by Duane Spurlock
Jules Verne’s works continue to influence and inspire artists today. For contemporary examples, readers need only look at the graphic novels – or albums, to use the word typically given European works of this type – in the Cities of the Fantastic (Cités Obscures) series by Benoit Peeters and Francois Schuiten. Written by Peeters, who is French, and drawn by Schuiten, who is Belgian, the books in the series present a picture of the present or future as seen from the past – specifically, a future depicted according to a 19th Century extrapolation of mechanical science that is part steampunk, part world of marvels, part dystopia. The result is rather Vernian in its feel, thanks greatly to Schuiten’s art style, which suggests the engraving style used for reproducing illustrations in 19th and early 20th Century publications. Further, such consistently amazing architectural wonders haven’t been seen in the graphic storytelling form since the days of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo.
Indeed, the two creators acknowledge Verne in their works with the names of characters (Ardan, Robur, Hatteras) and more. For instance, in Echo of the Cities, we learn that someone named Captain Nemo -- or perhaps Jules Verne -- has visited a city called Samarobrive. Even the umbrella title for their album series, Cités Obscures, suggests a familiarity with the title of Verne’s series as published by Hetzel, Voyages Extraordinaires. That their intentional efforts to evoke a Vernian universe of marvels have been successful is demonstrated by Schuiten’s having been selected to illustrate a French edition of Paris au XXe siècle (Paris in the Twentieth Century), an early (1863) Verne novel essentially unknown until its publication in 1994. According to Jean-Michel Margot, president of the North American Jules Verne Society, “Schuiten is well known in the French speaking community for having done the collection of 'Les Cités obscures,' where several volumes contain vernian references and glimpses. 'La Route d'Armilia,' 'L'Enfant penchée' and 'Le Journal des Cités' are among the most vernien volumes. . . the illustrations sometimes are influenced by Hetzel's editions engravings of the Jules Verne in-octavo volumes.” Further, “Schuiten was the main artist who decorated in 2005 the house of Jules Verne in Amiens (2, rue Charles-Dubois), mainly including a half Earth planisphere on top of the tower, which is wrongly supposed to be Verne's study (in fact, the tower is only a straircase).”
Some of the titles in the Cités Obscures series follow. Some are available in English translations available through Amazon.com, ABE.com, and elsewhere.
The Great Walls of Samaris (Les Murailles de Samaris)
Fever in Urbicand (La Fièvre d’Urbicande)
The Archivist (L’Archiviste)
The Tower (La Tour)
The Road to Armilia (La route d’Armilia)
Echo of the Cities (L’Écho des Cités)
The Guide to the Cities (Le guide des Cités)
The Shadow of a Man (L’ombre d’un homme)
The Invisible Frontier (La Frontière Invisible)
Brusel
To offer an example of the sort of marvels and mystery carried in these books, let’s look at two definitions related to The Great Walls of Samaris and found in the Dictionary of the Universe of the Cities of the Fantsastic web site:
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Samaris An Obscure City that sits almost exactly on the Equator, close to the SEA OF SILENCES, hence its damp climate. A protectorate of XHYSTOS, ruled by a Governor, it has for emblem the DROSERA and it is apparently physically impossible to take photographs (GC, MS). The city was already in existence at the time of the construction of The TOWER (LT). It is quite isolated and difficult to reach; those travellers who come back are often struck by the SAMARIS EFFECT (MS). See BAUER, BOOK OF SAMARIS, MARK, MONT ANALOGUE, MOREL, PIERRE and VOYAGE À SAMARIS.
Samaris Effect. A strange affliction that visits some visitors to SAMARIS when they come back. The major symptom is a severe form of space-time confusion (MS, EC, GC). See BAUER and ELKAÏM.
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Just as the Wold Newton universe postulated by P.J. Farmer has been taken up and expanded and researched by a growing number of fans and enthusiasts, so the Cités Obscures series has been the launch pad for many web sites and conferences. The “factual” reports by fans of the occurrences in the cities of the series are brought to light in Our World thanks to a number of mysterious passages that link Our World to the Obscure World.
There are a number of web sites dedicated to the Cités Obscures series, in a variety of languages. Some that might help you learn more and clarify some of their mysteries (certainly these cities’ mysteries shan’t be solved) are the following.
NBM (Nantier-Beall-Minoustchine)
The publisher in the US of the Cités Obscures (Cities of the Fantastic) series.
Dictionary of the Universe of the Cities of the Fantsastic
A dictionary of characters, cities, events, and more about the series.
Gateway to the Obscure Cities
Offers a comprehensive review for English-speaking fans.
I mentioned three elements of Peeters and Schuiten’s presentation of the future as seen from the past: part steampunk, part world of marvels, part dystopia. Steampunk is a handy bit of shorthand that really isn’t accurate in this case, because rather than retrofitting 20th and 21st Century technology onto a 19th Century platform, as many steampunk fictionalizings do, Peeters and Schuiten follow a methodology similar to Verne: Verne was very concerned with basing his extrapolations on existing knowledge. For instance, when someone compared his work as similar to that of H.G. Wells, Verne "openly criticized Wells' novels as lacking in scientific verisimilitude.”
