赫伯特·喬治·威爾斯陸續發表了《莫洛博士島》（The Island of Dr. Moreau）、《隱身人》（The Invisible Man）、《世界大戰》（The War of the Worlds）、《神的食物》等科幻小說，還寫了大量的論文和長篇小說。
The War of the Worlds is split into two parts, Book one: The Coming of the Martians, and Book two: The Earth under the Martians. The novel is narrated by a writer of philosophical articles who throughout the narrative struggles to reunite with his wife, while witnessing the Martians rampaging through the southern English counties. Part one also features the tale of his brother, who accompanies two women to the coast in the hope of escaping England as it is invaded.
The plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism, and generally Victorian fears and prejudices. At the time of publication it was classed as a scientific romance, like his earlier novel The Time Machine. Since then, it has influenced much literature and other media, spawning several films, radio dramas, comic book adaptations, a television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It also influenced the real-life work of scientists, notably the rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard who developed practical techniques for interplanetary travel.
The War of the Worlds is split into two parts, Book one: The Coming of the Martians, and Book two: The Earth under the Martians. The novel is narrated by a writer of philosophical articles who throughout the narrative struggles to reunite with his wife, while witnessing the Martians rampaging through the southern English counties. Part one also features the tale of his brother, who accompanies two women to the coast in the hope of escaping England as it is invaded.
The plot has been related to invasion literature of the time. The novel has been variously interpreted as a commentary on evolutionary theory, British imperialism, and generally Victorian fears and prejudices. At the time of publication it was classed as a scientific romance, like his earlier novel The Time Machine. Since then, it has influenced much literature and other media, spawning several films, radio dramas, comic book adaptations, a television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors. It also influenced the real-life work of scientists, notably the rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard who developed practical techniques for interplanetary travel.
《時間機器》是英國作傢黑.格.威爾士最著名的兩篇著作之一（另一篇是大傢都再熟悉不過的《世界大戰》），這兩篇作品在當時曾令我沉溺了好久。而其中最使我感興趣的是時間旅行的奇妙之處：這在當時還引發了一場關於時間旅行的社會問題及倫理的大爭論。故事情節同樣的引人入勝，充滿了驚險刺激和懸疑。
《時間機器》運用了某種近乎恐怖的手法和錯綜復雜的情節，展示了一個震撼人心的感人故事。時間旅行傢是對科學有所藐視的韋爾斯式的英雄（凡爾納式的英雄比較推崇科學技術），具有極強的能力，卻無法改變現實。整個作品給人以某種荒涼的感覺。
數十年來，時間旅行一直處於主流科學的邊緣。然而,近幾年內,該話題在一些理論物理學家中間已成了個人的研究愛好。這一變化部分是出於娛樂消遣——想象時間旅行可是件趣事。但此項研究也有其嚴肅的一面。理解因果關係是嘗試建立一個統一的物理學理論的關鍵部分。如果無限製的時間旅行是可能的，那麽在原則上，這樣一個統一理論的性質可能會受到極為嚴重的影響。
我們對時間最完善的理解來自Einstein的相對論。在這些理論誕生之前，時間被廣泛地認為是絶對的和普遍的，不管人們的物理狀態如何，時間對於每個人都一樣。在 Einstein狹義相對論中，他提出測量兩個事件的時間間隔取决於觀察者如何運動。至關重要的是，運動狀態不同的兩名觀察者對於同樣的兩個事件將會體驗到不同的持續時間。
經常用“雙生子佯謬”描述的那個效應：假定Sally和Sam是雙胞胎，Sally搭乘一艘飛船以高速駛嚮附近的一顆恆星去旅行，然後折返飛回地球，而Sam衹呆在傢裏。對於Sally而言，旅行大約持續了一年，但當她返回到地球並跨出宇宙飛船時，她發現地球上已經過去了10年，現在她的兄弟比她大九歲。儘管他們在同一天出生，可是Sally和Sam是不再具有相同的年齡。這個例子說明了一類有限的時間旅行。實際上，Sally已經跳躍到了九年後的地球的未來。
History
Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in an earlier (but less well-known) work titled The Chronic Argonauts. He had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, until the publisher asked him if he could instead write a serial novel on the same theme; Wells readily agreed, and was paid £100 on its publication by Heinemann in 1895. The story was first published in serial form in the New Review through 1894 and 1895. The book is based on the Block Theory of the Universe, which is a notion that time is a fourth space dimension.
The story reflects Wells's own socialist political views and the contemporary angst about industrial relations. It is also influenced by Ray Lankester's theories about social degeneration. Other science fiction works of the period, including Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, and the later Metropolis, dealt with similar themes.
