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The Mysterious Island (Captain Nemo, #3)

Jules Verne

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Mar 21, 2008 Werner rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, classics

As with many of my pre-Goodreads books, the date read for this one is a best guess, but probably roughly accurate. Although I liked it overall, I didn't rate it as highly as my Goodreads friend Bruce recently did.

Simply put, the premise here is that in March 1865, five Unionists (one the black former slave of one of the white escapees, and another a 15-year-old boy) escape from Richmond by stealing a balloon that's been prepared and provisioned for a Confederate mission; but are quickly blown WA As with many of my pre-Goodreads books, the date read for this one is a best guess, but probably roughly accurate. Although I liked it overall, I didn't rate it as highly as my Goodreads friend Bruce recently did.

Simply put, the premise here is that in March 1865, five Unionists (one the black former slave of one of the white escapees, and another a 15-year-old boy) escape from Richmond by stealing a balloon that's been prepared and provisioned for a Confederate mission; but are quickly blown WAY off course by a massive hurricane, and five days later wind up on an uncharted island. By the time of the Civil War, of course, balloon flights were not science-fictional. This novel's science fiction element is actually a tie-in with Verne's earlier novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; but I would say that much of the plot is a descriptive fiction tale of adventure and survival under adverse conditions. (In that respect, it has a lot in common with Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and readers who like the one might like the other.) That's not out of character for Verne; he didn't think of himself as a writer of "science fiction" (the concept as such didn't exist then), but as a writer of "Extraordinary Voyages," of which this is one, and he was as interested in describing the extraordinary wonders of the actual world as in speculating about the extraordinary marvels he believed science could achieve.

Verne was a practicing Roman Catholic. To a greater extent than in his other works (at least the ones I've read), he speaks here in his third-person narration about the providential care of God; and our castaways here several times both pray to God for help and acknowledge and thank Him for blessings received. Bruce, in his review, discerns a deliberate symbolism here in which the island stands for the world, whose inhabitants are watched over and supplied by a beneficent Deity. As an intentional symbolism, I wouldn't rule it out, though it's subtle enough that it didn't suggest itself to me when I read the book. In any case, it could certainly be a legitimate reader-response criticism. (And given the geological instability of the island, one could extend this symbolism to include Christian eschatology --but no spoilers here!) But this doesn't imply that the castaways are or can be passive; on the contrary, for them as for the inhabitants of this terrestrial island in space, benefiting from the resources they're blessed with takes cooperation, hard work, courage, and technological know-how and ingenuity. Fortunately, they have these in abundance!

Despite the Goodreads reference to their needing to build a "society," this isn't really sociologically-oriented science fiction. Our characters have to work together, pull their weight and share; but you don't develop much of a "society" with five people in it. Their conflicts and challenges are basically with nature and with physical processes, rather than interpersonal. Verne is part of a literary tradition that tends to be more gadget-oriented than people-oriented; and this shows here. My literary preferences are more drawn to the human element, rather than the physical-technological. That accounts for my lower rating for this than for other SF works that focus more on character. For me, this was often a less than riveting read, though readers more fascinated by learning about survival techniques and do-it-yourself technology might react differently. The prose style per se wasn't problematical; I found this more readable than some of the author's other works in that respect. Of course, this requires a caveat: international copyright didn't exist in Verne's day, so many English-language editions of his work were pirated, and he was very poorly served by most of the unauthorized translators, who took vast liberties. So with most 19th-century translations, you're never 100% sure that you're actually reading anything very similar to Verne's original. :-( (The Airmont edition I read provides no information about what translation was used.)

As a History major, I was put off by the inaccuracies in the way the Richmond setting of March 1865 was depicted. Verne was writing about nine years after the war; but he obviously either didn't follow the contemporary accounts of it very closely, didn't remember them well, or both. (And he didn't take time to research the subject, either!) Richmond was never "besieged" by Grant or anybody else; and a Union prisoner would not have been free to walk around the city. (Union officers were held in Richmond; but they were confined to Libby Prison.) Also, the tie-in with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea which I mentioned above has some chronological inconsistencies with the earlier book that I noted at the time I read this one, but which are hard to explain without a spoiler. But on the positive side, I don't recall anything invidious or derogatory in the portrayal of the black character, Neb; and that's a plus not always found in the literature of that era! ...more

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