Three Science Fiction Novellas: From Prehistory to the End of Mankind Read online

  The conventional view, however, may not be adequate, and the comparison of Rosny and Verne is a matter of greater complexity. On the one hand, Rosny was touched by positivism. In fact, the hold of positivism on French science and culture has been a strong one, enduring long after the method and its premises were challenged and finally rejected by science. Rosny began writing long after the end of the Age of Positivism. But his fiction bears the marks of positivist method on at least one level—that of the description of anomalous intelligent nonhuman species (generally of extraterrestrial origin in SF but in Rosny’s stories originating on Earth).9 Rosny’s description of the Xipéhuz, and to a lesser degree the Moedigen in Un autre monde, is “factual,” in the Comtean sense of classification along the axes of similarity and succession. The describer is unwilling to speculate beyond surface forms. These kinds of descriptions are still present in La Mort de la Terre.

  On the other hand, Verne was not impervious to new, more experimental forms of science that appeared in his time. A serious challenge to dogmatic positivism was launched in France by Claude Bernard in his Introduction à l’étude de la médicine expérimentale, whose publication in 1865 coincided with the beginning of Verne’s career as writer. In this treatise, Bernard attacks the systematizing of Comte and the “scholastic” nature of much scientific theory in his age, and pleads for an “experimental” approach to nature, whereby science seeks out and confronts the physical unknown by means of observation, formulation of tentative models, and verification through experiment. Bernard’s method, closer to that of the empirical science of the Baconian tradition, and to Darwin’s evolutionary science, did not materialize all at once with the publication of Bernard’s essay. For years he had been professing “experimental medicine” at the Collège de France. It is interesting to note that the major novels published by Verne around the time that Bernard’s treatise was published all promise experiment and exploration in their titles: Voyage au centre de la terre (1863), De la terre à la lune (1965), Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1869) and Autour de la lune (1870). Verne, in these works, appears to respond to the advent of this experimental science. But in what way does this response shape his vision of scientific activity? Bernard’s experimental method offers a way to compare Verne’s and Rosny’s approaches to science. How, for example, do Captain Nemo, whose field of investigation lies beneath the seas, or Professor Lidenbrock, who explores the interior of the Earth, process data? Do they question accepted theory when they discover new patterns of natural behavior that go against its conclusions? Likewise, how does Bakhoun proceed in his examination of the Xipéhuz? What method does Targ bring to his search for water beneath the desiccated surface of the Earth?

  Bernard’s method involves the perception and processing of new data, leading to corrections, to reformulations of existing theories that allow science to make incursions into the unknown. This is precisely the method of Darwin’s evolutionary science. At the center of Les Xipéhuz is humankind’s encounter with a new species. Humanity’s first reaction, superstitious fear, proves disastrous. It is only when a new type of man, the rational Bakhoun, begins to observe the Xipéhuz, performing experiments in order to determine their physical characteristics and limits, that humankind begins to understand, and thus control, this hitherto unknown phenomenon. Bakhoun’s method may at first appear positivist—he classifies the new beings into categories. But he is soon forced to address questions involving causality. By experimenting with different weapons, he discovers that a pointed object, when it hits the pulsating “star” at their centers, causes these otherwise invulnerable adversaries to die.

  As noted, Bakhoun himself represents a paradigm shift in terms of human cultural development, from superstitious nomadism to sedentary rational humanity. But this is a shift familiar to paleohistorians and Rosny’s readers alike. The battle with the Xipéhuz is an interesting tale, but in terms of evolutionary history, it is tangential. We have won our battle to the death with this competing species; when we do so, they become merely a might have been in the story of our evolution. The protagonist of Un autre monde, however, represents an event of a different order. Evolutionary change this time occurs within and evolves out of homo sapiens. The mutant is something new in our evolutionary process; as such he bears possibilities for future change.

