Free The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence by Alexei Panshin, Cory Panshin Page B

he did actually phrase them. Verne had such an intense sense of personal privacy that in 1898, seven years before he died, he burned his early unpublished manuscripts, his letters and private papers. His thinking is veiled from us.
    However, one bit of evidence about his idea is to be found in the public phrase that Verne chose to characterize this new novel form of his— voyages extraordinaires . Extraordinary voyages. This is the outwardness, the common frame within which sixty-five books by Verne would be made. In this concept is Verne’s abiding love of geography and imaginary travel.
    As for the content of his voyages, that was foretold by Verne in that long-ago letter to his parents in which he spoke of science “performing miracles and thrusting into the unknown.” Verne had faith in science. Science—performing miracles and thrusting into the unknown—was Verne’s chosen guide and companion on his extraordinary voyages.
    Whatever conscious thoughts of geography and science Verne may have had in mind, however, there is another element in Verne’s formula for the extraordinary voyage that cannot be overlooked. It may be the most important: Edgar Allan Poe. In the same way that Mary Shelley’s original intent in conceiving Frankenstein was no more than to write a ghost story right, at its most essential and immediate, Verne’s gold mine of an idea might well have been as simple as this—to write Edgar Poe right.
    Verne the late Romantic admired Poe deeply. He liked Poe’s cryptograms, puzzles and strange facts. He was fascinated by Poe’s fevered characters. He loved Poe’s occasional use of scientific materials, and his sense of mystery, his ability to dislocate vision.
    But Verne the scientific Victorian was bothered by Poe’s incomplete trust in science and his general lack of concern for plausibility. In spite of the note at the end of “Hans Pfaall,” it was clear to Verne that Poe didn’t really care a great deal about plausibility. In his essay on Poe, Verne specifically criticized “Hans Pfaall” for its abandonment of scientific principle in the matter of that thin atmosphere extending from the Earth to the Moon that permits the balloon to make its passage.
    Verne wrote: “The most elementary laws of physics and mechanics are boldly transgressed. This has always seemed astonishing to me as coming from Poe, who, by a few inventions, could have made his story more plausible.” 56 That was where Poe could be improved upon.
    All of the early extraordinary voyages might be described as Jules Verne’s attempt to write Edgar Allan Poe more plausibly. At the outset of the series, an alternative description of Verne’s stories was offered by his publisher: Voyages dans les mondes connus et inconnus. Journeys to worlds known and unknown. By enlisting the protective power of science and placing all his trust in it, Verne aimed to go into the unknown in confidence where Poe had gone doubtfully and pulled up short.
    This may have been Verne’s aim, but it was one that he was only able to carry out in part. He was able to set off into the unknown bravely enough, even to enter the region of novelty and wonder that Poe evoked but avoided. But Verne wasn’t able to remain very long in the heady atmosphere of the World Beyond the Hill.
    Just as in his first story of 1851, “A Balloon Journey,” Verne’s wild Romantic heart and his sober Victorian head still remained in conflict. Again and again in his early stories, Verne would wrap himself in super-science and launch himself into the unknown. All would go well enough for a time, but at last, in each case, the mystery would become too much for him, the threat of transcendence too overwhelming. Verne’s nerve would break and he would retreat to the safety of the Village.
    Verne was a Nineteenth Century man. He identified with the powers of science and technology and the changes in life they had brought. Science-beyond-science, so alien and dangerous to