Seth Hi there, and welcome back to Hugos There 2.0, and this is another author deep dive, this time about Jules Verne, which and that's the way I pronounce it, because until just a couple of years ago, I had no idea. It never crossed my mind that he had written originally in a language other than English. um and No, in fact, his name is closer to Jules Verne, and that's because he was French. and Both my guests will be able to pronounce the name more accurately because they both speak French. So that said, I said guests. I have two guests for this podcast. I have Emmanuel from the Stellar podcast, Lafayette. We are here. Hi, Emmanuel. Emmanuel Hi. Thank you. Seth Good to have you. And I also have Haley from the equally stellar podcast, Hugo Girl. Hi, Haley. Haley Hey, how you doing? Seth Yeah, it's good good to finally have you. i was Before we were recording, I i was like, oh, I've never had a halyon solo. And then I realized I still haven't. um so So down the road sometime we'll do that. um I have to say, ah when when I was originally talking about this, I mentioned to Emmanuel, I said, i I feel like Americans don't know that Jules Verne is ah French. And so I put up a poll on Twitter and I was not encouraged by the results. It turns out it was just me. 84% of respondents knew he was French. So it's a little it's a little embarrassing, but yeah. Emmanuel Maybe they cheated. They went to Google first. Haley Yeah. Seth yeah um So I think I have a handle on how Emmanuel came to speak French, but Haley, what's your story? Haley I was in college and I didn't know what I was going to be doing or studying, but I knew that I was going to get a minor in French. Like I had i'd studied it in high school and I loved it. And then I just kept taking classes. And then by my junior year, they were like, well, if you take another five extra classes, you can have a double major. So I majored in English and French literature. So. Seth Nice. So did you read some Verne? Haley We did not read any Jules Verne. um We read a lot of things. Mainly, I read things from the 19th century. so Yeah, which which Jules Verne is from the 19th century, but it was more like it was like Hugo. Emmanuel Le Romantique. Haley Yeah. Yeah. Seth Okay, nice. Seth And I do want to make sure to, to refer people over to Lafayette We Are Here because you recently did an episode, if people want to know more about and more detail about exactly who the man was. Emmanuel did a great job on that recently. Emmanuel Yes, on my podcast, Lafayette, We Are Here, which, as many of you guessed now, know by now, ah is a French history podcast so or ah oriented towards the American public. And my last episode of July 2024 was on Jules Verne, so it's really a kind of biography, you know, going through his whole life, not only the books we're going to talk about here, but from his beginnings to the end, his life in Nantes, in Paris, and in Amiens after that. We can touch on some of those elements, but if you want a complete overview, you can go to my latest episode. Seth Yeah. Seth Yeah, excellent. And I think it makes certain sense to bring any of that in that you know relates to what he was writing. Let's see. So I guess that that would would probably be, well, I guess before before then, Haley, anything new with Hugo, Girl!? Haley um Nope, just hanging out. ah We took a month off, which we hadn't done in five years. And so, yeah, I'm glad we had some time off. But I've been reading a lot of ah World War II. I get really into like World War II every couple of years. And so I've been reading about um the Marine Expeditionary Forces in the Pacific on Guadalcanal. So that's where my head's at. Seth oh my My dad was so into that. He had bookshelves and bookshelves, and I wish that I had ever taken that up. Haley Yeah. Seth The closest I've come is I watched The Pacific. Haley Yeah, and that is a launching point. Haley Same with Band of Brothers when I got really into like the Normandy campaign and all that stuff, so. Seth Yeah. Yeah. Seth And when I was a kid, you know, we had the, uh, the mini series war and remembrance, or I guess the winds of war and war and remembrance. And those were, yeah. Haley Yeah, Herman Wouk, yep. Seth Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Emmanuel My first historical research was in World War II. And my my first website was a big French website on World War II when I was like 15, 16 years old. So that was also like my entry into getting serious into history. Seth Wow. Haley Nice. Emmanuel So I know, I geek about World War II too. Seth I mean it's a major event, right? So it makes it makes sense is the the kind of thing that would attract somebody. Emmanuel Kinda. Haley Yeah. Seth And if you want more about World War II and Emmanuel's expertise on that, you can check out the Take Me to Your Reader episode on Slaughterhouse-Five or our Hugos There episode on Blackout and All Clear. Emmanuel Yeah, the Connie Willis one Seth Okay, so let's go ahead and and start, you know, maybe Emmanuel without spoiling your episode, like a brief, you know, back of the envelope, I guess, inside flap bio of Jules Verne. Emmanuel Yeah, so ah as I said, he was from Nantes, which is where in western France on like on the Atlantic, almost on the Atlantic coast. And he is, ah so he's born in 1828, I believe. And so he's really, and he dies in 1905. So he's really a 19th century writer. And he's the son of a lawyer, so he's any first to this law. He's not supposed to become a writer. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel ah He's supposed to do like that and to work in his office, but Jules Verne is anything but a lawyer. I mean, he's very, he works a lot. He's very smart, but he wants to create. And that shows very, when he's very young, he conflicts with his dad a lot. And then he will move to Paris to study law, but he will meet artists and writer and ah playwrights and all these people. and He's basically in Paris in mid 19th century. Of course, he's not going to do what he's that ask of him. He's going to become a writer. It's going to be a bit tough for the first few years, but then in the 1860s, he's going to be discovered, if you will, by an editor called Edsel. And he's going to start publishing his most famous books, like you Five Weeks in a Balloon, I think is the first novel that gets recognition, if you will. Emmanuel And then he will have the book we're going to talk about today, From the Earth to the Moon. as And a few years later, he's going to have his masterpiece, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. Then he's going to go on ah for a few decades like that. um He's going to be um snubbed a bit, I would say, in his life by the literary community, just like many science fiction authors still are. Seth mm. Emmanuel And he's going to be a huge influence on everybody after him. ah People often compare it to H.G. Wells, but they forget that Verne was active 40 years before H.G. Wells. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel And Wells took a lot from him, which is, you know, to be expected. And also Verne is an influence on modern literature, like if you take the turn-turn story, Seth mm. Emmanuel These big adventures, they clearly flow from the kind of story that Véin talks about, because it's not only science fiction, it's basically big adventures. They can be based on um prediction, but often they are based on, as we'll talk about, on science and when it was living. It's basically extrapolating from that. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel and is really a to me ah an image of 19th century big scientific advances and positivism that is going to be very strong throughout his whole life. Seth Nice. his His background reminds me, and so when I went to to college, you know I went to study engineering, but I ended up hanging out with the theater people and the music people and getting involved in in music theater and choir and things like that, but I somehow resisted the urge to switch to be an art major. so Haley Yeah, I did the same thing. I graduated from law school and practiced for a little bit, but then I became a professional writer. so Seth Right, and you'rere you're doing a lot more writing these days, right? Haley Yeah, well, I write for a company, so like I'm not like writing creative. I mean, there is... Seth You do some fandom stuff too, though, right? Haley Yeah, I write for ah Nerds of a Feather. I do movie reviews, but nothing terribly creative, but I do like to write. Seth Nice. Yeah. Emmanuel Well, they're very well written. Haley Oh, thank you. Seth Yeah. Yeah, indeed. So, ah Emmanuel, in school growing up, did you did you get exposed to a lot of Jules Verne? Emmanuel Not a lot, but some. I would say the book that pretty much every young French kid will read is Around the World in 80 Days because it's a fun story. It's an easy read. It's very short and the concept is fun. Just basically on a wager, ah this guy named Phileas Fogg goes around the world in 1870 something and he has to make it in 80 days, which at the time is a remarkable feat. You know you don't have plans. You almost have no trains except within, you know, Metropolite and France, stuff like that. Seth Right. Emmanuel you know it's So it is a feed it's a big adventure. