Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828 March 24, 1905) was a French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Journey to the Center of the Earth (written in 1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (18691870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before navigable aircraft and practical submarines were invented, and before any means of space travel had been devised. Consequently he is often referred to as the "Father of science fiction", along with H. G. Wells.[1] Verne is the second most translated author of all time, only behind Agatha Christie with 4162 translations, according to Index Translationum.[2] Some of his work has been made into films.
Biography
Early years
Jules Gabriel Verne was born to Pierre Verne, and his wife, Sophie-Henriette Allotte de la Fue (died 1887), in the bustling harbor city of Nantes in Western France. The oldest of five children, he spent his early years at home with his parents. The family spent summers in a country house just outside the city, on the banks of the Loire River. Jules and his brother Paul, of whom Jules was very fond, would often rent a boat for a franc a day.[3] The sight of the many ships navigating the river sparked Jules' imagination, as he describes in the autobiographical short story "Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse". When Jules was nine, he and Paul were sent to boarding school at the Saint Donatien College (Petit sminaire de Saint-Donatien). As a child, he developed a great interest in travel and exploration, a passion he showed as a writer of adventure stories and science fiction. At twelve, he snuck onto a ship that was bound for India, only to be caught and severely whipped by his father. He famously quoted: "I shall from now on only travel in my imagination."

Verne sitting on a bench. At the boarding school, Verne studied Latin, which he used in his short story "Le Mariage de Monsieur Anselme des Tilleuls" in the mid-1850s. One of his teachers may have been the French inventor Brutus de Villeroi, professor of drawing and mathematics at Saint Donatien in 1842, and who later became famous for creating the US Navy's first submarine, the USS Alligator. De Villeroi may have inspired Verne's conceptual design for the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, although no direct exchanges between the two men have been recorded.

Introduction
In Jules Verne's 1874 novel The Mysterious Island, the Civil War is raging in the United States. Five Northern men have been taken prisoner by the Confederate army in Richmond, Virginia. The city is engulfed in a bloody battle, and the prisoners decide that their only hope for freedom is to escape while their captors are defending the Confederate capital. They steal a hot-air balloon, and, to their amazement, manage to escape Richmond, the United States, and all that they have ever known before. The balloon lands on a strange and uncharted island. None of the men know where they are or what to expect, not to mention how they will ever return home. Adventure

and danger await themfrom bizarre phenomena to frighteningly close calls with the island's menacing creatures to a mysterious message in a bottle. As the bewildering events unfold and as the five men begin to understand just what they are dealing with, they make a shocking discovery about the true nature of their strange island and the man behind the mystery. Don't rule anything (or anyone) out until the final pages of The Mysterious Island!

Summary
A story of castaways, similar to Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, this book details the escape from Civil War-era Richmond, Virginia, of five Northern men who dared to go aloft in a balloon in the midst of a hurricane. Deposited on a lonely island in the Pacific, they make do with Yankee ingenuity where Chance has left them nothing. Only later do they find they have a hidden benefactor: Captain Nemo, of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, who resides, alone, secretly on the island. In time, the tiny colony becomes so prosperous that it is able to rescue another castaway from an island a hundred miles away. But all their work will come to naught their islands volcano is about to awake! (Summary by Mark)

Plot
The book tells the adventures of five Americans on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. The story begins in the American Civil War, during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America. As famine and death ravage the city, five northern prisoners of war decide to escape in a rather unusual way by hijacking a balloon. The five are Cyrus Smith, a railroad engineer in the Union army, his African-American manservant Neb (short for Nebuchadnezzar), who Verne repeatedly states is not a slave but instead a loyal butler, the sailor Bonadventure Pencroff (who is referred to only by his surname, but his "Christian name" is given to their boat; in other texts, he is also known as Pencroft) and his protg Herbert Brown (or Harbert, depending on the translation), a young boy whom Pencroff raises as his own after the death of his father (Pencroff's former captain), and the journalist Gideon Spilett. The company is completed by Cyrus' dog 'Top'[1]. After flying in stormy weather for several days, the group crash-lands on a cliff-bound, volcanic, unknown (and fictitious) island, located at 3457S 15030W about 2,500 km east of New Zealand. They name it "Lincoln Island" in honor of American President Abraham Lincoln. With the knowledge of the brilliant engineer Smith, the five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerin, iron, a simple electric telegraph, a home in stone called the "Granite House", and even a sea-worthy ship. They also manage to find their geographical location.

