. At this time in his career, Verne, who was already 70, had health problems and would die within a decade, was still producing solid work, although perhaps not always as inspired as in the first part of his career.


Next up: The Castaways of the Flag

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The Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss (1812) 125K words


Jules Verne's 47th novel in the Extraordinary Voyages ("The Castaways of the Flag", 1900) is a sequel and homage to Johann David Wyss' "The Swiss Family Robinson". In preparation for reading Verne's book, I first read Wyss' novel, a classic Robinsonade from the beginning of the 19th century.


What is it about?: A married couple and their four sons leave their home in Switzerland planning to settle half a world away. But things do not turn out as they had expected. The sole survivors of a terrible shipwreck, they wash ashore to learn that the danger has only begun. Their new world will test their courage, cleverness, endurance, and faith as they struggle to survive and create a civilization of their own in the wilderness.


Johann Wyss, a Swiss pastor, originally wrote this book to entertain and instruct his four sons. The book was very successful, and on each new edition he revised the novel, adding new stories. The situation becomes more confusing with the translations. The French translator Isabelle de Montolieu also modified and added new stories, and the most popular English translation (by William H. G. Kingston) is an abridged version of the modified French translation. Things got to a point when there's no such thing as the original, since every single edition seems to be different. So perhaps I should begin by saying the version I read, based on Kingston's translation, is one of the several versions available at Project Gutenberg. I read this one, to be precise: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/3836

I don't know if the experience would be much different with another translation, but age has not been kind to this novel. Verne wrote one other sequel to a different writer's work ("An Antarctic Mystery", aka "The Sphinx of the Ice Realm", which was a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket"), and Poe's style felt quite modern. However, "The Swiss Family Robinson" is missing several things that we take for granted in a novel.

After the shipwreck, the crew leaves the ship, abandoning the Swiss family they had as passengers alone on board. However, this family will be the ones who will survive. After they manage to get to land, they start working on basic survival tasks like obtaining food and finding shelter. They are able to rescue a lot of material and animals from the shipwrecked ship, which helps a lot (the ship had been going to provision a new colony, so it had a lot of useful material).

Now, some modern readers complain about old novels because the characters think or act differently from modern people, but I normally do not mind these things. People killed animals because they had to eat, and they did not have a slaughterhouse to do it for them out of their sight. They tended to be religious and had the values of their time, not of our time. Sometimes the pace is slower in these old novels, and they are not in a rush to tell the story. I'm perfectly fine with that. In fact, in the hands of a competent writer, these stylistic differences can add a certain charm and a feeling of period authenticity to the story. However, this novel is from 1812, earlier than most of my favorite adventure novels of that century, and even for a reader like me it was not easy to enjoy.

I certainly like the basic premise of the story, and in the hands of Verne, Stevenson or any writer like that I would have loved it, but here I had several problems.

First I have to mention the dialogues. More formality than we are used to is to be expected in novels from this period, but to my ear the dialogues here sound awkward and unrealistic. I don't know if it's the original or the translation. but did these people really speak like this?:

I observed to her that I could not but view with alarm the many cares and exertions to be made. ‘In the first place, a journey to the vessel must be made. This is of absolute necessity, at least, if we would not be deprived of the livestock and other useful things, all of which from moment to moment we risk losing by the first heavy sea. What ought we first to resolve on? For example, should not our very first endeavour to be the contriving of a better sort of habitation and a more secure retreat from wild beasts, as well as a separate place for our provisions? I own I am at a loss what to begin first.’

‘Return to the wreck by all means,’ replied my wife, cheerfully. ‘Patience, order and perseverance will help us through all our work, and I agree with you that a visit to the wreck is without doubt our first duty. Come, let us wake the children, and set to work without delay.’

The story is told in first person from the perspective of the father. It soon becomes very episodic. The problem is that the episodes are repetitive and, worse than that, they do not seem to contribute to the advancement of the plot, so that it feels as if at any moment you could skip twenty pages ahead without even noticing it.

The episodes go like this: the characters find some strange plant or animal. Then either the father, who is a human 19th-century version of the Wikipedia and seems to know every obscure trivia about natural history, or Ernest, the most bookish son, identifies it and explain how they can make use of it. If it's an animal, they kill or capture it in order to domesticate it. If it's a plant, they use it to make ink, or oil, or clothes, or any other thing. Rinse and repeat one hundred time. Or perhaps the episode is about them building a new home or a new farm, or a bridge or some other thing.

These episodes can serve for the father to teach the boys some moral lesson or, more often, some trivia about natural history or physical science.