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel So it talks about other countries. And at the time, to most people, it's a complete discovery. You know, people just don't know about those other countries. So we did read about, we did read that that book. But I would say, even though we don't read that much, Verne, a school per se, Verne is a huge persona in France. He's part of the French ethos in some way. Everybody everybody knows of him. He has streets in places all over the place. It's just like, you know, I don't know, take Edgar Allan Poe in America. Everybody knows him. Even ah even even if they never read him. Seth Right, right. Haley, what about you and in terms of your, like, what's your history with Verne? Haley Yeah, so I read, um I had a bunch of like the great children's illustrated classics and I read Around the World in 80 Days and it was like definitely abridged, but you know, it was that but you know it's pages of it or whatever. Seth Well, and show me a 19th century novel that can't be abridged. Haley ah Exactly. Seth Or shouldn't. Haley Everything, everything but Moby Dick. Seth Okay, okay. Haley Yeah. And then I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in high school as well and hadn't revisited him since since this summer, actually. So but it's good. Seth Okay. Haley um One of my first memories of Jules Verne actually is in ah Back to the Future Part Three. Seth Yep. Haley Doc mentions it to Clara and I was like, yeah, obviously. So. Emmanuel I remember that scene very well. Haley Yeah. Seth Yep. I, that may have been the first I knew of the author, other than, but so for me, I had never read any, any Jules Verne at all. Um, I would, was only exposed to it through film and television. So I had seen the the Kirk Douglas, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I had seen the Pierce Brosnan Around the World in 80 Days. I've never seen the David Niven one, um, which is more classic, I think. Haley Yeah, well, there's a new one with David Tennant that's on PBS. Haley It's like an eight-part miniseries. They kind of changed it up because it's kind of problematic. ah So, yeah. Seth Okay. I saw the Steve Coogan one as well that came out, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago. Haley Yeah, the 1956 Around the World in Eight Days won Best Picture, which is wild. Seth Wow. Seth i'll have to I'll have to check that one out at some point and put it on my list. But yeah, this is this is a new, basically a new author for me. So I always appreciate that. So Emmanuel, if you were to tell someone where to start, would you tell them to start with Around the World in 80 Days? Emmanuel it can be a good start because it's a fairly I would say it's a light story it's easy to go in it there's a lot of humor in it it's it's you know it's quite funny and I would say something like the um From the Earth to the Moon could be good for an American because it's it happens in America the story is in America so maybe you could read it in its right after the Civil War. So it does have some connection to American history. Seth Right. Emmanuel So that could be a good a good one too. I would not start with 20,000 Leagues because it's a denser book. It's more complicated. And it's the one of those when he enumerates a lot, you know, when you have those biologists who geek out about species and stuff. Seth Yes. Emmanuel And it's relevant. But if if that's the one you start with, it could be a bit tough boating, I would say. Seth I wanted to to bounce this off of you if you think that that Jules Verne was sort of like the proto hard science fiction author because he he really tries to ground things in reality. And when when he has a moment to pull on a thread, he just keeps on pulling. And and yeah, there's a catalog of of fish and 20,000 things under the sea. There's basically an entire chapter all about the moon and and how we know you know, using parallax, how we know how far away it is. um So yeah. Emmanuel he he is in a scan also of the Neil deGrasse Tyson of the time because there is clearly an intent to educate people. Seth Mm hmm. Emmanuel It's part of his, I would say it's part of his contract almost ah with his editor that he has to have those scientific based story. So they both entertain and also educate and all the stuff he talks about is really at the ah top of scientific knowledge of the time. Seth Hmm hmm. Emmanuel you know he was He did his research very, very well. We can laugh, of course, after some stuff, you know but it's easy to laugh 130 years after he wrote it. And we actually went there, you know which was not the case. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel We can talk about how he handles G-force in his novel. Seth Right. Emmanuel ah But as we all know, by the way, from the third and Back to the Future, very scientifically accurate, we cannot go faster than 88 miles per hour with a locomotive. So he didn't have any actual trial to to see what the effect of G force on the human body. Haley it's true Seth Yes, yeah. Hailey, any comment about the hard science fiction thing? Haley Yeah, that's one of the things that I wrote down. I would not recommend anybody starting with from the rest of the moon. It is like pure physics. I got real bored real quick. um It is funny at points. ah But yeah, it is just, I mean, and and it's super smart. Like I even like, there's one point he's like, this is the exit velocity, like 12,000 meters per second. I was like, I'm going to check that. So he's right. Seth Mm hmm. Haley So I mean, so that's really cool. Emmanuel Uh-huh. Seth Yeah. Haley But it's just basically, it's just like, It's like the really hard parts of um Neal Stephensen books. I guess like I get it. Ooh, this is just like a physics lesson. Seth Mm hmm. Right. Right. Yeah. and And credit where it's due, you know he he really did come close to all the the exit velocities and the transit time ah to reach the moon. i I'm not quite sure where he was going with the exact, you know the zenith and perigee calculation. i guess I guess for something that can't adjust its trajectory, you have to be a lot more exact where with with Haley Yeah. Seth um manned spaceflight, you know we can we can go out of the Earth's atmosphere and do an insure insertion burn right to actually um head toward the moon. um So we can and and use retrorockets and that kind of stuff to correct the course, but you really have to know ah you got it right if you're just going to aim a big gun at the moon and shoot. um I do kind of want to start with from the Earth to the moon because I feel like that's that's the science fiction fan choice. right And Emmanuel, like you mentioned, it's set in America and it is so American because unfortunately, um because it starts off at The Gun Club, right? Emmanuel heh Seth It starts off with with the members of the gun club who are responsible for making big cannons and things like that, lamenting the fact that the civil war is over and there's not really a prospect for another good dust up anytime soon. And so what are they going to do? And somebody's like, what if we shoot the moon? Emmanuel Yeah, it's funny that his depiction of Americans is but basically that you are brave, entrepreneurial, hardworking, open minded, but also bellicose and trigger happy, basically. Haley Which is so funny because France of the 19th century wasn't the most peaceful place. Emmanuel Not at all, not at all. We we had like yeah five changes of government in eighty years. Haley I know, right? Emmanuel So, and the French are very aggressive and bellicose in their own history. Haley yeah Emmanuel So, and that's his perspective at the time. Seth Yeah, so ah another thing to kind of talk about, I mean, anytime you talk about science fiction or or writing in the past, right, is looking at their worldviews and seeing, oh, okay, this is, you know, Around the World in 80 Days, pretty Eurocentric, right? There's there's there's some stuff where you're like, we could we could do better than that description of, you know, folks in Asia. um Nowadays, um but he also it it seems like vern Admires lots of different groups of people because because with Around the World in 80 Days, you know He I can't tell if he's insulting English people or complimenting them on how cool Phileas Fogg is and how how how you know on Unperturbed he is Yeah Haley that's the nicest way you could put to describe him haha Emmanuel it's it's always a bit caricatural i think he has to at some point because as i said at the time most people don't really know about these other people and you know when you read about for example when these when he depicts uh Itallians or Spaniards they're basically backwards and really over religious you know so it takes the caricature of the time which is very common i would say most French authors would of course say we the French are better than these guys you know ah but i'm Seth Right, right. Everyone knows that Americans are like this. Emmanuel Exactly. So there's a fair element of that. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel I would say if you read his whole corpus, it gets nuanced at times. It's not always that obvious and that aggressive. But yeah, he was, of course, ah an integral part of the ah preconceived ideas ideas of the time. Haley It kind of reminds me of, ah if you've ever read Democracy in America by Alex de Tocqueville, he went and like traveled around America for years. Seth Hmm. Haley And if you read that book, you're still like, wow, us Americans have not changed very much. And you know having having the gun club with people that have missing limbs from wars and shooting guns, and they're just like, give give me more guns, it's still true 150 years later. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel especially saw when we see it from an outside perspective. I mean, I'm not that far, I'm in Montreal, but from our side of the border, what some stuff that happens in the States is just flabbergasting. Seth Yeah, can I can feel you side-eyeing us from from up there. And it reminds me of the the Onion post that I just always posted every time there's a mass shooting in the US that says, "Nothing that can be done about this, says the only country where this regularly happens." Haley It's true Emmanuel But despite all this, he does present Americans as people that that do try to solve this insoluble problem, how to get to the moon. And he does point out a few times, only the Americans could do it. Only you have this spirit and this capacity and to to make such an endeavor true. Seth Right. Emmanuel But halfway to the book, of course, the main hero is French. Seth Of course. haha Emmanuel And what what I did like is that he comes in very late in the story. Seth He does. Yeah. Emmanuel ah did This dude, he comes in very late, and he's like, hey, your whole design, you know what? ah Put a hatch in it. I'm going to go into that shell to the moon. What? Oh, I'm almost there, by the way. Seth Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I don't know, maybe maybe it's a little surprising that he put America forth as the, the you know, where the ingenuity is because England was still a gigantic empire at this point. It was starting to to wane, right? and And kind of by the time World War II was over, it was, you know, basically gone. Emmanuel You'll have a hard time finding a Frenchman praising England, Seth That makes sense. Yeah. Emmanuel especially at the time. and you know the the Those two countries have been at war for like five centuries, on and off. And even though there has been a peace period at that time, tensions were coming back. It's it's a bit complicated, but you know Americans, French like Americans more than English almost all the time. Seth Right. Emmanuel you know So he's not ah he's no exception in that regard. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel Plus, the Americans did have that reputation of being very courageous, you know, is the time of the frontier and all that stuff. Seth Mm hmm. Emmanuel So it does. And your country is still not that well defined in the Europeans minds. So it is very exotic to them. um So I think that's part of the reason, ah like the the English are enemies, but also they're common, you know, we we know, we know the English, we've known them for 1000 years, and we each and know each other for 1000 years. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel So and Not that interesting, but the Americans ah were very interesting to the French people at the time. Seth Yeah. Haley Yeah, and he was right. like England and France would never go on to explore the moon. Seth True. Haley They would never have huge space programs. That's just a fact. so Emmanuel That's true. Emmanuel In the end, it was right. Seth I do want to mention to folks, i I don't think that I mentioned this while we were recording, that From the Earth to the Moon is it's more than half of a book, as Emmanuel said when we were before we were recording. you know There is a sequel to it. which i don't how How much longer after did it come out? Emmanuel ah If it it came out right after like a year or two after and ah can I spoil it so people is that okay? Seth Okay. Well, yeah, from From the Earth to the Moon it does end on something of a cliffhanger. Emmanuel Yeah, ah basically, they so spoiler times everybody, ah basically, they managed to get people in a shell, they shoot it with a huge cannon. And as Haley explained, you have all the engineering and physics behind it before in the book, so that you have a very good idea of what's going on. Seth Yes. Emmanuel And but they actually miss. So instead of landing on the moon, they go into orbit around it, which is actually a good thing. Seth Right. Emmanuel because you know what happens in the second book very broadly is that they turn around the moon for some time and they get hit but by an asteroid which changes their trajectory they come back to earth thanks to that because at some point they leave the gravity of the moon and they get grabbed by the gravity of the earth which is fairly accurate i would say Seth Mm. Emmanuel And ah they land in the ocean, I don't remember which one, but the image, the the the the drawings they did at the time, the illustration of that capsule in the ocean with those teams of boats going around to extricate the astronauts from it, it just it looks like an Apollo capsule. Seth Mm. Emmanuel It's incredible when you think about it. And to me, I can't imagine that those guys who designed that capsule didn't have some Jules Verne story in their minds. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel I'm sure you know that he he was an inspiration to maybe kids who later became engineers or scientists, what have you. Seth yeah Yeah, I mean, it it you've seen that story a bunch of times, right? why what why do you think we use Why do you think we ever had flip phones, right? Because of communicators on Star Trek. you know why Why do electric cars sound like electric cars from movies? Because they have to have a speaker in them so that they make some noise and the engineers were like, well, it should sound like an electric car then. Haley Yeah, so funny do you mentioned that. So it was the Pacific, and I read some Wikipedia today. During their return journey from the moon, the crew of Apollo 11 made reference to Jules Verne's book during a TV broadcast. The mission's commander Neil Armstrong said 100 years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the moon. His spaceship, Columbia (sic), took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing a trip to the moon. It seems appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew as the modern day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet Earth. Seth Hmm. Haley So. Emmanuel And the influence on US adventures doesn't stop there. For example, in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the famous submarine is called the Nautilus. And the first US nuclear submarine was called the Nautilus in honor to Jules Verne's submarine. Seth Hmm. Haley Yep. Emmanuel So there is a back and forth between Jules Verne and the United States. And I would say broad broadly Western culture, ah more than people often know. But everybody knows the Nautilus. Everybody knows Captain Nemo. is really part of who of our culture on both sides of the Atlantic. Seth Yeah, even thinking of Finding Nemo, right? Haley Yeah. Emmanuel Exactly. Seth This is not a coincidence. I want to back up for a second. So the the previous Zoomed Out episode that I just posted at the beginning of of August is about Translated Science Fiction. And of course, all of Jules Verne's works were translated from French into English. um And I think my my guest mentioned that some of them were really bad translations or that there would be someone would be thinking, oh, Americans don't care about this. And so just like eliminate an entire subplot. um Are you aware of any of the travails of the translation? Emmanuel I do know that many of them were translated at the time because Verne was very popular outside of France as he was writing. Seth Okay. Emmanuel And I don't know, I don't think they had that high quality standards back in the 19th century for translating work. Basically want to make it available as quickly as possible and a story and Verne probably never read the English versions of his own stories. Seth Okay. Emmanuel So if they kept that version going for long, that could be part of the explanation. Seth Hmm. Could be like they got somebody who who said they that he read French, kind of like Brad Pitt in Gloria's Bastard spoke