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We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on very scientific bases. . . I make use of physics. He invents. I go to the moon in a cannonball discharged from a cannon. Here there is no invention. He goes to the Mars [sic] in an airship which he constructs of a metal which does away with the law of gravitation. . . But show me this metal. Let him produce it. (Robert H. Sherard, "Jules Verne Revisited," T.P.'s Weekly [Oct. 9, 1903]: 589; quoted in Jules Verne, Invasion of the Sea [Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001]: 209)
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Following this way of thinking, Verne gives us perfectly possible modes of transportation in Five Weeks in a Balloon, The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, The Children of Captain Grant (aka In Search of the Castaways), Around the World in 80 Days, and so on. The means of locomotion in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (the Nautilus) and From the Earth to the Moon (a shell blown from a cannon) may have been improbable in Verne’s time, but were reasonable (if exaggerated) extrapolations of existing technology. So Peeters and Schuiten adopt Verne’s methodology in the books of the Cités Obscures, and the anachronistic technology the reader encounters seems more an extrapolation of reality and doesn’t seem quite so jarring as in stories by, for example, Joe R. Lansdale or Paul Di Filippo.
Likewise the two creators present a world of marvels in each of the Cités Obscures books. (Simply the detail Schuiten renders in his artwork is a marvel, and parallels the detail Verne includes in his many lists of species and varieties.) For instance, in The Fever of Urbicande, a strange cube is found and starts growing in size and complexity, evolving into a Network that, while remaining tangible, passes harmlessly through solid objects. It soon envelops the whole city. Similarly, The Tower features a Babel-like structure so vast its perimeters can’t be grasped by those living within it –- no one alive as ever visited its entirety. In Echo of the Cities we learn about a city, Alta-Plana, that is devoted entirely to archive keeping. Amid the marvels is mystery, a Vernian touch. For while Verne encyclopedically catalogs the world’s marine life in Twenty Thousand Leagues, he also leaves unanswered the secret of the Nautilus’ energy source and its engineering, along with the source of Captain Nemo’s driving passions. Similarly, the explanations regarding the existence of the giant shepherd encountered by Professor Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel in Journey to the Center of the Earth remain unrevealed, as does the ultimate fate of Arne Saknussemm, whose notes launch the trek into the earth’s bowels.
The understanding of Verne in the popular imagination, given us by movies and TV shows, is one of a world full of amazing gadgets. This appeals to our childhood love of toys and enthusiasms for exploration and adventure. But Verne’s later works – many of which were originally badly translated or mistranslated or not translated at all -- carry misgivings about the world and its use of technology. So linking the elements of dystopia that appear in the Cités Obscures with Verne’s worlds isn’t a great stretch.
In Peeters and Schuiten’s worlds, a mechanical or architectural utopia is usually hindered by human shortcomings. Efforts to create an apparently perfect world are typically undermined by human effort – by the limited vision of bureaucracies, by petty jealousies or efforts at control, by intentional facades meant to make the public think everything is running smoothly just the way it’s meant to do.
In Verne, what would be a perfect world of wonders for marine scientist Aronnax aboard the Nautilus is tainted by his being a prisoner, by Nemo’s melancholy and moody rages, by the secrecy that rules the submarine, and by its crew’s war with the surface world. In Around the World in 80 Days, what should be a simple trip to win a foolish bet by Phileas Fogg, with a perfectly scheduled timetable, is hampered at every turn by human misunderstanding, greed, and limited imagination -- Inspector Fix’s dogged determination (despite his quarry’s behavior and plans) to prove Fogg is a thief and fugitive from the law.
This brief discussion should provide a bit of detail to see how Verne continues to inform creative work today -- specifically in one series of books by two skilled and talented storytellers.
Links:
To accompany those links given above (which will include links to other Obscure sites), here are a few others:
The North American Jules Verne Society's web site is available by clicking here.
Paris in the Twentieth Century is available from Amazon.com. Click here.
The Book of Schuiten, an oversized book of art written by Benoit Peeters, is a great place to start an appreciation for Schuiten’s work. It’s available at Amazon.com. Click here.
The English translation of The Great Walls of Samaris is no longer in print, but you might find a used copy through Amazon (click here) or ABE.com (click here).
The English translation of Fever in Urbicand also is no longer in print, but you might find a used copy through Amazon (click here) or ABE.com (click here).
The English translation of The Tower also is no longer in print, but you might find a used copy through Amazon (click here) or ABE.com (click here).
The Invisible Frontier is available in two volumes, both of which are available from Amazon.com. Click here for Volume One, and here for Volume Two.
The English translation of Brusel seems to be out of print, but you might find a used copy through Amazon (click here) or ABE.com (click here).
Posted by ds at August 22, 2007 08:53 AM
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