I love Science Fiction, and I have a particularly appreciation for Jules Verne. And yet, every author who writes enough will eventually write something that’s… not so great. Mysterious Island is Verne’s not-so-great novel.
This is unfortunate, because it has an interesting premise, a solid sci-fi theme, and a great setting (perhaps even a “mysterious” one).
If you’ve not read it (and spoilers about from here on out–but it’s a hundred and forty years old, so, you know, it’s on you if you haven’t read it yet), the plot is simple: five Americans Yankees escape from a Confederate POW camp in a hot air balloon and are blown onto an island with nothing but the shirts on their backs. Can they survive? Who is the mysterious benefactor who occasionally helps out in a time of need? What will happen to them all?
It turns out, that not only will they survive, but they will thrive. And here is the first weakness of the book: the engineer among them can do everything. Growing crops? Check. Weaving and tailoring? Check. Mining and metallurgy? Check. Carpentry? Check. Shipwrighting? Check. And so on.
I get that engineers are competent, but there is a limit to their competence. Within two years these guys have an operational telegraph for crying out loud…
So that’s one weakness–the overworked ability of one of the characters stretches the imagination. The other weakness of the book is the excessive detail. Want to know how to make a gunpowder substitute from only plants, minerals, and materials found on a tropical island? Well you’re in luck, because you’re going to get six pages on how to do that. I do like hard sci-fi, but Verne goes over the top here. This book could have been two-thirds shorter with no cost to plot, theme, or character development.
And yet, I do hold that there are some interesting ideas here, particularly from a Christian perspective. For one, the five castaways work very hard for years to build a small civilization and a ship that will get them off the island. Certainly they could not have done so had they not been civilized, decent folk up front (this point is driven home by the contrast of Ayrton, who is rescued from a nearby island and who was a criminal when left there, and who had functionally reverted to bestiality before he was rescued and reformed by the castaways).
After all their work, just as they are on the point of finishing their ship so they can escape the island (and return as American colonists claiming the land for the good ol’ USA), the volcano erupts and destroys their escape ship, telegraph system, and everything they had built. They are only saved because their mysterious benefactor (Captain Nemo of 20,000 Leagues fame) had sent for help for them, just before he died.
If we want to look at this book theologically, human effort can make a nice little life in this world–even a tropical paradise. But destruction is coming that is out of our hands and will totally destroy everything we have built. Our only hope is that someone else will save us, that the dying true owner of the island will act in our place and send us rescue.
Like I said, there is a lot there that’s worthwhile. It is just utterly bogged down in technological minutiae and overly reliant on the skill of a single engineer. So while you’re reading through Verne, maybe leave this one until last.
Dr. Coyle Neal co-hosts the City of Man Podcast and is an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog). He teaches Political Science, Philosophy, and History in Southwest Missouri.
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