Italian. Buongiorno. Emmanuel Yeah, because when you read Verne, and Haley can comment on that, when you read Verne in the original French, he's a very plain writer. Haley Yeah. Emmanuel He's very clear, very, very clear, you know, there is no way you can misunderstand him. He's not Hugo or Dumas who plays with words a lot. He's not like that. Haley No. Emmanuel He's very straightforward. He's kind of like Asimov. Haley I was thinking like he's like Asimov, like he explains everything lays it out. Everything has a reason. Yeah. Emmanuel yeah like yeah Emmanuel Yeah, maybe not as bland as Asimov. He does try to cover things ah a bit and his characters are not as dull, but still he is very straightforward. Haley No, not at all. Haley Yeah. Emmanuel So I think it could be very translated perfectly because he doesn't play with the French language as much as Victor Hugo would. Seth Okay. Haley Yeah, it's not poetic. It's it's just it's it's a matter of fact. I think he relies more on his plots than like his character development or his like twists. But yeah, I think it's, I actually thought about breaking it out and reading some French, but all the science in from the Earth to the Moon, I think would have been a challenge for me. Like, I don't like to read science texts in English, let alone French. so Seth So I guess maybe not as many things to get lost in translation but because of not trying to, you know, get and because that's one of the things, right? and when If there's there's ways to to do puns, for instance, that work in one language, but not another, right? Haley Yeah. Seth And so when you translate that, you have to figure out how to how to render it. Haley Yeah. I don't think there's a single pun in these books. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel No, not even the funnier one, like Around the World in 80 Days, ah I think it can be translated perfectly because it's there is no even the puns, the few that are there are very straightforward, they're not. Seth Hmm. Haley Yeah. Emmanuel As i say he doesn't it as she said, it's not poetic, it doesn't play with the language. Seth So so this I had a question about From the Earth to the Moon, because the the president of the gun club is named Impey Barbicaine. And I've never heard such a name. And I wondered, is that is it a joke in French? Is it Pig Latin? I was never able to figure it out. Emmanuel I don't think so Haley i thought it was I thought it was very Dickensian, just like MP, Imperial, warlike, and then Barbican, like barbarous, so. Seth Yeah, that works. Okay. I hadn't thought of it in in like thinking about Dickens characters and and that kind of thing where, yeah, they there were some great names in Dickens. Emmanuel And I don't know that he read a lot of English literature. He was a huge fan of Poe, for example. Haley Mm-hmm. Emmanuel And he so he I think he was very aware of how Anglophones represented themselves in literature. Seth Okay. Emmanuel So that could be an experience of that. But ah it doesn't make any funny thing in French. It just how a French man would imagine a president of such and such an association be named. Seth okay Haley Yeah, I think if he was writing today, it would be the similar version would be like Chuck McDanger or something. Seth Okay. Seth Right. Haley This is like Uber masculine. I don't know. So yeah. Seth Right, right. Johnny Squarejaw. Haley Yeah. Seth Yes. um I did want to ask, because in one ah in one of the big lists, Haley, in from the Earth to the Moon, there's a big list of exotic foods in America when and when the entire basically entire United States comes to watch the launch. And some of them are definitely killed by the launch. um it will just He kind of yada-yada's that. Haley ah Yeah. Seth um But he presents stuffed monkey as a southern delicacy. And you know I know Atlanta isn't exactly the Deep South. but but is Haley Stuffed monkey. Seth And there are no native monkey species in the United States. Haley No, nope. I think he was just taken in. Takin' the piss, as the British would say. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel You just destroyed my... Haley Fried monkey, maybe, but stuffed monkey. Seth right There we go. Emmanuel You just destroyed my hopes, Haley. I was figuring next time I went down south I could discover something. Haley right Well, I always think of chilled monkey brains from Indiana Jones, so. Emmanuel Happy memories. Seth Yeah, yeah yeah yeah that very very respectful depiction of of you know indian Indian food. Emmanuel Totally. Seth anyhow ah so what what don't we move on in let Let's talk about Around the World in 80 Days. i mean We don't have to dwell super long on any of these because I think they're you know we We mentioned there's a number of adaptations of Around the World in 80 Days, and I thought it was amusing that um you know my only reference for it really was that I completely forgot the Steve Coogan movie until we started recording. But the Pierce Brosnan one was a television miniseries. Haley oh yeah Seth And I just assumed that it was a pretty straight adaptation, but there's a lot of ah differences. You know, things that are in common are the, you know, the Indian princess and Passepartout, the French servant, um and Phileas Fogg, obviously, and the law man trying to hunt him down. um But some of the modes of where he gets from one place to another definitely change. Haley I think they do that to make it more interesting because like there there there is a lot of train and boat, and I think mixing it up just a little bit makes it more fun. Seth Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, it is interesting though that that they they get on the train and the train only takes them so far. And well, now you have to to travel another 40 miles to catch the next next train. Haley okay I was reading about the more recent one with David Tennant, and it's it's it's very modern with like you know politically more appropriate sensibilities, and so they turned Fix into a woman, and she accompanies them kind of like Nellie Bly, a journalist. they and It appears they give her the entire Indian queen subplot, which I think is for the best. um And just, you know, they just add more diversity to it. But I think it's interesting that the the story keeps living on, just we want to change bits, but keep the overall theme. Seth yeah um Emmanuel, were these novels serialized or were they published in novel form? Emmanuel I would say so ah this one I think was serialized. Many of them were, some were released directly as novels, but often they were serialized in, um actually I have the name, in the Magazine of Education and Recreation. So just by the name of the magazine you figure the point of it. uh and funny thing about the adaptations of 80 uh Around the World in 80 Days even ah during Verne's life it was adapted in plays and often by himself or he was part of the production if you will and during those plays you would have big changes sometimes because it was just not practical to try to represent this or that event but also because Verne understood perfectly the difference between a play in a novel and that you want to show Seth Hmm. Emmanuel basically the same idea but represented differently and he was perfectly fine with that. yeah He started actually as a playwright when he first started writing so he was very aware um of the differences ah between ah the original novel and adaptation and you can tell that to Colin. Seth Hmm. I was going to say Jules Verne is now dead to Colin. Haley Yeah Seth Um, no, I mean, Ray Bradbury was similar, and right? Because he, he wrote a lot for the stage as well. And he often changed things drastically. Haley I wonder if like all of the different forms of transportation, it's like a 19th century fast and the furious. It's just like, man, there's like a boat, there's an elephant, there's a steamship. like People are just like excited to hear about all these different types of modern conveyances that they might never see. so Seth Mm. Emmanuel Well, he is, all these stories to me have a common thread is that they show human an achievement. They show what we can do or what we could do in the, to the near future. And it's all, in my mind, it's all part of that very 19th century way of thinking that a French philosopher named Auguste Comte called positivism. Basically we're advancing, progressing, the human race as a whole is advancing. Haley Mm Emmanuel Because to them, if you look at somebody living in France in 1870, And you compare them to 1770, it's day and night. like it's not It's as modernized so fast. Where if you were to compare 1770 to 1670, it's almost the same. you know So a year of study all the centuries before the progress is very slow. But in the 19th century, the progress was huge. And not only in France, but of course, Verne being French, he sees the French perspective. So to him, humanity is going very fast. And advancing progressing, you see medicine advances, you're