Author | Jules Verne |
---|---|
Original title | Face au drapeau |
Translator | Cashel Hoey |
Illustrator | Léon Benett |
Language | French |
Series | The Extraordinary Voyages #42 |
Genre | Adventure novel, Science fiction [1] |
Publisher | Pierre-Jules Hetzel |
Publication date | 1896 |
Publication place | France |
Published in English | 1897 |
Media type | Print (Hardback) |
Preceded by | Propeller Island |
Followed by | Clovis Dardentor |
Facing the Flag or For the Flag (French : Face au drapeau) is an 1896 patriotic novel by Jules Verne. The book is part of the Voyages extraordinaires series.
Like The Begum's Millions , which Verne published in 1879, it has the theme of France and the entire world threatened by a super-weapon with the threat finally overcome through the force of French patriotism.
Thomas Roch, a brilliant French inventor, has designed the Fulgurator, a weapon so powerful that "the state which acquired it would become absolute master of earth and ocean." Unable to sell his unproven idea, Roch becomes bitter, megalomaniacal, and paranoid. The United States Government reacts by tucking him away at a luxurious asylum in New Bern, North Carolina, where he is visited by Ker Karraje, a notorious pirate of Malagasy origin.
Karraje and his men kidnap Roch and his attendant Gaydon from the asylum and bring him to their hide-out, the island of Back Cup in Bermuda. Here a wide cavern, accessible only by submerged submarine, has been made into a well-equipped pirate base. It is revealed that Gaydon is actually Simon Hart, a French engineer and explosives expert sent to spy on Roch and gain his confidence. Roch begins constructing his fearsome weapon, happily unaware that he is nothing but a glorified prisoner in the pirate's hands.
Hart succeeds in secretly sending out a message in a metal keg, giving the full details of Karraje's operations and his impending acquisition of the Fulgurator. The message gets through to the British authorities at their nearby naval base in Bermuda, and they send a submarine, HMS Sword, to find Hart. The submarine's crew makes contact with Hart, and take him and Roch on board, but the Sword is discovered, attacked, and sunk by the pirates. The unconscious Hart and Roch are extracted from the sunken British sub by pirate divers, leaving the entire British crew to perish. Hart manages to avoid suspicions of his actions.
Meanwhile, Roch's weapon is completed and becomes operational. Roch has no compunction in using it on British or American ships, and easily destroys the first cruiser to approach the island, with only a handful of its crew surviving. Next, a ship arrives from France, but Roch refuses to fire on his own country's ship. He struggles with the pirates, who try to seize the Fulgurator. During the struggle, Roch blows up himself, his weapon, and the pirates, along with the entire island. The single survivor of the cataclysm is Simon Hart, whose unconscious body with the diary at his side is found by the landing French sailors. Hart is eventually revived, to be amply rewarded for his dedication to his country.
Following publication of the book, Verne was sued by the chemist Eugène Turpin, inventor of the explosive Melinite, who recognized himself in the character of Roch and was not amused. Turpin had tried to sell his invention to the French government, which in 1885 refused it, though later purchasing it (it was extensively used in the First World War); but Turpin had never gone mad, nor did he ever offer his invention to any but the Government of France, so he had some justified grievance. Verne was successfully defended by Raymond Poincaré, later president of France. A letter to Verne's brother Paul seems to suggest, however, that after all Turpin was indeed the model for Roch. The character of Roch and his revolutionary powerful explosive might also have been inspired by the real-life Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite and later reportedly regretted having introduced such a destructive force into the world. [2] [3]
The book was written and published when France was in the throes of the Dreyfus Affair, Frenchmen were deeply divided over whether or not the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus was guilty of treason and espionage on behalf of the hated Germany (and over more fundamental issues bound up with the Dreyfus case). The question whether or not Verne was an anti-semite is hotly debated; while Walter A. McDougall finds "no overt evidence of anti-Semitism on Verne's part," [4] Brian Taves and Jean-Michel Margot note that his Off on a Comet contains "unflattering Shylock-style stereotypes." [5] In 1899 Verne came to support a judicial review of the Dreyfus case. [2]
Film historian Thomas C. Renzi considers Roch the archetype of the "mad scientist," the thriller fiction stock character of a monomaniac whose warped genius endangers the world. If so, much of 20th-century thriller fiction, including such films as Thunderball and Barbarella , may be considered direct descendants of Facing the Flag. [6]
In 1958, Czech director Karel Zeman used the novel as the basis for his 1958 film Vynález zkázy (a.k.a. The Deadly Invention and The Fabulous World of Jules Verne). The film, which made considerable use of the steel engravings in the original editions of Verne's novels, won the Grand Prix at the International Film Festival at Expo 58 in Brussels. [7]
In 2012 French comics artist Goux adapted the novel into a comic book, Le Fulgurateur Roch. [8]
Though in concrete details Roch's Fulgurateur bears no resemblance to nuclear arms, Verne's theme of a super-weapon whose possession could give world domination and which may destroy the world can be said to anticipate the post-1945 world.