I can see how this was an influence on Verne, who also has a didactic element in many of his stories and also wrote about shipwrecked people making a life for themselves and prospering through their hard work and ingenuity ("The Mysterious Island", "Two Years' Vacation"...). However, Verne was a gifted storyteller. Wyss, not so much. The episodes do not build on each other to tell a story, and that, and their repetitive nature, makes them a bit dull and lacking in tension.

The premise, and the idea of the family with four boys isolated on a desert island and working together to survive and prosper is fun, but the execution is less fun.

The fauna and flora of the island is completely unrealistic. We are talking about an island in the Indian Ocean, near the equator, but whatever animal or plant you can think of (and many you can't think of) are there. Seriously, anything goes. From monkeys to lions, from penguins to elephants, from seals to boas constrictor or weirder animals I had never heard of, they are all there in this island. Sometimes it's a single exemplar of the species, but every kind of animal seems to be there. Presumably, the author had access to books about world fauna but he, like his audience, did not have the slightest idea about what kind of animals one might expect on an island near the equator in the Indian Ocean. In that he also reminds me of Verne, who did have some unlikely fauna sometimes, but Wyss really takes it to the extreme.

The characters all have their own personality, but they do not talk and interact in a realistic manner. Also, they are very industrious and have a lot of ingenuity, but they do not do some very basic things one would expect of shipwrecked people. For example, after ten years in the island, they have only explored their more immediate surrounding. They have no idea about the shape of the island, or even if it's really an island. Seriously, for all they know there could be a town on the other side of the island, or they could be in a continent.

Maybe this works as a collection of tales to tell your children at night, where the repetitive nature does not matter, and where you can introduce some lessons, but the art of storytelling has left this behind, and I can't really recommend this novel, unless you are interested in the history of adventure literature. But I can't recommend it if you are just looking for entertainment.

I don't like being so harsh, and I can't help wondering if this is the victim of a bad translation (I love Verne, for example, but I hear he had some bad English translations). But as far as this translated version of "The Swiss Family Robinson" goes, I can't recommend it. Thankfully I now have the Verne sequel to enjoy. I have no doubt it will be better.


Enjoyment factor: Sadly, I didn't enjoy this one as I would have liked. There's not much of a plot. The premise is quite good, however. The family togetherness and the perseverance, ingenuity and hard work of the characters made it tolerable.


Note: checking other versions in Project Gutenberg, I found this one which seems to be in a less awkward English than Kingston's translation. It also has more plot coming from Isabelle de Montolieu French version, including natives. Verne's continuation does not have these natives, but nevertheless the reader might find this version of "The Swiss Family Robinson" more accessible: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/11703

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by db105

The Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss (1812) 125K words


Jules Verne's 47th novel in the Extraordinary Voyages ("The Castaways of the Flag", 1900) is a sequel and homage to Johann David Wyss' "The Swiss Family Robinson". In preparation for reading Verne's book, I first read Wyss' novel, a classic Robinsonade from the beginning of the 19th century.

...
Note: checking other versions in Project Gutenberg, I found this one which seems to be in a less awkward English than Kingston's translation. It also has more plot coming from Isabelle de Montolieu French version, including natives. Verne's continuation does not have these natives, but nevertheless the reader might find this version of "The Swiss Family Robinson" more accessible: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/11703

I'm really enjoying this review thread.

Wyss's book is from 1812, but has an older stylistic feel to it. The translation and edits can make a huge difference. I have the Signet classics version which uses a translator who also has several novels of his own. I suspect it's closer to a retelling than a pure translation. I suspect that Swiss Family Robinson is one of those books that is best enjoyed as a child. If you think about it, it has similarities to some of those never ending children series, which makes sense given that it started as bed time stories for his kids and if I remember correctly was put together by one of his sons.

[Little.Egret]

Captain Marryat read Swiss Family Robinson and then produced MasterMan Ready on the basis "I can do better than that"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast...of_the_Pacific. Link to Gutenberg

Better animals but 1841 is long pre-Darwin so "how wonderful is God's special creation to suit this island" and a sermon about Masterman Ready sacrifice of his life

[db105]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Captain Marryat read Swiss Family Robinson and then produced MasterMan Ready on the basis "I can do better than that"

I see how one might think that after reading Swiss Family Robinson.

I need to read something by Captain Marryat at some point.

[db105]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

If you think about it, it has similarities to some of those never ending children series, which makes sense given that it started as bed time stories for his kids

Yes, when I read that, it made sense to me, because it doesn't feel like a novel. It doesn't have those lot term plot threads that you normally expect in a novel. It's very episodic, based on random encounters.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by db105

I see how one might think that after reading Swiss Family Robinson.

I need to read something by Captain Marryat at some point.