seeing engineering achievements. I mean, at the time, you know, it's crazy, like you have Louis Pasteur, who helps make ah ah vaccines come along. You have technological achievement that were completely unbelievable, maybe 20 years before. um Trains are starting to go everywhere. Emmanuel So imagine living in such a world where you see advancement in such a bright light, you make it part of your story. And that's something he clearly puts into his story with many different forms, either by going on the moon or by traveling around the world or by going under the seas or going to the center of the earth. All these books try to represent some aspect of that positive progress. Seth I like it. Um. yeah I mentioned that Around the World in 80 days in places is definitely kind of Eurocentric and epitomized probably most when Passepartout becomes separated from Fogg right because he makes the boat and fog does not. um And he arrives in Japan and basically thinks to himself, I can make a living busking for for a couple of weeks until until Fogg shows up um because you know these Japanese could not fail to appreciate good European singing. Haley He would only be so wrong. Seth yeah Yeah. Emmanuel For real. Haley um i I was thinking about this, and one of the notes I wrote down is, why is it so fun to watch unbridled wealth move mountains? Because like he's like, i you know tear your ship apart and start burning. Seth right Haley it I don't care. like Here's one million dollars. It's just so fun to watch somebody who's that rich just bend the world to his will. Seth Yeah. And you know in in this book, you know not to spoil too much, but but you know he essentially doesn't really make any money on the bet because he so he spends his entire fortune in order to to make the trip. yeah He does come out with a wife um who proposes to him, which I thought was nice. Emmanuel And it's something that to us French is very British. He did this whole wager for nothing for the sport. Haley Yep. Seth Right. Emmanuel And that's a perspective, I mean, it's a very, it's a caricature, but that's the idea that a Frenchman would have of a ah English high society member, you know, he would do anything on a bet on a whim. And that's something you'll find in those stories that you'll have those national elements. Seth Right. Emmanuel Here we have an English gentleman in Voyage to the Center of the Earth, we are Journey to the Center of the Earth in English, I believe. We have a German mineralogist From the Earth to the Moon. We have those Americans. In 20,000 Leagues under the seas, we have a French professor. And he was always tried to put those elements of each country's what he believes is part of their cultures um and you know as you may know since last Friday with the opening ceremony the French can be quite provocative so expect some discoveries. Haley It was so good. Seth Yeah. Anything else to to talk about about around the world in the late eighties? I mean, you know it it is very What's the word? Peripatetic, right? From one place to another. Haley It's fun. Seth And yeah, yeah. Haley Yeah. Seth And it definitely reads like a serialized novel um where where you can you can just pick it up and go, you know, it doesn't have the previously on, you know, kind of thing that you get sometimes in serialized stuff. Haley Definitely. Seth Like I think of some Lovecraft where like the first 25% of any new chapter is recapping what was in the previous one. Haley Yeah. Seth Um, and perhaps that's edited around when, when things are compiled into novels. Emmanuel Mm Seth Um, but, uh, but yeah, it's fun. And, and Fogg, you know, is not presented as in really any kind of negative light. You know, he talks about how he, he plays cards and wins money, but then he just donates it to charity, right? He he's not really interested in expanding his own wealth. And so, yeah. Haley So yeah it's very neutral. It's just like, this is a weird dude. He's got a thing that he likes. Seth yeah Haley He's very into his routine. Seth Uh-huh. Emmanuel Well, Verne characters tend to be nerds and to to not care about wealth. Haley True. Emmanuel That's also a common thread. Seth Hmm. Emmanuel They usually care about the adventure or the mission, what have you, but wealth, you you can see he doesn't appreciate characters who want to achieve wealth or fortune or glory for for the sake of itself. Seth Hmm. Emmanuel There was always something higher in his stories. Seth All right. Uh, maybe 20,000 Leagues under the sea. Talk about that for a little bit. I feel like those, those are, there are three good works to kind of introduce somebody to, to the author note. Haley It's not. Seth I mean, not, not that I'm an authority on that. I've read those three and that's all, um, I will say that. Haley The other ones are horrible. Seth oh Okay. I will say that, um, I have a really hard time saying 20,000 Leagues. I I've been saying 2000 leagues under the sea for but several months. Haley oh Yeah. Emmanuel It's the kind of title that career flows better in French. Vingt Mille Lieues Sous les Mers It just rolls off the tongue a lot easier than 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Haley Yeah. Seth Hmm. Emmanuel You feel like you're recitating something. Seth Yeah. Haley And it's, I thought it was under the sea and and it is in English for a lot of ways, but then the French one translates sometimes to it's seas, which we don't say seas very often. We say, I think, I think that could have just said under the ocean, but yeah. Seth It's very apt though, because he he definitely describes you know traveling in many of the different seas, right? Haley That's true. That's true. Seth they All the way in Indian Ocean, in the Mediterranean, you know Pacific, the Atlantic, Arctic. Haley Yeah. Haley it's got It's got big Frankenstein's monster energy in terms of like, it's not Frankenstein, it's it's this. Seth Right, right, right. Emmanuel Well, you could argue that a submarine is a kind of Frankenstein. It's a character in itself. Haley True. Seth Right. Yeah. and And like I saw the movie on television when I was when I was a kid. And so basically all that I remembered was being kind of bored until the squid showed up. And then that was awesome. Haley Yeah. Seth so um And so so I didn't really know much about the actual plot. And and and I really enjoyed the way the novel starts. and i was I didn't know exactly what was happening when it talked about the ships being rammed by something. I thought, oh, this is the squid. We've already met the squid. Then when when they go out there and they start harpooning it, and I'm like, metal. Oh, okay. I think I think i know what this is now. Seth um and so so It kind of surprised me. and I really enjoyed the book. i I think I would really not like it on a reread because of all the the the ways that I don't appreciate hard science fiction. Seth where, yes, I'm glad that you did all that research and all that homework, and you spilled it all out onto the page for me. And one time, I can usually get through that, maybe not with the Mars books, but um with with the Martian and Jurassic Park and most most Michael Crichton. Haley Yeah. Seth I can appreciate that one time through. And then when I reread it, I'm just annoyed. Emmanuel Yeah. Haley It's because, like, it's partly because I think once you learn it, you it kind of gets spoiled. Like, OK, so that's how he makes the potatoes and the Martian to go. Yeah. So there's there's no element of surprise left. So. Seth yeah Yeah. I will say the most unbelievable thing in here for me is that people were eating on ah but on board the Nautilus and mistook seafood for anything but seafood. um that's That's not a thing. um People who don't like seafood don't like any seafood. Haley That's true. Seth and and To us, it tastes it all tastes the same. so And what it tastes like is seafood, even ah even seaweed, like seaweed chips, terribly fishy, yeah, for for those of us who can't eat fish. Haley Yeah, yeah. Haley Just think about, yeah, just think about how good their cholesterol was though, probably. Seth And it's a bummer. Seth Right. Well, but but of course, you know, the the Canadian and and the Frenchmen were, especially the Canadian, was constantly wanting to get on land and shoot something with hooves, you know? Haley Yeah. Haley I've got to eat meat. Seth Yeah, yeah. Emmanuel Yeah, the Ned Land character is a funny one. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel He's clearly a kind of a comic relief, especially he's like his duo with ah Conseil. I don't know how they translated his name in English. Haley It's just Conseil. Emmanuel Conseil, the same? Okay. Haley I guess it'd be like if your name was advice. Emmanuel Exactly. That's what it means. Seth Mm hmm. Haley Yeah. Emmanuel And he he is a good advisor. Haley Yeah, he's like Passepartout if Passepartout was in the military. He's just like got his shit together. Seth Yes. Haley He's loyal to a fault and has absolutely no personality. Emmanuel Yeah, correct. Seth Yeah, willing to lay down his life for for his master. Haley Yep. