|
-
News
- Features
- Events
Calendar
- Editorials
- Monthly
Zine
- Offworld
Report
- Our Daily
RSS Feed
- Movie/TV
Reviews
> Recent movies
> Movies by year
> Movies by title
- Book
Reviews
> Recent books
> Books by year
> Books by title
- Home
- Worlds
- Biography
- Bibliography
- Appearances
- Reviews
- Blog
- Community
- Press
- Links
Become
an Advertiser
- Web
Site Directory
- Search
the Net
- StephenHunt.net
- WoodenRocket.com
- Check
your E-mail
- Non Sci-Fi
News
|
Mammoth New Jules Verne
01/07/2005 . Source: Paul Hanley 
I am not particularly keen on short stories but when they are in an anthology which has a common theme, I think they become far more readable check out website: www.avalonpub.com
I am not particularly keen on short stories but when they are in an anthology which has a common theme, I think they become far more readable. This anthology whose theme is Jules Verne, the grandfather of all Science Fiction in my opinion, is a real treat with 23 stories by well-known writers in the genre such as Stephen Baxter and James Lovegrove. It has the added virtue that all but two of the stories were written specially for this book and you will not therefore have the irritation of discovering you have read them all elsewhere.
Jules Verne had a huge output producing more than 60 novels and created many memorable characters and stories, such as Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus in 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea', so the writers in this anthology have an especially broad spectrum to chose from.
Many of Verne's original stories, written from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, involved then quite fantastic contraptions such as airships, spaceships and submarines. They also often involved wars. Eric Brown in his 'Six Weeks In A Balloon' which is a reference to Verne's first best-seller, 'Cinq Semaine En Ballon', has the left wing journalist hero in an alternative 1930s boarding an airship in a bombed Glasgow and flying down to London to meet a man who knows a secret regarding the current war which originates with a famous book published decades before. Eric Brown skilfully creates as a backdrop a country devastated by a war that has been raging against Germany for a quarter of a century with homeless, hungry people living on the pavements and a ruthless state crushing any opposition with force.
One of the causes of the hostility with Germany is the book 'Six Weeks In A Balloon' which supposedly details of the adventures of a group of Englishmen who float over Africa in a balloon. Its author recounts how they saw German troops burning native villages and murdering their inhabitants and also how another bunch of Germans fired on them. Despite German protests that this was all untrue, relations between the two countries had deteriorated from that point until finally a devastating war broke out in 1908.
The man who has sent the message to the journalist is the sole survivor of the expedition, an elderly man-servant, who tells the journalist that all the parts about German perfidy were made up by the author with the help of a rascally French writer, Jules Verne, at the behest of the British government 'for the good of the Empire'. He wants someone to know the truth before he dies and having read the journalist's writings thinks he is the man to reveal it.
What will the journalist do? Who knows because he is of to join his regiment in the morning. The Germans have a new Chancellor, one Adolf Hitler, and are becoming ever more of a menace. An excellent story. One that makes one wish it were a full-length novel.
'Giant Dwarfs' by Ian Watson is a reworking of one of Verne's most famous stories, subsequently made into several films, 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth'. Apparently, Verne picked up on a theory that the Earth was actually hollow and wrote what was probably the first great Science Fiction novel. Ian Watson's story is told from the viewpoint of a nineteenth century French heroine who, out with her lover riding, sees his horse fall into a hole which suddenly opens in the ground. The injured horse has to be shot and her lover, a gallant soldier and explorer, determines to explore the cave system the accident has revealed. After all Mr Verne has revealed the adventures of other intrepid explorers into the Earth so Pierre hopes to emulate them. Our narrator insists on going with him.
A small team including her and Jules Verne set out and have various adventures overcoming physical obstacles until they reach a vast underwater sea where long extinct creatures battle it out. Whilst they are watching spellbound, our heroine narrator is snatched by small, pasty white people and carried away through the surrounding fern forests. She manages to scream after biting the hand clamped over her mouth. Instead of rescue from her French compatriots, the dwarfs are mown down by gunfire from a group of militaristic Germans. Initial gratitude from our heroine turns to fear. These Germans are not from her own time, the elegant pre-World War One Edwardian era, but from Nazi Germany of the early 1940s.
Eventually, she is rescued by the gallant Pierre. The Germans are disarmed and probably left for enslavement by the dwarfs, whilst our heroine and her comrades return to France wondering how to warn their fellow countrymen about what is impending. Jolly fun nonsense with a great period feel to it.
Laurent Genefort takes as his inspiration Verne's story of a voyage to the Moon. Instead of rockets, his space craft was a projectile fired from an enormous cannon. Verne's original story can claim to be the first 'hard' SF extrapolating developments in existing technology. Laurent Genfort in 'The True Story Of Barbicane's Voyage' is claimed to be just that: what really happened when Verne's creations went to the Moon. Again, this is a story which builds an old-fashioned atmosphere and written from the viewpoint of Captain Nicholl, a rival to Impey Barbicane in the original story and a man who opposed the experiments but who by accident ended up on the voyage.
Of course, when they land on the Moon they encounter Selenites, more technologically advanced than Earthmen and who deliberately keep themselves hidden because humans are not advanced enough to learn of their existence. After a number of adventures, our intrepid explorer agrees with them and persuades his colleagues to keep his discovery to themselves so as to avoid wars which he feels will become unavoidable if news of their discovery gets out. They contact the great writer Jules Verne on their return and he provides them with a 'story' of their journey to publish in a learned journal. Again, some of the imagery came originally from Verne but the story is lively and another excellent read.
I think that without exception all the stories are in the same vein. Rather like boxes of assorted chocolates which usually contain a proportion of inedible sweets in anthologies there are usually a number of duff stories but this book is the exception. The stories are also linked to their originals by comments at the beginning of each from the editors.
This is a jolly good book well worth reading.
Paul Hanley
|
|