Map of "Lincoln Island" Throughout their stay on the island, the group has to overcome bad weather, and eventually adopts and domesticates an orangutan, Jupiter, abbreviated to Jup (or Joop, in the aforementioned other translation). The mystery of the island seems to come from periodic and inexplicable dei ex machina: the unexplainable survival of Smith from his fall from the balloon, the mysterious rescue of his dog Top from a wild dugong, a box full of equipment (guns and ammunition, tools, etc...), the finding of a message in the sea calling for help, and so on. Finding a message in a bottle, the group decides to use a freshly-built small ship to explore the nearby Tabor Island, where a castaway is supposedly sheltered. They go and find Ayrton (from In Search of the Castaways), living like a wild beast, and bring him back to civilization and redemption. Coming back to Lincoln Island, they are confused by a tempest, but find their way to the island thanks to a fire beacon; which no one seems to have lit.

At a point, Ayrton's former crew of pirates arrives at the Lincoln Island to use it as their hideout. After some fighting with the heroes, the pirate ship is mysteriously destroyed by an explosion, and the pirates themselves are found dead, apparently in combat, but with no visible wounds. However, six of the pirates managed to survive and even manage to considerably injure Herbert through a gunshot. Herbert then, after recovering, contracts malaria and is saved by a box of sulphate of quinine, which mysteriously appeared on the table in the Granite House. The secret of the island is revealed when it turns out to be Captain Nemo's hideout, and home harbour of the Nautilus. It turns out having escaped the Maelstrom at the end of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, the Nautilus sailed the oceans of the world until all its crew except for Nemo had died. Presumably the other crewmen perished from natural causes. Now an old man with a beard, Nemo returned the Nautilus to one of the submarine ports that he used at times: the one hollowed out under Lincoln Island. All along it was Captain Nemo who had been the savior of the heroes, provided them with the box of equipment, sent the message about Ayrton, planted the mine that destroyed the pirate ship, and killed the pirates with an electric gun. Nemo dies of old age and the Nautilus is scuttled to be Nemo's tomb.[2] Eventually, the island explodes in a volcanic eruption. Joop, the orangutan, falls down a crack in the ground in which he met his doom. The castaways, warned by Nemo, find themselves at sea on the last remaining boulder of the island that is above sea level. They are rescued by the Duncan

ship, come to pick up Ayrton, and itself informed by a message left on Tabor Island by Nemo

Synopsis
During the American Civil war, five men:, Captain Cyrus Smith, an engineer; Gdon (Gideon) Spilett, a reporter; Pencroff a sailor; Harbert (Herbert), a student; Nab (Neb) a cook and Smith's dog Top escape the siege of Richmond, Virginia by balloon. The balloon was launched during a great storm; the wind from the storm blows the balloon and its six passengers on a 6,000 mile journey. They manage to make it to an island, which they determine is in the South Pacific Ocean. Everyone is accounted for except their natural leader Smith and his dog. The engineer and his dog are found under mysterious circumstances, but it is just the first of the island's many mysteries. Through the use of the engineer's vast knowledge, their wits, courage and the occasional help of an unknown force, the men begin to turn this island into their new home. When they complete a small boat, they are able to journey to a nearby island and add another member to their island's population. That man they eventually find out is named Ayrton, who was left on the nearby island for his involvement in the affair of the "Children of Captain Grant" (1868). The castaways survive an invasion by pirates, but their mysterious benefactor later reveals himself to them. Captain Nemo tells

them his history and that they may not be able to survive the next attack. That next attack is from the island itself as the island's volcano has begun to stir from its hibernation. NOTE: The stories Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant (1868), Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers (1870) and this story are all part of a trilogy, with Ayrton and Captain Nemo being the linking characters. Unfortunately, for reasons yet unknown, but probably because this linkage wasn't planned out in advance, the timelines for the three stories are inconsistent. This story takes place near the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and for the two years following; Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers takes place in 1866 and Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant takes place in 1864. Don't try to resolve these discrepancies because it is impossible.