The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures
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Authors: Mike Ashley,Eric Brown (ed)
The Mammoth Book of NEW JULES VERNE ADVENTURES
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The Mammoth Book of
New Jules Verne
Adventures
Edited by Mike Ashley
and Eric Brown
CARROLL & GRAF PUBLISHERS
New York
Carroll & Graf Publishers
An imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.
245 W. 17th Street
New York
NY 10011-5300
First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2005
First Carroll & Graf edition 2005
Collection and editorial material copyright © Mike Ashley and Eric Brown
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 0-7867-1495-6
Printed and bound in the EU
an ebookman scan
CONTENTS
The Mammoth Book of NEW JULES VERNE ADVENTURES
COPYRIGHT AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION: Return to the Centre of the Earth
A DRAMA ON THE RAILWAY by Stephen Baxter
JEHAN THUN’S QUEST by Brian Stableford
SIX WEEKS IN A BALLOON by Eric Brown
LONDRES AU XXI
E
SIÈCLE by James Lovegrove
GIANT DWARFS by Ian Watson
CLIFF RHODES AND THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEY by Peter Crowther
1 The two strangers
2 Ernest Hemingway was a bullfighter?!
3 In the presence of a literary man
4 What the hell’s `tipsey’?
5 Enter Cliff Rhodes
6 The man on the bus
7 Thick with possibilities
8 The second parchment
9 The back room
10 A parting of the ways
11 A sense of closure
THE TRUE STORY OF BARBICANE’S VOYAGE by Laurent Genefort
1 What History Records . . .
2 Columbus of the Moon
3 The Selenites
4 The Philosophical Calculator
5 “The Moon had revealed all its Secrets”
COLUMBIAD by Stephen Baxter
TABLEAUX by F. Gwynplaine Maclntyre
THE SECRET OF THE NAUTILUS by Michael Mallory
DOCTOR BULL’S INTERVENTION by Keith Brooke
1 Sunny Meadows?
2 Maddy and Nicholas consult
3 Tracy butts in
4 Who, then, was Dr Bull?
5 All returned to normal
6 Consternation and a critical point
7 In the following weeks
8 A Heroic Resolution
9 Gideon gives advice
10 The distant view
11 Matters go so far
12 Denouement
THE VERY FIRST AFFAIR by Johan Heliot
EIGHTY LETTERS, PLUS ONE by Kevin J. Anderson & Sarah A. Hoyt
THE ADVENTURERS’ LEAGUE by Justina Robson
HECTOR SERVADAC,
FILS
by Adam Roberts
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
THE MYSTERIOUS IOWANS by Paul Di Filippo
OLD LIGHT by Tim Lebbon
THE SELENE GARDENING SOCIETY by Molly Brown
Chapter One: J. T. Maston takes up gardening
Chapter Two: In which a solution is suggested
Chapter Three:
A delegation
Chapter Four: Fiona thinks it through
Chapter Five: A garden on the moon
Chapter Six: The great work begins, and a cablegram arrives
Chapter Seven: A Frenchman, a Norwegian, and a cannon
Chapter Eight:
A new beginning
A MATTER OF MATHEMATICS by Tony Ballantyne
THE SECRET OF THE SAHARA by Richard A. Lupoff
THE GOLDEN QUEST by Sharan Newman
THE TRUE STORY OF WILHELM STORITZ by Michel Pagel
1
2
THE SHOAL by Liz Williams
CONTRIBUTORS
End of New Jules Verne Adventures
COPYRIGHT AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All stories, except those listed below, are original to this anthology and are copyright © 2005 in the name of the individual authors. They are used by permission of the authors and their agents.
“Columbiad” is © 1996 by Stephen Baxter. First published in
Science Fiction Age,
May 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The True Story of Barbicane’s Voyage” © 1999 by Laurent Genefort. Originally published as “Le Veritable Voyage de Barbicane” in
Futurs anterieurs
(Fleuve noir, 1999). It is published here in English for the first time. Printed by permission of the author.
Our thanks to Jean-Marc Lofficier and Victor Berch for their advice and help.
INTRODUCTION:
Return to the Centre of the Earth
Jules Verne was a phenomenon.
In a writing life spanning over forty years, he produced more than sixty novels of adventure and exploration, creating a sub-genre of fiction that exploded on to the world at a time when both the advances of science and technology, and the physical exploration of the world, were proceeding at an exponential rate.
Jules Verne was born in Nantes in 1828, to a prosperous middle-class family. His father was a successful lawyer who hoped that his eldest son might follow him into the profession. But Verne dreamed of adventure. As a boy, living in the port of Nantes, he day-dreamed of sailing around the world. Family legend has it that he even stowed away aboard a ship, only to be dragged home by his irate father when the ship docked further down the French coast. In 1848 Verne did escape — though only as far as Paris, where he combined working on the stock exchange with penning much bad poetry and short comedy plays which were staged at the Théâtre Lyrique and the Théâtre Historique, without success or critical acclaim.
He sold a few short stories around this time, the first being “Les Premiers Navires de la marine mexicaine” (usually translated as “The Mutineers” or “A Drama in Mexico”) which appeared in the monthly
magazine Musée des families
in July 1851.
It was not until 1863, with the publication of his first book,
Five Weeks in a Balloon,
that success and acclaim eventually came to Verne. This is the story of Dr Fergusson, his friend Dick Kennedy and loyal man-servant Joe Smith, and their intrepid balloon journey across the continent of Africa from Zanzibar to Senegal. Headlong adventure alternates with much (often, it must be said,
too
much) scientific detail — but the story caught the imagination of readers in France, Britain and America. The novel was a best-seller, its documentary narrative convincing some readers that it was a true account.
