
Jules Verne’s Most Famous Books Were Part of a 54-Volume Masterpiece - vo2maxer
http://www.openculture.com/2020/02/jules-vernes-voyages-extraordinaires.html
======
mynegation
Jules Verne's "The Mysterious Island" was how I got interested in tech around
the age of 6. I devoured all of his books that I could find after that and it
was my introduction to geology ("Journey to the Center of the Earth"),
geography ("In search of the castaways", "Around the world in eighty days"),
oceanology ("Twenty thousand leagues under the sea"), Astronautics ("From the
Earth to the Moon", "Around the moon"), dystopian/utopian world building ("The
Begum's fortune") and so on and so forth.

EDIT: fixed the name of the book, thank you bradyd.

~~~
irrational
For me it was the old Tom Swift books that I found at my grandparent's house.
Tom Swift and His Flying Lab, Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster, Tom
Swift and His Diving Seacopter, Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire, Tom
Swift in the Race to the Moon, etc.

[https://www.orderofbooks.com/characters/tom-
swift/](https://www.orderofbooks.com/characters/tom-swift/)

[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=tom+swift](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=tom+swift)

~~~
WalterBright
Elon Musk is the real life Tom Swift:

1\. Elon Musk and his Reusable Space Rocket

2\. Elon Musk and his Electric Car

3\. Elon Musk and his Tunnel Boring Machine

4\. Elon Musk and his Flamethrower

5\. Elon Musk and his Self Driving Car

~~~
gen_greyface
I may be rude, but Elon Musk is just a 22nd century snake oil salesman.

~~~
hyperpallium
He's good at promotion and raising capital, and has real products that
function... but I can't believe he's _only_ a salesman.

OTOH how would you go about assessing his engineering ability? He was accepted
into a Stanford PhD program. An ex-employee of spacex was amazed how he
absorbed a textbook of rocket science.

Unlike Eistein, he hasn't written any papers himself (AFAIK), so we can't
assess his work directly. I would guess his primary role is being a
technically and business-aware coach for engineers who actually do the work -
like Steve Jobs. But maybe he is a genuine engineering genius himself - but
how could we tell?

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kazinator
A movie called _Vynález zkázy_ ("the destructive contraption") based on severa
of Verne's works was made in Czechoslovakia in 1958, combining animations
based on line art from some of Verne's books with live acting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_World_of_Jules_Ve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_World_of_Jules_Verne)

It won the Grand Prix at the International Film Festival that was held as part
of Expo 58 in Brussels.

Czechs and Slovaks can't get enough Verne. Check out all the translations of
_The Mysterious Island_ between 1878 and 2018. Some of the translators did it
several times again, one of them six times.

[https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajupln%C3%BD_ostrov#%C4%8Cesk...](https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajupln%C3%BD_ostrov#%C4%8Cesk%C3%A1_vyd%C3%A1n%C3%AD)

~~~
paganel
Jules Verne was generally seen pretty well in the former communist countries,
my HN/reddit nickname is taken from a Soviet TV series based on one of Jules
Verne's books [1]. Mind you, I didn't even live in the former Soviet Union,
but when I first saw a glimpse of Verne's universe as a 7-year old kid I was
hooked for life.

[1]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088635/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088635/)

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acabal
Shameless plug, we have a few Verne books downloadable for free as high-
quality ebooks: [https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jules-
verne/](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jules-verne/)

If you'd like to produce some new ones for everyone to read, get in touch at
our mailing list!

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f4stjack
Oh man, I recently finished some of his novels and it is astounding to see the
optimism he had for us, considering he was writing in a world before any world
wars happened.

I really would like to live in a Vernian world where people are mostly good
and rationalism wins the day. But I also would like to live in Discworld
(maybe except Fourecks) so caveat emptor! :'D

~~~
erk__
You should try and read the dystopian novel he wrote, it was first published
in 1994. It paints a very bleak dystopian picture of Paris, it is an
interesting contrast to his other works
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century)

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Andrew_nenakhov
"The Mysterious Island" is his best book, and it had aged way much better than
any of his other novels. Probably because in this one Verne didn't try to
venture far from the realm of possible, giving Cyrus Smith a very advanced set
of skills and deep knowledge of contemporary sciences, but abstained from
introducing non-existing technologies, besides a brief appearance of Nemo &
"Nautilus"