The obvious recommendation is Mr. Midshipman Easy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Midshipman_Easy

[db105]

(47) Seconde Patrie (The Castaways of the Flag, aka Second Fatherland, 1900) (2 volumes) 118K words


The 47th Extraordinary Voyage is a sequel to Johann Wyss' novel "The Swiss Family Robinson". It's a story about sailing and castaways, but also about the founding of a colony. It's the second and last Verne novel written as a sequel to a work by another writer (the first was "An Antarctic Mystery", a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket").

Be careful if reading an English version, because the novel was initially translated as two separate books, the first one titled "Their Island Home" and the second "The Castaways of the Flag". Later editions included the whole novel with the title "The Castaways of the Flag" or "Second Fatherland". Therefore, if you get an older book titled "The Castaways of the Flag" you may be getting only the second part of this Verne novel. That's the case, for example, with the free version of "The Castaways of the Flag" available at Project Gutenberg: it's only the second half. If your version has 32 chapters and begins in the island of New Switzerland, with the arrival of the British ship Licorne (Unicorn), then you are reading the complete Verne novel. If your version has 16 chapters and begins with a chapter called "The Castaways", on a boat with a group of castaways at sea, then you only have the second half.


First read or reread?: First read for me.


What is it about?: The story begins by retelling the last chapter of "The Swiss Family Robinson", with the arrival of the Unicorn, a British corvette commanded by Lieutenant Littlestone, whose commission includes the exploration of the waters in which New Switzerland is situated. No longer isolated from the rest of humanity, the former castaways intend to keep living on their island, which has become their home, and start a colony there. For that, some of the members of the family will travel to Europe, while the rest remain on New Switzerland to complete the exploration of the island and prepare it to receive new colonists.


First, I have to say that reading "The Swiss Family Robinson" is not required to understand this novel. Just as he did in "An Antarctic Mystery", Verne gives the reader all the information needed to follow the story. In fact, chapters 4 and 5 of this novel are an extended summary of the events told in "The Swiss Family Robinson". In the case of "An Antarctic Mystery", I recommended reading the Poe novel first, just for reading pleasure. In this case, I don't necessarily recommend reading "The Swiss Family Robinson" first, since I did not enjoy it that much (see my review). But that's just my taste, and your mileage may vary.

Like what happened with Poe's novel in "An Antartic Mystery", Verne presents here "The Swiss Family Robinson" as a real, non-fiction book, based on the journals of Jean Zermatt (the father of the family originally stranded in New Switzerland).

I mentioned in my review of "The Swiss Family Robinson" that I expected the Verne sequel to be better, and it was. Mainly, it was a relief that instead of a collection of random encounters, we have here a traditional novel, with a plot, characters who make long-term projects and carry them out in a logical manner.

The first half of the novel starts with the arrival and departure of the Licorne, and then it involves the original castaways and their new friends the Wolstons preparing New Switzerland to receive more colonists. This part was OK, but it lacked the spark of the best Verne stories, mainly because a story about castaways, where survival is at stake, naturally has more tension than a story about former castaways who have rejoined human civilization and are now working on projects like making a new canal to improve irrigation in order to help feed a future colony. Of course, Verne had already told stories about castaways from the beginning (see "The Mysterious Island", "Two Years' Vacation" and, on a lighter note, "Godfrey Morgan"), but this post-castaways situation is more low-key compared to that.

Fortunately, we move on to an exploration trip to discover the layout of the island, something that inexplicably had not been done in "The Swiss Family Robinson", despite the castaways being there for twelve years. This part was more interesting, including the attempt to ascend the highest peak of the central mountain range, although this is still not the heart of the novel.

The discovery of a group of hostile... well, not "natives", since they are newly-arrived to the island, so let's call them "savages", as the novel does, seeks to add tension to the story. This plot element felt a bit too trope-ish to me, the easy way to add danger on a desert island. Also forced, because, where had these savages come from? If it was from a nearby island, how is it that they had not discovered and colonized New Switzerland, a large and fertile island, much earlier? And if, as the novel suggests, they came from far away and had made a very long canoe trip, how come the group was so numerous?

Then, the second half of the novel, concentrating more on the characters who had left the island to go to Europe, turns out to be the most interesting. The original title of the novel translates to "Second Homeland", and I thought the English title ("The Castaways of the Flag") made reference to the original castaways on New Switzerland, with the "flag" being the banner they had flying at the islet on Deliverance Bay. However, it turns out we get another group of castaways, and the Flag is the name of the ship where there's a mutiny resulting in these characters being abandoned on a boat. Talk about bad luck, some of them becoming castaways for a second time!

I found this part of the story very enjoyable, compensating for the more laid-back beginning.