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel Whereas as Ned Land is always unhappy about something and he wants to hit something. And you have the professor in the middle trying to find reasons somewhere around that. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel But the sense of awe in the professor is really interesting, I find, when he discovers the Nautilus in all those species, you can feel like he's geeking out completely, which is a sentiment I can share. Seth Yeah. Haley Yeah, he's having the time of his life, even though he's technically a prisoner for like the rest of his life. And he's just like, well, at least the view is great. Seth Right, right. Haley Yeah. Emmanuel Exactly. He's a prisoner within the most advanced technological achievement of humanity. So he's like, man I'll take it. Seth Mm hmm. Haley He's like, well, it could be worse. Yeah. Seth Yeah. One thing that I admire about about Jules Verne is he he really does write in that that professorial kind of kind of voice where he's going to tell you some things. And if you're someone who's in the know about science at all, you're going to be like, but what about? And then then he'll answer that up to a certain point, right? Up to the level of his knowledge. um you know he'll He'll say something like, water, water is the solution to the, of course, crushing acceleration that someone would experience on being launched out of a gun. um had Yada, yada is it. and And you go, okay, that's fine. that's that's That's where he crosses over into the speculative part of it. um but But he does a good job of kind of laying that groundwork. And you're like, well, okay, how are you going to deal with the buildup of carbon dioxide in here? And he talks about it. And then, of course, it becomes a crucial plot point later on. Emmanuel Yeah. Haley And he does a better job of it than I think Asimov does, because sometimes Asimov is just like, and then I press my anti-gravity button, and that's how it works. Seth Right. Haley like At least he lays down you know the groundwork for it. Seth Yes. Yes. Haley so Seth I applied hand wavium and it was all better. Haley That's science, yeah. Seth Yep. Emmanuel Yeah, and the thing he always tried to have this balance between scientific facts and engineering and actual adventure and story and plot moving forward, which is not easy to achieve. Seth Hmm. Emmanuel Honestly, that's it's really easy to get either very boring or as Elie said, just press a button for himself and no more discussion. Haley Yep. Seth yeah Emmanuel he He struggled, that's something during my research I did on on my own episode. At first he struggled to find that balance and his editor was a lot of help at the beginning to find it. say Because he was putting less scientific elements in it at the very beginning, like his short stories and stuff. And his editors, you know, put more um of it to the point that people will learn a lot from those. And remember at the time, this stuff is not taught at school. Most people don't actually go to school at the time. So it's it's very good in that in that way. Emmanuel And something that you can't find really with any authors that I found from that era. It's very unique, it's very modern. And we mentioned before that he was snubbed by lots of the literature community at the time. Some people actually loved him. One of them was Alexandre Dumas, the famous author who wrote The Three Musketeers, for example. Seth Hmm. Hmm. Emmanuel and but Alexandre Dumas was himself snubbed by many people because his grandfather was black so he had black ancestry Haley Yep. Emmanuel and of course the French society being what it is many racists and people accused him of being a descendant you know of they called him a negro to his face you know and he would play with that and i in one of those stories he some people say oh you must know everything about apes being who you are you know this kind of stuff you know very Seth Wow. Emmanuel Very bad and he answered. Yes, sir. My family and starts or no my family ends where your begins or something like that yeah you reverse the thing against him and Because he was Alexandre Dumas, you know, you don't try to attack a guy that's stupid Seth Mm hmm. Seth Right, right. Emmanuel But he helped Jules Verne. Seth He clapped back hard. Emmanuel Yeah, exactly. And you know he helped Verne. He loved his work. But Verne never made it into the Académie Française, which is like the elite core of the French writers. And I have an anecdote about that. Verne tried a few times, ah but there was only 40 seats, I think. And you need to wait until one dies ah to have a seat available. They called it Immortals because of that. Seth Hmm. Emmanuel And he never made it. And his nephew, who was, let's say, had mental issues, severe mental issues. So that's the son of his brother, Paul, who he was very close to. One day, his nephew decided he wanted to help his uncle called get into the academy. So what he did, he waited for him at his house after he went to a social club. And he shoot him in the leg, um basically to have sympathy on his uncle. And he said, I want did this for you, so you could get into the Académie Française, and of course it didn't work. Emmanuel Poor guy, the poor nephew Gaston, I think was his name, spent the rest of his days in an asylum, and died in the 1930s, and Verne limped for so the rest of his life. Haley Oh, didn't work. Emmanuel So that's that's a weird story, but you see it is true. Haley Yeah, I mean. Seth Yep, the science was so solid on the attempt to you know. Haley Yeah, also like him, him writing in the 1850s and 60s, like that's just a stack time for French literature, so. Emmanuel Lots of competition. Seth Yeah. Haley Yeah. Seth Yep, you got it. You got to pack the Academy. Haley ah Expand the Academy. Seth who Emmanuel You know, you have people like Hugo Muppason. All these people are from that era. yeah it's It's one of the most prolific period of French literature, as Haley said. Seth Mm hmm. Yeah. Haley Yep. Seth ah Captain Nemo is definitely an interesting character and and like he's so alienated from from the world of humanity, right? And know in in one way, I kind of want to reread it and do a character study of him and really really dig into like, what where did that, and the book does tell you, right? it's He's mourning and and his mourning has turned him into this underwater incel kind of. Um, and it radicalized him really in a lot of ways. Um, but, uh, I had always thought of captain Nemo as a good guy. Seth And, and so then reading this, I'm like, Oh, this is not a nice man. This yeah, very flawed. Haley No. Emmanuel Yeah, it's kind of Haley he is He's one of the world's first ecoterrorists. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel is, but you can see Verne also explains his story. He's a suffering man. He's a brilliant man. Seth yeah Emmanuel And he's also present in another book, um The miss Mysterious Island, where we we meet him. Seth Right. Emmanuel And that's when we learn he is actually Indian. So it's one of those big characters who are not Europeans. Seth Right. Emmanuel And that's something that at the time could be shocking. Seth Yeah, especially given what you were talking about, about, about, you know, racism in the society. Emmanuel oh yeah, totally. And i I'm certain, if you were to ask most Frenchmen in 1880, what do you think of Indians? Oh, they're savages. They would not go beyond that, you know. Seth Hmm. Emmanuel And sometimes in Verne's book, people like in the Pacific or i are presented as savages, that's the word they use. um So having one being, one of those quote unquote savages being yeah extremely brilliant men that actually outsmarted many Europeans is quite something I would say. Seth Yeah, I mean, that that makes me kind of interested back in Around the World in 80 Days, you you know, you have this pairing of an Indian woman and an English man, and not of course, that that kind of thing was unheard of. There there has been race mixing for a long time that was largely due to rape, um where it's not presented that way in Around the World in 80 Days. um But I'd be curious what sort of adversity, you know, that couple would face in England of the time. Or if they would, I don't know. Haley I mean, yeah, in the 19th century, England and France are more like than different despite their personality differences. Seth Yeah, yeah. Emmanuel those Don't forget, those were colonial countries, so they had lots of back and forth. Haley Yeah. Yeah. Emmanuel so And the French were especially ah used to having colon colonial people coming to the metropole, coming to France. Seth Mm-hmm. Emmanuel I think it was more common than in England, ah in part because of the proximity. you know Lots of people came from North Africa to France, which is just across the