  First of all, because of his enhanced perceptual abilities, he becomes an instrument in the hands of science that gains access to a whole new world of beings living side by side with normal humanity, but in another dimension. His early classifications of these beings are positivist, focusing on similarities between forms and their sequential arrangement. He thus delineates the forms of the earthbound Moedigen, and distinguishes their behavior from that of the aerial Vuren. But positivism is not the only model for these descriptions. They remind us also of the first impressions of the two-dimensional being named A Square in Edwin Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, published in 1884—a work Rosny may have read in English. A Square’s first impressions are only a prelude to further reflection, for he is soon confronted with a new phenomenon: a three-dimensional incursion into his two-dimensional world. Reflecting on this, he posits the possibility of a fourth dimension, which his three-dimensional interlocutor, Sphere, rejects as impossible. In like manner Rosny’s narrator, reflecting on this other dimension, posits a causal relationship between it and us, whereby actions there may have an impact on us here, to such an extent that understanding them and this possible causal link becomes an evolutionary and ecological necessity for human science: “Un règne, enfin, se mouvant sur les eaux, dans l’atmosphère, sur le sol, modifiant ses eaux, cette atmosphère et ce sol, tout autrement que nous, mais avec une énergie assurément formidable, et par là agissant indirectement sur nous et nos destinées, comme nous agissons indirectment sur lui et ses destinées!” (A kingdom of beings, finally, moving about on the waters, in the atmosphere, on the ground, transforming these waters, this atmosphere, this ground, in completely different ways than we do, but with a certainly formidable energy, and by that means acting indirectly on us and our destiny, just as we act indirectly on it and its destiny!)

  La Mort de la Terre is a work whose every detail, almost, exists in a current of evolutionary transformation. At first we may find what seem to be positivist classifications in the descriptions that introduce the ferromagnetics. In chapter 2, these entities are presented as if they were a closed system: “ils comportent des agglomérations de trois, cinq, sept, et même neuf groupes, la forme des groupes revêtant une grande variété” (there are now agglomerations of three, five, seven, even nine groups, the forms of these groups being greatly varied). As in a tableau of Cuvier, we seem to have their formal limits and nothing more: “A partir de l’agglomération par sept, le ferromagnétal dépérit si l’on supprime un des groupes.” (For agglomerations of seven or more, the ferromagnetic entity perishes if one of its groups is suppressed.) At once, however, we realize we are in a world of shifting paradigms and evolving forms. It is no longer possible to make abstract categories of rival species, for these creatures are part of a vast, and unfinished, web of evolutionary transformations: “Actuellement, la présence des ferromagnétaux est à peu près inoffensif. Il en serait sans doute différemment si l’humanité s’étendait.” (Today the presence of the ferromagnetics is little more than harmless. It would no doubt be a different story if mankind were to expand its domain.) Targ is a scientific adventurer seeking to adapt to a world of dwindling water supplies. He conducts his “hygrometrical” experiments in various locations, hoping to find the water that will allow humanity to “spread out” once again. In terms of his search, the ferromagnetics remain a secondary issue, if an important one. For though they evolve in their own iron-based sphere, they still share the same Earth as Targ, and their evolution benefits from human activities. As opposed to the static-seeming Xipéhuz or Moedigen, Targ discovers late in the novel that the ferromagnetics are continuing to evolve: a new, more powerfu
l “tertiary” form appears on the scene just as the last carbon-based life forms perish.

  Rosny’s narratives, then, confine positivist method to increasingly localized situations, as experimental science opens new vistas that prove increasingly complex in their interplay of evolutionary factors. Verne’s narratives of experimental promise seem to reverse this movement. All of Verne’s aforementioned four novels appear to offer the reader startling adventures of scientific observation. New technologies, such as submarines and rocket ships, give scientists the possibility to go where no human has gone, to places where humans can observe and gather new data, facts that promise (like the discovery of the Moedigen) to alter humans’ understanding of nature radically.

