Just Finished Reading Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island

Published in 1874, The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne, fulfills the qualifications for what constitutes true science fiction perhaps better than any story in that genre that I've read.  It obviously is fiction, no doubt about that.  But there is so much science (and engineering) in it that I would recommend this book for a general middle school science class.  Unfortunately, the often excessively detailed attention that the author devotes to explaining how different things were devised and constructed slowed down my reading to the point where it took me much longer than I had expected to complete this 500-page novel.  That having been noted, I still thought it was a good tale...

The setting for the opening of The Mysterious Island is the besieged Confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia in February of 1865, just two months before the end of the U.S. Civil War and the ensuing assassination of President Lincoln.  Engineer and Union Army Captain Cyrus Harding is a prisoner of war there, but is allowed to freely roam through Richmond without being allowed to leave. He is joined by his servant Neb, a freed slave who has been employed by Harding as a servant on his Massachusetts farm for much of his life.  They meet up with a New York reporter named Gileon Spilen, a sailor named Pencroft, and a young teen-age boy accompanying Pencroft named Herbert.  Pencroft points out to Harding that the Confederates had constructed a large hot-air balloon to break the siege and were planning soon to use it.  Instead, with the aid of a fortuitous strong storm, the five of them sneak aboard the craft and take off.  The storm, much stronger than they had expected, puts them on a perilous flight for thousands of miles into the open South Pacific Ocean.  There, with some adventure, they manage to land on an uncharted island and, using their individual talents, create shelter, agriculture, and industry using the raw materials available.  But there is a mystery here on Lincoln Island, as they named it.  Some anonymous person or force, at different times of crisis, keeps intervening to save them...just enough so that they cannot trace the source of their benefactor.  Without wanting to give away the assorted adventures that our "heroes" encounter throughout the book, let me just say that the mystery does get eventually resolved...and it points to a hilarious time contradiction that Verne must have known about but still allowed to stand...

It isn't apparent for most of The Mysterious Island, but this novel is indirectly related to an earlier Jules Verne work...the name of which I'll let you, the adventuresome reader, to discover for yourself.  The problem with time here is that both novels are set in the same time period, yet The Mysterious Island is supposed to take place many years after the conclusion of that earlier novel!  I think that the author had wanted to tie in two different historical events: the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the end of the Civil War in 1865...and couldn't integrate the two dates without creating a troublesome overlap. Oh well, that's the author's prerogative...I'll just roll with it (but it's still funny)...

With most stories I read, the characters have all sorts of conflicts with each other...this is usually one of the desired effects that the authors are trying to produce.  Not with The Mysterious Island, though.  The "five", although truly distinct individuals with their own personalities and bents, all continually work together with a common spirit, camaraderie, and commitment .  I was very impressed with their high level of cooperation...maybe The Mysterious Island should be taught in social studies classes, too!