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well-researched according to the scientific knowledge then available, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas is a science fiction adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne. It is often considered a classic within both its genres and world literature. The novel was originally serialised from March 1869 to June 1870 in Pierre-Jules Hetzel's French fortnightly periodical, the Magasin d'éducation et de récréation. A deluxe octavo edition, published by Hetzel in November 1871, included 111 illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou.
Nautilus is the fictional submarine belonging to Captain Nemo featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1875).
The Voyages extraordinaires is a collection or sequence of novels and short stories by the French writer Jules Verne.
Tom Ayrton is a fictional character who appears in two novels by French author Jules Verne. He is first introduced as a major character in the novel In Search of the Castaways (1867–1868). He then reappears in a later novel, The Mysterious Island (1875), in which his fate, left unknown at the ending of the previous novel, is resolved, and during the course of which his character undergoes change and achieves a redemption.
The Lighthouse at the End of the World is an adventure novel by French author Jules Verne. Verne wrote the first draft in 1901. It was first published posthumously in 1905. The plot of the novel involves piracy in the South Atlantic during the mid-19th century, with a theme of survival in extreme circumstances, and events centering on an isolated lighthouse. Verne was inspired by the real lighthouse at the Isla de los Estados, Argentina, near Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn.
Les Indes noires is a novel by the French writer Jules Verne, serialized in Le Temps in March and April 1877 and published immediately afterward by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. The first UK edition was published in October 1877 by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington as The Child of the Cavern, or Strange Doings Underground. Other English titles for the novel include Black Diamonds and The Underground City.
The Begum's Fortune, also published as The Begum's Millions, is an 1879 novel by Jules Verne, with some utopian elements and other elements that seem clearly dystopian.
François Eugène Turpin was a French chemist involved in research of explosive materials. He lived in Colombes.
HMS Sword is a fictional experimental submarine of the British Royal Navy in Jules Verne's 1896 novel Facing the Flag.
Invention for Destruction is a 1958 Czechoslovak black-and-white science fiction adventure film, directed by Karel Zeman, produced by Zdeněk Novák, and starring Lubor Tokoš, Arnošt Navrátil, and Miloslav Holub. Based on several works by Jules Verne, primarily his 1896 novel Facing the Flag, the film evokes the original illustrations for Verne's works by combining live actors with various forms of animation.
The Chase of the Golden Meteor is a novel by Jules Verne. It was one of the last novels written by the prolific French hard science fiction pioneer. The book, however, is seen as less an early example of hard science fiction than a social satire lampooning greed, monomania and vanity. Verne first wrote La Chasse au météore in 1901 and then rewrote it before his death, but it was only published in 1908, three years after the author's death, one of seven such posthumous novels.
Travel Scholarships is a 1903 adventure novel by Jules Verne.
"A Drama in the Air" is an adventure short story by Jules Verne. The story was first published in August 1851 under the title "Science for families. A Voyage in a Balloon" in Musée des familles with five illustrations by Alexandre de Bar. In 1874, with six illustrations by Émile-Antoine Bayard, it was included in Doctor Ox, the only collection of Jules Verne's short stories published during Verne's lifetime. An English translation by Anne T. Wilbur, published in May 1852 in Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature, marked the first time a work by Jules Verne was translated into the English language.
The Barsac Mission is a novel attributed to Jules Verne and written by his son Michel Verne. First serialized in 1914, it was published in book form by Hachette in 1919. An English adaptation by I. O. Evans was published in 1960 in two volumes, Into the Niger Bend and The City in the Sahara. It includes a hidden city, called in English "Blackland", in the Sahara Desert.
Backwards to Britain is a semi-autobiographical novel by the French writer Jules Verne, written in the fall and winter of 1859–1860 and not published until 1989.
Jules Verne (1828–1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. Most famous for his novel sequence, the Voyages Extraordinaires, Verne also wrote assorted short stories, plays, miscellaneous novels, essays, and poetry. His works are notable for their profound influence on science fiction and on surrealism, their innovative use of modernist literary techniques such as self-reflexivity, and their complex combination of positivist and romantic ideologies.
Master Zacharius, or the clockmaker who lost his soul is an 1854 short story by Jules Verne. The story, an intensely Romantic fantasy echoing the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, is a Faustian tragedy about an inventor whose overpowering pride leads to his downfall.
The Thompson Travel Agency is a 1907 novel attributed to Jules Verne but written by his son Michel Verne.
Jules Verne (1828–1905), the French writer best known for his Voyages extraordinaires series, has had a wide influence in both scientific and literary fields.