  However, after mounting these expeditions with elaborate detail—it takes almost the entirety of De la terre à la lune to prepare the ship and devise experiments—Verne invariably finds ways to deflect his observers from contact with the unknown. There is more to this than what Marie-Hélène Huet and others have noticed—that Verne’s discoveries appear to be rediscoveries, and “unknown” territories turn out to have been previously mapped.10 For there are moments when Verne’s scientists find themselves faced with a real possibility of seeing new phenomena, thus of having to revise or abandon the scientific consensus. Verne revels in taking the reader right up to these moments of discovery, only to swerve away from actual contact with the new. One might say that the most extraordinary thing in his “extraordinary voyages” is his creation of an elaborate art of “scientific suspense” that relies on raising and then dashing the hopes of his experimental scientists. The reader is titillated, then reassured, as science glimpses new, even frightening things but comfortably avoids them.

  Verne’s most famous scientists—Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax, the Barbicane-Nicholl-Ardan trio, and especially Professor Lidenbrock and Axel—are all confronted with never-before-seen phenomena. In 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, for example, Nemo takes Aronnax on a scientific underwater tour, offering glimpses of phenomena that, if studied and experimented on, could easily unsettle physical history as science has written it. Well along in the undersea narrative (chapter 9, part 2), Nemo and Aronnax walk among the ruins of a sunken city the reader later learns is Atlantis. Things appear that suggest that in this undersea environment, altered physical conditions have given rise to evolutionary mutations. And Aronnax, who thinks like Claude Bernard’s scientist, is ready to give primacy to evidence of the senses: “Et moi-même ne sentais-je cette différence due à la puissante densité de l’eau, quand, malgré mes lourds vêtements, ma tête de cuivre, mes semelles de métal, je m’élevais sur les pentes d’une impracticable raideur?” (And didn’t I myself physically feel this difference, caused by the powerful density of the water, whenever, despite my heavy garments, my copper helmet, my shoes of metal, I lifted myself up on slopes that were impracticably steep? [323].)

  Verne’s scientist expends much energy and ingenuity in reaching the threshold of discovery, and Verne lavishes much detail on the description of his approach. But once he arrives at the unknown, we realize Verne has handicapped him mightily. We realize that in order for Aronnax to have any access to this environment, he has to wear his cumbersome diving suit. His becomes the torture of Tantalus. In these deep cavities he discovers “gigantic” crustaceans, “giant” lobsters, “titanesque” crabs, “terrifying squid tangling their tentacles like a nest of snakes” (“des poulpes effroyables entrelaçant leurs tentacules comme une broussaille de serpents” [324]). He needs his suit to protect him from these creatures, but it isolates him physically from making the first-hand contact a scientist needs to examine such specimens. Nemo must have scientific knowledge of this lost world; but Aronnax, isolated in his suit, as no way to question Nemo about the origin or nature of the phenomena Aronnax observes. Unable to communicate, his only recourse is to ask himself endless questions. We have the illusion of a scientist at work; the result, however, is tautology. Indeed, the final product of this scientific adventure is not new knowledge. It is rather a general lament, bemoaning the inability of observational science ever to grasp the richness of the phenomenal world: “Je touchais de la main ces ruines mille fois séculaires and contemporaines des époques géologiques! Je marchais là même où avait marché les contemporains du premier homme! J’écrasais sous mes lourdes semelles ces squelettes d’animaux des temps fabuleux!” (With my own hand I was touching ruins that were hundreds of thousands of years old, as old as the geological epochs! I was walking in the same place where contemporaries of the first human being walked! I was crushing under the heavy soles of my boots skeletons of animals from the times of fable! [327]).

  A similar isolation besets Verne’s Moon explorers. They want to land on the Moon and explore its surface, but a miscalculation, sets them in orbit around it, such that they can only observe along a fixed path. We learn later that even if they had landed on the Moon and done experiments, no word of this would ever have reached Earth. For they fail not only to calculate for enough fuel but also (despite all their preparations) to think of bringing along a communication device capable of sending information. Rosny gives his astronauts the simple if improbable device of Morse code in Les Navigateurs de l’infini (1927), his late, and only, space novel. Can we believe that Verne, otherwise prodigious of technological detail, simply “forgot” this all-important device here? We have a similar example of a “naturally” aborted opportunity to gather new knowledge when the explorers, orbiting the Moon, pass over the Dark Side. This is new territory, but they cannot see it. Theirs too, like Aronnax in his diving suit, is the torture of Tantalus, for all they can do is make wild and fanciful theories, all in the dark. Verne throws in a little “scientific” suspense when a meteor suddenly explodes, and for an all-too-brief moment they have a glimpse of the unknown side. But the light fades at once, and they are no closer to making significant new observations. A final act of blindness is their attempt to land on the Moon by blasting their rocket. Miscalculation, however, propels them back to Earth, with no positive data on a new world seen through a glass darkly. At least Ardan and Barbicane are safe and sound. Not only does adventure trump science, but the nature of the adventure itself appears to be the trumping of science.

