THE FATHERS OF SF:
VERNE & WELLS
1864 Journey
(Voyage) to the Centre of the Earth (underworld sea, prehistoric monsters,
etc.) film: 1960 (Pat Boone, James
Mason, Arlene Dahl) Note Prof.
Challenger series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), begun w/ The Lost
World (1912) and filmed in 1925 (Wallace Beery) and 1960 (Michael Rennie,
Jill St. John, Claude Rains, Fernando Lamas)
1865 From
the Earth to the Moon (Barbicane, president of the Baltimore Gun Club, is
shot w/ Fr. adventurer Michel Ardan and antagonist Capt. Nicholl to Moon, only
to become satellite) Film: 1958 (Joseph
Cotten, George Sanders, Deborah Paget) and used loosely by Georges Méliès
(1861-1938) for Le Voyage dans la lune/A Trip to the Moon (1902)
1866 Les
Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras (The English at the North Pole) (polar
exploration discovers volcanic island; note Hyperborea resonance)
1870 Round
the Moon (sequel to From the Earth to the Moon explaining near miss
by Earth meteor's influence, describing the moon, and bringing adventurers back
to crack off bowsprit of a U. S. Navy frigate in the Pacific)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Film: 1916 (diva Geraldine Farrar as Joan of
Arc) and 1954 (dir. Richard Fleischer; James Mason, Peter Lorre, Kirk Douglas)
(cf. Fantastic Voyage, 1966, Stephen Boyd, Arthur Kennedy, Raquel Welch;
dir. Richard Fleischer; and cf. Inner Space, 1987, Dennis Quaid, Martin
Short)
David Bushnell's one-man Turtle attempts
to sink HMS Eagle off New York in 1776.
Robert Fulton sails functional submarine Nautilus for Napoleon in
Seine (1807). 17 Feb 1864: CSA sub Hunley
sinks USA frigate Housatonic anchored in Charleston Harbor, S.C.; no
casualties on USA ship, but all 9 crew of Hunley lost in action. JV takes pleasure cruise on the Great
Eastern and buys "floating study" St. Michel
1872 Doctor
Ox and Other Stories contains a running joke called "Une Fantasie du
Dr. Ox" in which Ox and his assistant Ygène slowly gas a somnoloent
Flemish village and make vegetables huge and humans and animals fiery-tempered
(see Wells, 1904)
1873 Around
the World in 80 Days (Phileas Fogg wins race bet, saves maiden, and tames
American West w/ faithful Passepartout) JV's most popular book: sells over 1
million copies hardback in 1st year.
Film: 1956 (David Niven, Cantinflas), Best Picture. N.b.: American journalist Nellie Bly: 14 Nov
1889-25 Jan 1890-72 days 6 hrs 11 mins.
JV buys St. Michel II.
1875 The
Mysterious Island (five Northern prisoners escape CSA camp by balloon to
become super-Crusoes and get helped by unseen hand of misanthrope [Nemo] driven
mad by loneliness) Film: 1929 (Lionel Barrymore) and 1961 (Ray Harryhausen
special effects) (see Poe below)
1879 The
Begum's Millions: idealism of bourgeois Frankville is pitted agst the greed
of militaristic Stahlstadt in the Olympic Mtns
1887 Adventures
of the Rat Family (publ in enlarged version 1891): only fairy tale, uses
catalogs, evolution (transmigration), self-reflexivity, and social satire to
achieve happy, chauvinist, classist ending (but note: philosophical father
Raton stays a rat)
1889 Purchase
of the North Pole (Baltimore Gun Club yet again, using Maston as
boy-mathematician, attempts to shift Earth's axis to reveal polar mineral
treasures)
1897 Le
Sphinx des glaces/An Antarctic Mystery/The Ice Sphinx sequel to The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) (who
used Benjamin Morrell's Narrative of Four Voyages to the South Seas and
Pacific [1832] + "Report of the Committee on Naval Affairs"
[1835] on the proposed expedition of Poe's acquaintance J. N. Reynolds).
Note: Poe,
"The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfall," in Southern
Literary Messenger, June 1835: by balloon to the moon; EAP linked to RAL
following...
Richard Adams Locke (1800-1871) (friend of Poe),
The Moon Hoax begun in New York Sun, August 1835, reports civilization
on the moon
Poe, "The Balloon Hoax," New York Sun,
13 Apr 1844: "factual" report of Atlantic crossing by gale
See also Daniel Defoe (1660?-1731), Robinson
Crusoe (1719), an enormous embellishment of Alexander Selkirk's years
(1704-1709) on Juan Fernandez (400 mis. W of Chile), which was presented as a
true story (Stanislaw Lem: "...to become a true Robinson...the world,
exactly as it is found, must be put to rights, and in a civilized fashion...The
world of dream...is the Nowhere that...is a utopia." A Perfect Vacuum,
10-11)
1901 Le
Village aërien (transl as The Village in the Treetops): safari
survivors seeking a return to civilization move steadily backward until they reach
the pre-verbal "Waggdis" (who, it is hinted, will be overwhelmed by
European colonialism) (see ERBurroughs' Caspak series)
1902 Les
Frères Kip: brothers wrongly confined to a Tasmanian penal colony are
exonerated after their escape when an enormous blow-up of a dead man's eye
reveals the culprit (see Wm H Rhodes, "Phases in the Life of John
Pollexfen" [pre-1876])
1910 The
Secret of Wilhelm Storitz, an invisible man story, which Versins calls JV's
most perfectly romantic, in which the heroine regains her natural opacity only
"in giving the world a son" (R: JV's typical male chauvinism; cf.
with Wells, 1897)
Yesterday
and Tomorrow (including
"Amiens in 2000 A.D." "In the Twenty-Ninth Century,"
"The Eternal Adam" [periodic deluge; see Asimov's
"Nightfall"], etc.) (more Wellsian)
Donald Wollheim: all SF divided into 4 categories:
1)
Imaginary voyages
2)
Future Predictions
3)
Remarkable Inventions
4)
Social Satire
JV is usually in 1, often in 2 and/or 3, but
almost always stereotypically in 4; HGW is always in 3 and seriously in 4 &
therefore (?) more adult and enduring.