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julienchastang
I read a number of Jules Vernes novels recently. The pattern is a similar one
where he describes the known science of the time in quite a bit of accurate
detail. Starting with that as the premise, he then runs with the idea to
create the plot. The result is both science and science fiction. My favorite
is still "Around the World in Eighty Days". A Jules Verne novel was
rediscovered not long ago: "Paris in the Twentieth Century".

~~~
Robotbeat
That really is what science fiction is supposed to be, IMHO. You take a
scientific or technological concept (or set of concepts... or perhaps a near-
at-hand extrapolation of a concept... like air-independent propulsion for the
Nautilus) and explore it and its consequences thoroughly.

Seveneves explores social media and swarm robots (and non-fantastical
alternatives-to-chemical-rocket-propulsion), for instance (and later,
epigenetics).

Arrival explores a hypothesis from the science of linguistics, for instance (I
like this one a lot because it strays from the usual "hard" sciences or
anthropological rehashing of European conquest, etc, of space operas).

Space operas are really just fantasy in space. Fun, grand epics, but not
science fiction (exception would be in The Last Jedi, the use of the
hyperdrive as an extremely powerful weapon... exploring the consequences of
any kind of propulsion system capable of traveling at extreme speeds... of
course, everyone--except me--hated that one because, we all agree, Star Wars
is fantasy, not science fiction).

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CWuestefeld
_recapturing the 'feel' of Verne’s socio-historical milieu and evoking that
sense of faraway exoticism and futuristic awe_

It's my understanding that the original French texts (not just the
illustrations) are much richer in that socio-historical stuff. The English
translations that we have are unfortunately dumbed-down to YA-friendly
adventure stories.

I'd love to see translations that more faithfully capture the full complexity
of the works.

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microtherion
I enjoyed many of Verne's books as a child, so last year I tried reading some
to my children. I thought the writing held up quite well (compared to e.g.
Karl May, another author I loved reading when I was young):

In particular, Verne is able to deploy ethnic caricatures without coming
across as bigoted:

> What can be added to these figures, so eloquent in themselves? Nothing. So
> the following calculation obtained by the statistician Pitcairn will be
> admitted without contestation: by dividing the number of victims fallen
> under the projectiles by that of the members of the Gun Club, he found that
> each one of them had killed, on his own account, an average of two thousand
> three hundred and seventy-five men and a fraction.

> By considering such a result it will be seen that the single preoccupation
> of this learned society was the destruction of humanity philanthropically,
> and the perfecting of firearms considered as instruments of civilisation. It
> was a company of Exterminating Angels, at bottom the best fellows in the
> world.

~~~
bouvin
I agree in general (adored Verne as child, and has enjoyed many of his books
as an adult), but I would caution against reading Off on a Comet, as that
contains pure, unadulterated, mean-spirited anti-semitism. At least that does
not come to the fore in any other book of his that I have read.

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ElFitz
Jules Vernes is one of my favorite authors.

He dreamt big, wild (Michel Strogoff), and daringly (From the Earth to the
Moon), ranging from adventure (Around the World in Eighty Days) to scientific
anticipation (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea), to sheer madness (Robur
the Conqueror).

My favorite quote of his is quite revealing of the man's character: "Tout ce
qui est dans la limite du possible doit être et sera accompli". Which I would
roughly translate as "All that is within the limits of the possible must and
will be accomplished".

~~~
thrower123
Reading Robur the Conqueror was quite a trip when I first picked it up from
Project Gutenberg.

It made me suspect that the versions of the more well-known novels like 20,000
Leagues, Earth to the Moon, Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the
Center of the Earth that I'd read from the shelves of my school library had
been considerably bowdlerized.

~~~
bzbarsky
The initial English translations of Verne _were_ considerably bowdlerized,
sometimes with large chunks cut out or summarized in the interests of making
them more "kids books" than adult ones.

There are some modern translations that might be better on this front.

Edit: Mentioned elsewhere in this thread:
<[https://19thlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/jules-verne-
translati...](https://19thlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/jules-verne-translations-
that-dont-stink.html>), which I have now bookmarked!

~~~
lordfrikk
Your link has a ">" at the end which makes it not work.