  Geosphere and Anthrosphere

  Despite escapades on the Moon or Mars, Verne and Rosny both confine their scientific explorations to the geosphere. The three Rosny novellas in this volume explore (1) a prehistoric Earth environment; (2) a world alternate to our present world yet sharing the same geosphere; and (3) an Earth undergoing ecodisaster, at least from the human perspective. Likewise, Verne’s explorers find nothing more in the depths of the sea or on the Moon than what is known on Earth. Verne’s and Rosny’s scientists, then, explore the same geosphere. It is their respective uses of this geosphere, however, that are radically different. For Rosny, the geosphere is the place of evolutionary possibility, where human life some day will be superseded, but where Earth, as place of struggle between animate and inanimate forces, abides. Verne’s Earth, however, despite his scientists’ stated desire to explore, even exceed, its limits, remains centered in mankind. The geosphere of Verne’s scientists proves to be the conventional anthrosphere of Cartesian rationalism.

  In this regard, the Verne text to compare with Rosny is Voyage to the Center of the Earth. In this novel, Verne’s scientists journey farthest into the territory of evolutionary possibility. Ostensibly, the purpose of Professor Lidenbrock’s expedition to the center of the Earth is to verify Humphry Davy’s theory of chemical oxidation, which says there is no core of heat at the Earth’s center. But since Davy, as Allen A. Debus points out, had already disowned his theory four decades before the publication of the novel, he could hardly be the scientific motivation for this expedition.11 The explorers’ voyage, in fact, is not to the geological center of the Earth but to a space of much interest to the reader of Rosny—the space of evolutionary history, of the life forms that lead to the advent of homo s
apiens. On their descent, Lidenbrock and Axel discover a “land that time forgot,” fifty years before Edgar Rice Burroughs coined the phrase. Their first find is a welter of previously unclassified fossils. In the midst of these they discover something bound to overturn then accepted theory: a humanoid skull, physical evidence that, if heeded, must change the evolutionary picture for mankind.

  Not long before Verne wrote this novel, the so-called Moulin-Quignon man had been “discovered” (1863) and then soon denounced as a hoax perpetrated by workers at the site. This denunciation reinforced the Cuvier school, which argued that no human species could have coexisted with the fauna of the Quaternary Era. The Quaternary, however, is the very period of the fossil specimens Lidenbrock and Axel find. What they discover appears to be another “line” of humanity—such as the Neanderthal-like hominids in Rosny’s La Guerre du feu (1911). For an age of science fascinated by fossil remains and the possibility of “pre-sapiens” species, Lidenbrock and Axel have before them tangible evidence that challenges existing theories of the origin of mankind.

  As if the bones were not enough, Verne adds new, now irrefutable evidence by bringing his fossil remains to life. Lidenbrock and Axel discover an island in the center of the underground sea where Quaternary flora and fauna flourish. All at once, they come across a giant being apparently a living specimen of the newly discovered humanoid species, tending its “flocks” of giant prehistoric creatures. But at the sight of this giant, Axel and Lidenbrock can only flee in terror. Real scientific evidence is under their feet, all around them, before their very eyes. Yet Axel categorically denies it all, everything the reader has seen and witnessed: “Nulle créature humaine n’existe dans ce monde subterrestre.” (No human creature exists in this subterranean world [299].) Moreover, Lidenbrock’s mention of the discredited Moulin-Quignon man reinforces the possibility that everything described was indeed a fabulation, the dream of two scientists become a waking nightmare, from which they awaken empty-handed. If this is another false discovery, it only reinforces the already-known.