Compare, for example, Verne's Dr. Ox's Experiment (1872) and
Wells's The Food of the Gods (1904)
1896 The
Island of Dr. Moreau (men from beasts) Film: 1933: Island of Lost Souls
w/ Charles Laughton (married to bride of Frankenstein) and Bela Lugosi (hero:
Dr. Prendick).
1897 The
Invisible Man (Faustian: ended by Ipping Villagers in Surrey) Film: 1933
(Claude Rains; dir. James Whale)
1898 The
War of the Worlds (Martians feed on human blood, but bacteria feed on them) "Invasion from Mars," Howard
Koch's script for Orson Welles' broadcast of 30 Oct 38 (cf. Finnish Jan 86
radio broadcast of Jan Hartman's "The Next War"; Portugese broadcast
of Wells adaptation, Nov 88). Film:
1953 (prod., George Pal, who earlier won Academy Award for Special Effects for When
Worlds Collide, 1951). G. V.
Schiaparelli (1835-1910) reports channels (canali) on Mars from sightings of
1877 and 1879. Percival Lowell
(1855-1916) tries to prove these are artificial (Mars, 1896; Mars as
the Abode of Life, 1908; Mars and Its Canals, 1911), providing
materials for HGW and for Edgar Rice Burroughs' (1875-1950) first Mars book, A
Princess of Mars (All-Story, Feb 1912) (cf. Tarzan of the Apes,
Oct 1912)
1899 When
the Sleeper Wakes (dystopian novel of aerial warfare and super-corps (cf.
Heinlein, "The Roads Must Roll")
1901 The
First Men in the Moon (Cavor, who is finally slain, and Bedford, who
returns, go to Moon by means of Cavorite gravity blinds to find underground
life and diurnal atmosphere; agst regimentation; specialized ants as Selenites;
Cavor's messages give Swiftian satire, especially dialogue w/ Grand Lunar)
Film: 1964 (Br) Lionel Jeffries and Martha Hyer
1903 Joins
Fabian Society
1904 The
Food of the Gods (in which little [ordinary] people resist the mental
and physical enlargement flowing from a scientifically discovered supernutrient
[which they call poison] promising a possible socialist utopian future) (see
Verne, 1872) (In the 1976 movie, the nutrient spontaneously bubbles up through
the soil on a farm.)
1905 A
Modern Utopia (blueprint for takeover of world by physical and intellectual
elite called Samurai) (cf. Guardians in Republic of Plato [c. 429-347
B.C.])
1906 In
the Days of the Comet (passing gas improves all humanity); compare with
Henry James’s “The Great Good Place” (1900), a rejuvenating posthumous (?)
fantasy visit to Heaven (?)
Fought
and lost Fabian factional dispute with G. B. Shaw
1907 First
and Last Things (exposition of HGW's political and social philosophy)
Joins
Eugenics Education Society
1908 The
War in the Air (cf. Moorcock's Warlord of the Air, 1971)
Resigns
from Fabian Society
1909 Tono-Bungay
(rise, after civilization's collapse, of a new rich British middle class; Uncle
Teddy sells snake oil, then soap; nephew George Ponderevo builds battleships
instead)
1914 The
War That Will End War (optimistic)
1920 The
Outline of History (cross-cultural, pattern-seeking; sold 1/4 million
four-volume copies just in first American editon)
1923 Men
Like Gods (bright, pacific, usually nude utopia Barnstaple finds through
the fourth dimension [cf. episodic The Story of the Treasure Seekers
(Bastable children), 1898, and The Railway Children, 1906, by Edith
Nesbit, a founder of the Fabian Society])
1929 The
Science of Life (w/ Julian Huxley [HGW studied under Thomas Huxley
1884-1887] and son GPW) (biological pattern seeking)
1933 The
Shape of Things to Come (future regimented stable society run by
enlightened engineers) Film: 1936 (Raymond Massey and Ralph Richardson; HGW
scenario; dir & set design, Wm Cameron Menzies)
1934 Experiment
in Autobiography
1937 Star-Begotten
(Martians are modifying us long distance; uses term "Big Brother")
Carlos Clarens, An Illustrated History of the
Horror Film (NY: 1967)
Richard Hauer Costa, H. G. Wells (NY: 1967)
I. O. Evans, Jules Verne and His Work (NY:
1966)
James D. Hart, ed., The Oxford Companion to
American Literature, 4th ed. (NY: 1965)
Paul Harvey, ed., The Oxford Companion to
English Literature, 4th ed. (Oxford: 1967)
Howard Koch, The Panic Broadcast (Boston:
1970)
Roger Manvell & Lewis Jacobs, The
International Encyclopedia of Film (NY: 1972)
Steven Scheuer, Movies on TV (NY: 1971,
esp for dates and ratings)
Brian Taves, “Afterword,” Jules Verne, Adventures
of the Rat Family, Evelyn Copeland, transl (NY:1993)
Pierre Versins, Encyclopédie de l'utopie et de
la science fiction (Lausanne: 1972)
Donald Wollheim, The Universe Makers (NY:
1971)
Biblical references for
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
Rev 6: 7-8 And
when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say,
Come and see. And I looked, and behold
a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with
him. And Power was given unto them over
the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with
death, and with the beasts of the earth.)
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