~~~
bzbarsky
Ugh, I keep forgetting that HN's URL delimiter handling is completely
broken.... Unfortunately I can't edit my comment at this point, but the link
should have been [https://19thlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/jules-verne-
translati...](https://19thlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/jules-verne-translations-
that-dont-stink.html)

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komali2
> Human knowledge of the universe has widened and deepened since Verne's day,
> but for sheer intellectual and adventurous wonder about what that universe
> might contain, has any writer, from any era or land, outdone him since?

No, I don't think so. It seems sci fi went the way of the graduate thesis:
hyper specialized, hyper focused. I think this might have been out of
necessity. Maybe Stephenson has come close though.

He's covered nonfictional history, space travel (anathem, seven eves),
colonization of Earth orbit and the moon (seven eves), generational space
travel (anathem), multiple universe theories (anathem), and to come back down
to earth, cryptography (cryptonomicon, reamde, fall), AI (diamond age),
wetware hacking (snow crash), VR (snow crash, fall), post mortem VR (fall),
nanotech (fall, diamond age), and layered simulated universes (fall).

So beyond Stephenson I don't think anyone comes close to fantastical
exploration at the level of Verne. Crichton didn't. Watts is highly focused in
biology. Banks deals with cosmic horror, AI, and a touch of multiverse.
Doctorow is fantastic "realistic near future" exploration but he never takes
us to space, and I don't think he really even explores AI.

~~~
Apocryphon
Why not Crichton? Too much techno-thriller horror, despite his fantastical
imaginings and settings?

~~~
webmaven
Ever notice that most Crichton plots end with things going back to the status
quo?

~~~
Apocryphon
They're a little like Indiana Jones adventures except with technological
terrors instead of ancient artifacts.

------
JoeDaDude
In Prophets of Science Fiction [1], the TV Series about SF authors, they
portrayed Jules Verne as disillusioned and depressed in his later years. They
said he burned all his correspondence and in despair wrote his last work,
Paris in the Twentieth Century [2], a somewhat dystopian novel in which art is
no longer valued.

It is such a contrast to his other novels I have to wonder how accurate this
portrayal is, whether it was greatly exaggerated in some way. Can anyone
comment on Verne's latter days?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophets_of_Science_Fiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophets_of_Science_Fiction)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_in_the_Twentieth_Century)

------
James_Henry
I would love to re-read some of these books with the original illustrations
now, something I didn't have the first time I read them.

Does anyone know of good copies of English translations that preserve the
original illustrations? The easiest to find ones on Amazon (from SeaWolf
Press) don't look to be the best printing.

~~~
rst
Unfortunately, Verne was not well served by his contemporary translators --
among other things, there are technical descriptions, or episodes poking fun
at the English or Americans, which somehow just never showed up in the English
translations. There are newer translations that do a much better job -- but
those are still within copyright, and so not cheap. (This addresses only the
text; the illustrations are a significant extra wrinkle.)

~~~
jacobolus
> newer translations that do a much better job

Do you have recommendations?

~~~
Reason077
Jules Verne Translations That Don't Stink:

[https://19thlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/jules-verne-
translati...](https://19thlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/jules-verne-translations-
that-dont-stink.html)

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shakna
Well, there's a number of people plugging their ebook sites of some of them
easier to get books.

As a slightly different plug, "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" from 1916 [0] is
worth a glance.

It's a silent film, so some people might not be able to watch it today, but is
has some curiosities to it.

It was the first feature filmed underwater, using a simple tube and mirror
arrangement that most people here could come up with. It also had tons of
extravagant sets, and so on, making it incredibly expensive for the era.

Literature wise, it combines "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" and "The
Mysterious Island", in a fairly faithful way.

[0]
[https://sixteenmm.org/s/leaguesunderthesea_1916](https://sixteenmm.org/s/leaguesunderthesea_1916)

Note: If it wasn't obvious from above, that's a link to something I run.

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giorgioz
>Human knowledge of the universe has widened and deepened since Verne's day,
but for sheer intellectual and adventurous wonder about what that universe
might contain, has any writer, from any era or land, outdone him since?

Yes, we can safely say science fiction writers after Jules Verne has outdone
him. Safely. I believe Jules Verne himself reading science fiction that came
after himself would say so himself.

Believing that one moment in the past was better than all the future moments
is a classic form of romantic nostalgia in the style of Midnight in Paris of
Woody Allen.