One thing I was curious about was whether Verne would retcon the surprising variety of animals on New Switzerland. He does not, although he places less emphasis on that. Of course, just like in Wyss' novel, the attitudes towards hunting and killing animals is 19th century rather than modern. This book was published in 1900, almost forty years after "Five Weeks in a Balloon", but Verne's attitude in that sense has not really changed during that time. This can be shocking for modern readers, but it's also authentic. The idea of protecting endangered species would have been an anachronism.

The same can be said about attitudes towards the "savages". The ones in this novel are depicted as an uncivilized, hostile enemy. Of course, it makes sense for the characters to defend themselves, but the attitude towards them is shown by how they keep shooting at the savages even after they have been defeated and are in retreat. Not they way it would have been written today, but it was the prevalent worldview at the time, even for an otherwise humanist writer.


Enjoyment factor: I did enjoy it. I thought the first part lacked some spark, and wondered if maybe it was a natural decline because of the author's old age, but it got better, and ended up being an entertaining adventure novel.


Next up: The Village in the Treetops

[db105]

(48) Le Village aérien (The Village in the Treetops, 1901) (1 volume) 53K words


The 48th Extraordinary Voyage takes us to Central Africa, where we hadn't been since... well, since "Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen", as I'm not counting the quick visits in "Robur the Conqueror" and "Captain Antifer". More recently than that, we travelled to the northern coast of Africa in "Clovis Dardentor" and to South Africa in "The Vanished Diamond". By the way, this is the first book in the series published in the 20th century (remember that 1900 was still the 19th century). When he published this, Verne was 73 years old and would only live four more years. Despite his failing health, he was still working hard. After this one, there would be six more novels in the series published in his lifetime, and another eight more posthumously.


First read or reread?: Reread. The first time I read it, I wasn't too impressed with this one.


What is it about?: In the heart of Africa, in the plains near Lake Chad, a stampede of wild elephants devastates an ivory hunting expedition. A group of survivors, including the Frenchman Max Huber, the American John Cort, their guide Khamis and a native boy whom they had saved, find themselves limited to their own resources. They decide their best option to get back alive to the French Congo is crossing the impenetrable forest to their south. Inside the forest, they will have several adventures and find a hidden civilization.


For two thirds of the book, this is a conventional travelling-through-Africa jungle adventure. I have no complaints about this part. A reviewer in Goodreads called Sandy commented that comparing the way Verne, Henry Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote their African adventures, you notice that Haggard was the only one who had extensive personal experience of the continent, so he gave his books a certain aura of effortless verisimilitude, while, of the other two, Verne at least had the support of extensive research, so he has a patina of realism in his descriptions.

During the story, Verne is planting seeds and clues about an American and later a German researcher who travelled to Africa to try to prove that apes were capable of language, and also about Darwin and the theory of evolution. Which brings us to the main theme of the novel, when the characters find a hidden tribe of ape-men, for want of a better name, some kind of "missing link" between apes and humans.

This part is clearly the heart of the story, and therefore it is curious that it's only dealt with during the last third of this already rather short novel. In fact, the last chapter is titled "An Abrupt Ending". When I read it as a boy, I was underwhelmed by this part of the adventure. It seemed rushed. This time around it still seems rushed, but I did appreciate it more. The point here, more than the adventure, is the sense of wonder at the discovery and its implications.

I have to say that the discussions between the characters about evolution were interesting. They are interesting despite, or perhaps because, they illustrate how people in the 19th century understood Darwin's theories. Nowadays, although we may talk of "missing links" in terms of transitional forms during evolution, the term has fallen out of favor with anthropologists because it implies the evolutionary process is a linear phenomenon and that forms originate consecutively in a chain. Instead, "last common ancestor" is preferred since this does not have the connotation of linear evolution, as evolution is a branching process. Humans do not descend from the other great apes, but we have common ancestors at some point in the past. Also outdated are some comments made by the characters, which would be racist from a modern perspective.

In any case, this part is what's really distinctive about this story, and Verne should have developed it a bit more. I wonder if he was in a hurry to meet a deadline and deliver the novel.

This novel turned out to be influential in the development of the Lost World subgenre. Conan Doyle, who was fluent in French, read it along with "Journey to the Center of the Earth", and they were part of his inspiration in writing "The Lost World". It also influenced Burroughs and other writers.

As an anecdote, the English translator of the novel decided to call it "The Village in the Treetops" instead of the more literal "The Aerial Village" because he did not want to mislead readers, making them think that this was about some kind of science-fictional flying town.


Enjoyment factor: While not one of Verne's greatest works, I appreciated this more than when I read it as a boy. It's a fast read, and it deals with some really interesting themes and ideas, even if it does so in a rather rushed manner.


Next up: The Sea Serpent