Mediterranean. Haley Yeah. Emmanuel um And actually at the time of Verne, although Verne was anti-colonialist and he was anti-slavery, he recognized this as a fact. You know you just have this crossover between between the two and it was part of his stories in his world. Seth Hmm. Hmm. Emmanuel So it was not uncommon, let's say even in 1885, to see black people in in Paris because because of the colonies. Seth Anything else you want to talk about, about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? it's it's ah It is a good adventure and it and is definitely a meteor book than the other two. Haley Yeah, I would say if you I love ah all things aquatic. Emmanuel Yeah. Haley like I just got my scuba certification this summer. So this was blast to read. And um I think one thing that maybe might appeal to us less than someone reading this in 1880, for example, is like, I've seen so many nature documentaries where I've seen things that humans didn't look at for all of history. And so I think even though he describes them well, like I've seen these in high def. Seth Yeah. Haley So like, I think we're we're spoiled, basically. Seth Yeah. Mm hmm. Haley So Emmanuel But the adventures in it are fantastic. The action scenes are actually very good. Haley Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Emmanuel The action scenes are really tremendous. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel You you leave you live them. Seth Yeah. Some of the the underwater hunt is is wonderful. Emmanuel Yeah, and and the Maelstrom at the end and all that stuff, you know it's very compelling, very well written, to be honest. Haley yeah Seth Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. but so Let's talk about some some other titles. i mean I feel like these are ones that everybody knows about right and maybe Journey to the Center of the Earth as well. um other Are there any other kind of off the beaten path things? Haley, have you written have you read anything from Vern that was rarer? Haley These are the only three that I've read. so Seth in Okay. Emmanuel If you want something different, you can try Michel Strogoff, a story set in Tsarist Russia. Haley oh Emmanuel And you're basically following a courier, a man, this man, Michel Strogoff, is a courier, I think, working for the Tsar Alexander. Not sure which one, maybe the first anyway. And he so you for story so that's not at all speculative fiction. It's real just a story set in another country. And actually did a lot of those stories that were not speculative at all. They were just based abroad. There was always some exotic elements in it. ah There is something like the children of the cap of Captain Grant, which is your friend, Captain. Jules Verne was ah himself a sailor. He loved everything aquatic, just like Haley. Emmanuel So lots of his stories involve boats and traveling on boats and and the seas in orchs and And what else could you could be interesting? So, I mean, he he wrote like 80 books. ah So, you know, I'm sure you could find a few that would be to your tastes. I would recommend the ones I would say um that he wrote in his first 15 years of writing. Because the ones that come after is in his later life are very dark, actually. Emmanuel ah Not all of them, but some of them are very dark. Seth Hmm. Haley Hmm. Emmanuel He actually invents a character with basically the mad scientist who invents a device that could end the world. Haley Oh. Seth Hmm. Emmanuel Basically, a nuclear bomb. you know he Before, Einstein was a five-year-old at the time. and So he he invents a lot of dark stuff because he had those very dark experiences in his life. I mentioned being shot by his nephew, but that's actually the least of it. He had very lots of trouble with his own son. He was nub He had some issues and his health was declining. So all this mid made this very bright van into a darker van and himself Just so we can talk about him about his own character even though you have those stories that are very open very Adventurous himself. He was a very hard man in his own life. He was very strict He was tougher on his own boy than his dad what was with him, which is Emmanuel funny when you think about it because he basically rebelled against his dad and when his own son did the same he could not take it so he was ah a hard man on many levels and it shows in his later stories Seth Yeah. Seth Hmm. Interesting. it I just reminded myself that for most of my life, when I've thought of 20,000 Leagues under the sea, and this is probably why I truncated it to 2000 is because I don't know what a league is. um and And so I pictured that as depth, not distance traveled. And um and it was reading it this time, and I thought, okay, it it's definitely the distance that they traveled under the sea. Emmanuel Yeah. And when you read that something, when I read it, I figure, oh, that must be tough for Americans because all the references for length or they're all in the old French way, like the the leagues and all that stuff that even to modern French readers would make no no sense because we use the metric system. And even though the metric system was law at the time, people use their old system for years. Seth Right. Emmanuel Like just like here in Canada, we have the metric system. Everybody tells their weight in pounds and size in feet and inches. Nobody tells them in metric. Seth Right. Emmanuel In France they do, but not here. Seth Mm hmm. Emmanuel So that's an example. And it was the same for them. But what I do find very interesting with Verne is honestly the legacy of of it all. ah The very long lasting legacy, I would say. I mean, how many kids became engineers or scientists because of him? Seth yeah Emmanuel That's something not many authors can can claim, honestly. It's quite breathtaking. He was part of the whole movement of that 19th century going going into the 20th where science and technology clearly took a part in our lives that never that it never did before, but is part of the good aspect of it. if you will a good aspect of it ah you know I always think about those those NASA guys, I'm sure they all read their stories or they know of it. Seth Yeah. Mm hmm. Emmanuel and It's part of that scientific spirit that they find very admirable on many ways. Seth yeah Yeah. Haley It's easy to imagine ah Monsieur Eiffel reading this you know when he was a young man and then being inspired to do hard physics. so Emmanuel Yeah, actually it was contemporary, so maybe he read it as an adult. Seth Yeah, and I think you know in terms of one of the places of science fiction in society, and the good thing that it it it does is kind of encourage people to think speculatively because there's always this tendency, when you look at the history of science, there's a tendency to come to a point and think, we've discovered everything, and it takes some effort to push through into the next revolution, and that's you know that's where the next discoveries come from and where where you know you end up getting to the moon um and you you end up you end up doing ah discovering the Higgs boson right because because people started thinking more speculatively about things and and understanding everything that they can understand. Seth And you know we're kind of getting to one of those points again where we feel like what we've you know we found the Higgs and now what is there left to discover? We'll see what happens. Emmanuel Well, leave it to the French to make a nice revolution out of anything. Emmanuel It's interesting you said that because when you look at the history of literature before Verne, especially in France, some authors already already touched the idea of going to the stars or to the moon. Seth Mm hmm. Emmanuel ah There is this author, I think I evoked it last year, which you said, called Cyrano de Bergerac, not the character, the author of that name, who wrote a story of going to the moon in a rocket ship in the 17th century. Seth Mm hmm. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel So those people had ideas that would actually come true down the line. Voltaire wrote a story that happens in the stars. You have a Saturnian coming to Earth, and that the story goes Micromegas. So those ideas were clearly around with all the discoveries in the science that that was happening at the time. And even when there was no way of understanding of knowing how we could make something like that happen but they could see it would happen at some point so they had this vision they had this perspective they had this perspicacity of saying you know what it's gonna take time yes but we' we'll get there we just have to keep pushing and imagining and that's something that we often lack this imagination that those authors had and that's something that could be very inspiring to many people Seth Yeah. Well, you have um debates about science fiction, right? Should it should it be forward-looking and positive? and you You end up with the you know the sad puppies and the rabid puppies stuff, right? we we We want the science fiction that we had when we were kids that was positive and and talked about all this stuff and didn't didn't get into social issues. and The problem is the Seth science fiction can kind of help correct society. And and so there's a place for for all of it. And I like a good you know throwback story. It was fun fun reading these and and and kind of soaking in that kind of positivism of it. And it's good to do that now and then, but you know it's good to take a dour look as well sometimes. Seth um all right so If you were to assign any further reading for Haley or for me, since since our our tally is up to three, where would you send us? Emmanuel ah For your next reading yeah I mean do ah you did you read the journey to the center of the earth? Seth No, i haven't I haven't read that one. I have heard it's a journey partway to the center of the earth. Haley I haven't. Seth but Haley Surprise, surprise. Emmanuel it It is funny, it is a nice one because here is the story of this German mineralologist and his nephew trying to find the center of the earth and of course he discussed the theories of his nephew is persuaded that basically they're gonna melt because it's so hot down there and he says no anyway they go and they have a big adventure and there's a lot of interaction between the two which are quite funny and there's a whole part where basically this discover Seth Right. Emmanuel a world under the earth, if you will, and it's very bright and very colorful and very interesting. Seth Right. Right. Seth It's a hollow, hollow earth kind of thing, like in the, in the Monsterverse movies. Emmanuel Yeah. Emmanuel Yeah, and it's ah so it is I would say it's one of those I would recommend because it's lots of fun There is less description and listing than in 20,000 Leagues So it's a bit of it's a bit easier to be shorter to 20,000 Leagues is bigger than most of his novels Most of his novels would say three four hundred pages ish 20,000 Leagues is more than 600 range. So it's a bit. Seth Yeah, yeah. Emmanuel It's a bit heavier Haley Darn, was it really that long? I have an e-book, and I don't do pages. I do like ah time left in the book. So like so i I had no idea how long it was. Seth Yeah, me too. Haley I know it took me a long time to read, but damn. Emmanuel Well, my paperback is about 600 pages. so Seth Hmm. Haley That explains that. Seth Yeah, I did most of it on audio. So it said it was a 13 hour book. So that's, that's fairly long. Haley Oh, nice. I have never listened to a complete audio book. I can't concentrate. Seth Hmm. Haley I'll lose it, and then I have to go back, lose it to go back. so Seth Emmanuel, you're kind of similar on on that, right? you You don't usually care for audiobooks. Emmanuel No, ah on a reread, yes, I will. Seth Yeah. Yeah. Emmanuel But on a first read, it's not... No, i don't it just doesn't stick in my mind as well. Haley Same. Yeah. Emmanuel Plus, to me, ah reading with a book in my hand is just a pleasure. It's something that's very soothing to me, very relaxing. Seth yeah Haley Yeah. Emmanuel just sitting with the book uh i actually like the the object of the book you know ah and uh i love listening to podcasts including yours Haley Haley ah thank yeah Emmanuel uh and uh true and uh you know this i love to ah to have those interactions or to learn about something and i listen to lots of history podcasts for example but something creative something of fiction. I have to have it imagined in my mind and that's something I cannot do if somebody else's voice is doing it for me. Haley Yeah. Emmanuel To me it's detrimental. So to to each their own and not judging people who are enjoying it in that form, but to me it just it's a layer between me and the story that i that prevents me from enjoying it as much. Seth Yeah. I think it's a rare audio book that sticks with me the same way an eye read does. every Every now and then, there's something that's that is so well done that it really, really works for me. Emmanuel I just had a flash of another story you could read that is very nice. It's called Robur le Conquéron, or rubber, R-O-B-U-R, The Conqueror. This one is about flying machines, and it's a direct um inspiration for the Japanese anime movie, A Castle in the Sky. Seth Mm hmm. Emmanuel I don't know if you know it. it's ah It's a Ghibli movie, it's a great movie, but you see the machines in that movie and you read the Jules Verne story, it's the same machines. Seth Mm hmm. Emmanuel Basically, you have those balloons with um Emmanuel Desilis. Seth Propellers. Emmanuel Forgot the name, propellers, thank you. Seth Yeah. Emmanuel With propellers and they look like boats with balloons and ah so with ropes suspended and those propellers and they fly around. Seth Mm. Emmanuel And so at the time it was very, you know, original and it's ah it's a bit of an adventure story, of course. And so this one is a nice read too. And it was written after the others we yeah we talked about. Seth Okay, okay. I think it is interesting that um Journey to the Center of the Earth like that is the most one that's still ahead of where we are. I saw a YouTube video the other day that was about like attempts to drill as far into the crust as possible. And we have not gotten very far. And and that's, that's really interesting that we haven't caught up with what Jules were in yet. Emmanuel Correct. Haley Then it's just liquid hot magma for like 50,000 miles. Emmanuel that That's a small issue, yeah. Seth Yeah, yeah. Of course, eventually you get through the bottom and and hit the shell of the turtle. Haley Turtles all the way down. Seth But yes, yeah, yeah, I was throwing out a sop to the flat earthers there. Haley I was going to show y'all I got an ad years ago on TikTok for ah these things called book wallets. And I had a Count of Monte Cristo one for years, but I lost my wallet. But I got a new one, and it's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And it's like a little book, but it's where I keep my credit cards and my ID. I love it. Seth oh that's fun. Haley So a lot of people think it's a New Testament, but it's not. Emmanuel That's very cute. Seth I was going to say it looks like a little Gideon Bible. Haley It's not. So many like people that know me, I'm like, you know, I don't carry around a Bible. Come on. But yeah, so it's just I love it. Seth That's funny. I like that idea. Haley Yeah, so um if if you just Google, like and and I'm not plugging them, but just like book wallets, um there's a bunch of good ones. I'm still waiting for them to do a Moby Dick one. They haven't yet, but this is the next best thing, so. Seth Nice. Okay. Um, I mean, it kind of suffice it to say, right? Like if, if you're somebody who likes something like 20,000 Leagues under the sea, you might want to read the mysterious Island. Cause that's, that's another Nemo story, right? I saw it when, when I logged it on Goodreads, it said captain Nemo number two for 20,000 Leagues under the sea. Haley Ooh. Seth And I thought, what, why is that number two? Emmanuel yeah he's He's actually a small part of the story, but yeah, he he's in it. He's ah is' in the end of that story. Seth Okay. In my mind, I have to admit that, um, sometimes I get HG Wells and Jules Verne mixed up and, and, you know, I think of one of the titles and think now, which one of them was it that wrote that? Emmanuel Actually, during his lifetime, sometimes HG Wells was called the English Verne, and he hated that because he wanted to be his own man, you know, which, you know, fair. Seth Yeah. yeah Emmanuel ah But he was clearly ah a successor, you could say, ah to a point to Verne, you know, and he did great stories too, and too i mean and I don't want to lower him. Seth Okay, i think I think we can probably leave it there. Emmanuel, where can people find you? Emmanuel Yes, so they can find me on laughheadpodcast.com or in any podcast app that they they want. um I'm also i present on many social media sites like Blue Sky and Threads and the meta ones, not on X anymore. um And um I'd be happy to have your comments on my episodes and the next one might be of interest to you because it's in august 24 i'm going to i did an interview with an american historian called Alyssa Betrice and it's the 200th anniversary of Lafayette come back to America in 1824 when he visited the then 24 states that you had so that's for ah august 2024 Seth Cool. All right. How about you, Haley? Where where can people find you? Haley ah hugogirlpodcast.com and Hugo Girl Podcasts on all the socials and ah Nerds of a Feather on their socials and their website. I do movie reviews and the occasional Star Wars show recap. Seth Nice. All right. I'm going to go ahead and sign off, but don't don't close your browsers or anything. All right. Well, thank you both for doing this. I really appreciate it. Haley Yeah, it was fun. Seth All right. Emmanuel merci beaucoup Seth Yes. All right. Bye. Haley See y'all later.