Book Review: The Master of the World
A late Jules Verne science fiction book with surprisingly little science in it.
Another book I’ve read as part of Drew Wagar’s Monday night Twitch book club. Similarly to the situation with H.G. Wells, I’d never read any Jules Verne before, though I am familiar with a number of his more famous stories - particularly Around the World in 80 Days, From the Earth to the Moon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And those are mainly via TV and movie adaptations. Something that came to my attention while writing this review, is that The Master of the World is a loose sequel to an earlier novel titled, Robur the Conqueror, and honestly, that makes a lot of sense for how the book progressed, and it’s something I wish I had been aware of going in. Beware spoilers for a 119-year-old book.
I’ve not been able to find a proper blurb for this book, so I’ll summarise instead:
Summary
John Strock, head inspector of the federal police in Washington DC, investigates sightings of a mysterious new vehicle terrorising the people of the United States with its unimaginable speed fed by advanced technology. The nations of the world entreat the vehicle’s inventor, who refuses to sell his marvellous invention and declares himself Master of the World.
Review
Oh jeez, where do I even begin with this one? This book annoyed me so much. The main positive is that it’s short, and does get to the point fairly quickly. It doesn’t have the typical treatise on the scientific principles the book will discuss, and instead we’re treated to a scene where the people of a town fear their nearby mountain - the Great Eyrie - may be a dormant volcano about to erupt. They see fire and hear rumblings coming from the peak of the mountain, causing panic and two near-evacuations. This opening, I will admit, was very intriguing. We hear the sound of flapping giant wings, and - because I went into this book totally blind - I legitimately thought the book was going to be about a gargantuan bird like the legendary Roc. It had me going for a little while until I realised it was all about a machine. So, the misdirect worked that first time. It’s a shame Verne tried to repeat this same misdirect another TWO times, because it had zero impact after the first.
Generally, the book’s plot was a bit naff at best, and nonsensical at worst. At the end I struggled to find the point of it.
The character of Strock annoyed me the most. He spends the first part of the book being built up as this master detective, then he goes on an expedition to the Great Eyrie, finds there’s no easy way inside it and goes home. He then spends a sizeable chunk of the book doing almost nothing but reading the newspapers and speaking with his police chief about what he’s read in said newspapers. This is where we get the reports of the vehicle being a car that can travel at 200mph, and a boat that can go really fast in the water, and finally a submarine. Strock is prone to making a lot of assumptions, asking a lot of annoying questions based on those assumptions, and repeating himself incessantly. Oh, and he receives a letter of warning from the Master of the World not to try scaling the mountain again, and our brilliant detective says “it must be a prank”, stuffs it into his desk drawer and tells no-one about it until months later. What a genius!
Robur the Conqueror, on the other hand - the titular “Master of the World” and main antagonist - I felt very sorry for. The man does nothing all that wrong. He’s treated as this insane supervillain trying to take over the world and who must be stopped at all costs… My dude just wants to enjoy his invention in peace. All he’s doing is moving about quickly - maybe breaking a few traffic laws, admittedly. But for his trouble, he’s harassed by the police. And what is his highest crime? Being anticapitalist. When the nations of the world realise he’s got a nice invention, they want some of it, and he refuses to sell, saying that humanity isn’t ready for this technology yet. He also runs his mouth a bit, too. But otherwise, he seems really harmless. And Verne gives him an ignominious death by turning him inexplicably into an idiot - was it supposed to be an expression of hubris? Perhaps, but it didn’t work.
Here’s where the knowledge of it being a sequel would have come in handy: We’re told all of Robur’s prior exploits - basically a summary of the previous book. The villainous cur had the audacity to rescue his inventor rival from a potentially fatal fall, and then fly off somewhere. And here’s the thing: we’re told all of this, not shown. Strock recalls the news reports of the events to which he was not present at the time. We’re supposed to think of Robur as a villain, but Verne never actually shows him being evil. Even his name “Robur the Conqueror” was a nickname given by his fellow inventors who were mocking his ideas. It’s not surprising he got a bit rowdy. And Strock just sat there in the vehicle for what felt like pages upon pages assuming the most horrible things about the man’s sanity without having had a single conversation with him. There’s no villain monologue here. Robur says almost nothing to Strock, but the utter devil makes sure he’s fed and watered and safe while he’s a guest aboard “The Terror”. It seems like Verne was going for another Captain Nemo in Robur, but it doesn’t work.
In terms of worldbuilding, Verne went in a very strange direction. It’s almost as if he wrote the book by looking almost exclusively at an incomplete map, and there are plenty of descriptions of surrounding areas that read as though he’s done exactly that. But at the same time he’s added a random fictional lake near Topeka, Kansas, and given the name “The Great Eyrie” to the mountain that is most likely to be Table Rock, North Carolina, based on its location. Science-wise, it’s surprising how little there is in the book, and what is present is mostly incorrect. One part that actually floored me was the idea that a heavy vehicle could go so fast because the faster you travel, the lighter you get. Apparently this was legitimately a hypothesis at the time Verne was writing. I was just amazed that it was the total opposite of what Special Relativity tells us actually happens - that the faster you go, the heavier you get (because of mass/energy equivalence). But of course this isn’t really appreciable at ordinary speeds. I suppose I can’t be too hard on Verne for this, because the discoveries all come way after his time. The Terror itself seems to be powered by electricity, which is here functioning as a futuristic buzz-word similar to “atomic” in Asimov’s works, and “quantum” in modern sci-fi. It’s the “new thing” that everything in the future will be powered by. Again, I can’t really fault Verne for not knowing how heavier-than-air flight will work, because it was still in its infancy when the book was written, but the way it happens is pretty amusing.
The best part of the book is the action sequence where Strock and his companions ambush The Terror, and Strock is accidentally caught up by a grappling hook as the vehicle tries to escape. He’s rescued and then there’s a tense chase sequence where The Terror escapes the Navy along the Niagara River, finally revealing that it’s not just an amphibious automobile and submarine, but also a flying machine - specifically, an ornithopter. Its wings flap, and its flies over the Niagara Falls to safety.
Sadly, it’s after this sequence that the book really falls apart into nonsense.
Overall, I much preferred H.G. Wells. I can’t recommend The Master of the World. If you really need to read Jules Verne, stick with one of his more famous works.