I believe Jules Verne books were incredibile for the time and inspired
millions of readers.

Believing that Jules Verne was the apex though is very sad. It's absolutely
the opposite of what Jules Verne was. Jules Verne was a dreamer believing in
progress. When you believe that the Jules Verne was the apex of science
fiction progress you are spitting in the face of his optimism.

------
nathell
Ah, Verne. Brings back childhood memories.

I consumed the entire Verne that was in my primary school library, maybe 15
novels in total. "The Mysterious Island" and "Journey to the Centre of the
Earth" were one of the first books I read in English translations (my mother
tongue is Polish), around the age of 13. Good times.

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amerine
Is there a collection of fictional ‘"documentational" illustrations like "the
map of the Polar regions (hand-drawn by Verne himself)’ illustrations out
there? I love that hand-drawn style and often want to find examples for
tattoos.

~~~
durkie
You're in luck! This week, via kottke.org:
[https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/](https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/)

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mirimir
All here for free: [https://www.epubbooks.com/series/1-voyages-
extraordinaires](https://www.epubbooks.com/series/1-voyages-extraordinaires)

Registration required, though.

~~~
misterprime
And here without registration requirements:
[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/60](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/60)

~~~
mirimir
Gutenberg blocks German IPs.

~~~
mirimir
Here's why:
[https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html](https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html)

PGLAF has taken an extreme position. In order to comply with a German court
ruling about copyright infringement, it's made the entire site unavailable to
German IP addresses.

That would be like Google entirely cutting off the EU over "Right to be
Forgotten" stuff. Google would never do that, because money. But PGLAF isn't
about money.

So anyway, I'm on PGLAF's side here, if anyone cares.

~~~
kwhitefoot
> But PGLAF isn't about money.

But the decision to block German IP addresses /is/ about money. They made the
point that it would be more expensive for PG to arrange to block specific
works and that they simply don't have a budget for it. See
[https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html](https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/index.html)

Edit: formatting.

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quotemstr
It's amazingly difficult to predict which of one's efforts is going to
"stick". I've put years of work into things that ended up being total duds.
I've also spent a few evenings here and there writing things off-the-cuff that
ended up becoming famous. Just as we're lucky if we think one truly novel
thought in all our lives, we're amazingly lucky if one part of our effort out
of 54 becomes part of humanity's collective inheritance. Jules Verne was lucky
several times over.

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8bitsrule
This story of the (usually serialized first) books' publishing history is
interesting. (Many also had special 'Christmas editions'.)

"... if variations in binding color are considered, more than 4000 different
combinations of text and binding were published between 1866 and 1919."

[http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/archives/v3_1/harpold/](http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/archives/v3_1/harpold/)

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abecedarius
If you read French, there's a convenient Kindle edition of his collected works
for three bucks. Unfortunately the illustrations there are comparable to
postage stamps.

~~~
hallidave
Also this, for free:
[https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Auteur:Jules_Verne](https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Auteur:Jules_Verne)

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crmrc114
Holy cow, Looks like I need to expand the library.. Somehow I am unable to
quickly find a complete collection in print. I will have to dig to see what
volumes would be required to collect all of his work. Plenty of ebook
collections however if that is your style.

~~~
karatestomp
Beware: AFAIK many of the most commonly-available English translations are not
very good. It's a pretty common problem with 19th-century foreign language
literature generally, in fact. The public domain's full of translations that
are simply poor, and/or retain a lot of cruft from 19th or early 20th century
English style that aren't vital to conveying the meaning or tone of the
original work, and so are less approachable to the modern reader, to no real
purpose. Probably any big ebook collections you find are going to be re-
packagings of translations of this sort, from Project Gutenberg or wherever.

His French isn't too tough if you read that, but some of the English
translations you see in the wild—oof.

~~~
alex_c
_Are_ there specific English translations that are good and reasonably modern?

As a kid I read Jules Verne translated in my native language, and loved it.
Not sure where I would start to acquire his work in English.

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ChrisMarshallNY
I did not know that, and I have read a few of his books.

One of the reasons that I like HN, is because of occasional gems like this.

Thanks!

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ZguideZ
I love this. I ate these up as a kid and looked for the connections.

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nicodds
Almost like Donald Knuth's TAOCP!

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esch89
That's amazing!

