Jules Verne's Dream Machines: Technology and Transcendence

Evans, Arthur B. "Jules Verne's Dream Machines: Technology and Transcendence." Extrapolation 54.2 (2013): [129]-146.

Abstract: This article discusses how Verne mythologizes and poeticizes his fictional machines. More than just a means for solving problems and/or for providing access to exotic geographical locales, Verne’s technology is portrayed as being intrinsically poetic. Bridging the worlds of the industrial and the artistic, Verne’s machines constitute a new kind of objet d’art. Anthropomorphized to make them seem less coldly mechanical, these devices take on a life of their own and exist in a richly symbiotic relationship with their creators. Such machines transport the readers of Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires beyond the mimetic, serving both as a means to build verisimilitude and as a stepping-stone to transcend the real.

Well illustrated — though the illustrations are not clearly identified — with 9 figures in a relatively short article, two or three of which are immediately relevant: an "exotic steam-driven overland locomotive designed to resemble an elephant" (p. 132; Figure 2, p. 133); and a futuristic (now Retro/Industrial) land vehicle (Figure 6, p. 138).

The article begins in the distinction Verne himself made between his goal (among others) of teaching "science through fiction" as opposed to H. G. Wells's goal of developing "fiction though science," making Verne the main progenitor of "'hard' sf — more technical, empirical-based, and didactic" — whereas Wells is described as the writer of "a 'softer' brand of sf —more social, philosophical-based, and speculative" (Evans, p. 130). Evans complicates this binary: "In my opinion, an important [...] trademark of the Vernian text is the extent to which the science and technology portrayed is mythologized and poeticized, creating a kind of 'mechanical mysticism.'"

Evans discusses this move in, among instances: The submarine Nautilus generally in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (pp. 130-32).

The "Steel Giant" in The Steam House — the "overland locomotive" mentioned above —described by Evans as "a gigantic mechanical elephant" and by Verne as an "artificial Leviathan" —and by Evans and Marie-Hélène Huet as "A piece of technology that 'is situated half-way between a natural marvel and a scientific marvel'" (Evans, pp. 132-33).

The use of electricity as, in the French of the period, "the electricity fairy" as a frequent power source for his "travel machines" (Evans, p. 136).

The improbable interior of the "space bullet" in the frequently scientifically exact From the Earth to the Moon (pp. 136-37) {to which we might add the harm done to any astronauts shot out of a cannon with enough speed to escape Earth's gravity well}.

"The luxurious accommodations aboard these Venerian dream machines [that[] transform them from simple modes of transportation into sumptuous vehicular utopias." (p. 134)

Verne's consistent assignment of names to his "vehicular dream machines," personalizing them (p. 138).

The "incantation effect" of machines "repeatedly praised in a non-stop series of glorifications" making them seem eventually, in the formulation of Jacques Noiray, "'not as a mechanical masterpiece but, rather, as a real miracle' (160)" (Evans p. 139).

The personification of the machines in their disappearance after their narrative use, especially "when one of these machines 'dies' and is mourned by the surviving protagonists" (p. 141).

Evans sees a "distinctly mise-en-abyme structure in which" Verne's "dream machines" are "embedded and of which they form a part." Even as Captain Nemo's painting collection "can be viewed as artwork inside a work of art, the Nautilus is a novel machine inside a novel, itself a "textual machine" that functions as a semiotic device, generating both content and meaning" (p. 141).

RDE, Initial Compiler, 31Jan19/1Feb19