Plot summary
The book's protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator:
The Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to the year A.D. 802,701, where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, androgynous, and childlike people. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a frugivorous diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he concludes that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival.
Returning to the site where he arrived, the Time Traveller finds his time machine missing, and eventually works out that it has been dragged by some unknown party into a nearby structure with heavy doors, locked from the inside. Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, pale, apelike people who live in darkness underground, where he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutish light-fearing Morlocks. Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine, he explores the Morlock tunnels, learning that they feed on the Eloi. His revised analysis is that their relationship is not one of lords and servants but of livestock and ranchers, and with no real challenges facing either species. They have both lost the intelligence and character of Man at its peak.
Meanwhile, he saves an Eloi named Weena from drowning, and they develop an innocently affectionate relationship over the course of several days. He takes Weena with him on an expedition to a distant structure that turns out to be the remains of a museum, where he finds a fresh supply of matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he fears he must fight to get back his machine. But the long and tiring journey back to Weena's home is too much for them, they are overcome by Morlocks in the night, and Weena is injured. The Traveller escapes only when a small fire he had left behind them to distract the Morlocks catches up to them as a forest fire; Weena is lost to the fire.
The Morlocks use the time machine as bait to ensnare the Traveller, not understanding that he will use it to escape. He travels further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth, menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wandering the blood-red beaches of a world covered in simple vegetation. He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing Earth's rotation gradually cease and the sun grow dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last degenerate living things die out.
Overwhelmed, he returns to his laboratory, at just three hours after he originally left. Interrupting dinner, he relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two strange flowers Weena had put in his pocket. The original narrator takes over and relates that he returned to the Time Traveller's house the next day, finding him in final preparations for another journey. The Traveller promises to return in half an hour, but three years later, the narrator despairs of ever learning what became of him.
Deleted text
A section from the 11th chapter of the serial published in New Review (May, 1895) was deleted from the book. It was drafted at the suggestion of Wells's editor, William Ernest Henley, who wanted Wells to "oblige your editor" by lengthening out the text with, among other things, an illustration of "the ultimate degeneracy" of man. "There was a slight struggle," Wells later recalled, "between the writer and W. E. Henley who wanted, he said, to put a little 'writing' into the tale. But the writer was in reaction from that sort of thing, the Henley interpolations were cut out again, and he had his own way with his text." This portion of the story was published elsewhere as The Grey Man. This deleted text was also published by Forrest J. Ackerman in an issue of the American edition of Perry Rhodan.
The deleted text recounts an incident immediately after the Traveller's escape from the Morlocks. He finds himself in the distant future of an unrecognisable Earth, populated with furry, hopping herbivores. He stuns or kills one with a rock, and upon closer examination realizes they are probably the descendants of humans/Eloi/Morlocks. A gigantic, centipede-like arthropod approaches and the Traveller flees into the next day, finding that the creature has apparently eaten the tiny humanoid.
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
First adaptation
The first visual adaptation of the book was a live teleplay broadcast from Alexandra Palace on 25 January 1949 by the BBC, which starred Russell Napier as the Time Traveller and Mary Donn as Weena. No recording of this live broadcast was made; the only record of the production is the script and a few black and white still photographs. A reading of the script, however, suggests that this teleplay remained fairly faithful to the book.
Escape Radio broadcasts
The CBS radio anthology Escape adapted The Time Machine twice, in 1948 starring Jeff Corey, and again in 1950 starring John Dehner. In both episodes a script adapted by Irving Ravetch was used. The Time Traveller was named Dudley and was accompanied by his skeptical friend Fowler as they travelled to the year 100,080.
1960 film
George Pál (who also made a famous 1953 "modernised" version of Wells's The War of the Worlds) filmed The Time Machine in 1960. Rod Taylor (The Birds) starred, along with Yvette Mimieux as the young Eloi, Weena, Alan Young as his closest friend David Filby (and, in 1917 and 1966, his son James Filby), Sebastian Cabot as Dr Hillyer, Whit Bissell as Walter Kemp and Doris Lloyd as his housekeeper Mrs Watchett. The Time Traveller is addressed as George. The plate on the Time Machine which he builds, is inscribed 'Manufactured by H. George Wells'. This is clearly visible and easily read whenever the date indicator panel is shown in the film. The location is not stated anymore precisely than in the south of England, but is near a sharp bend of the river Thames, so is presumably still Richmond, Surrey.
This is more of an adventure tale than the book was; The story begins with the Time Traveller returning from his trip, unkempt and in disarray. He relates to his friends of what he has witnessed: wars' horrors first-hand in June, 1940 over London and a nuclear bomb in August, 1966. Travelling to 802,701 A.D., he finds world has settled into a vast garden. He meets the pacifist, illiterate and servile Eloi, who speak broken English, and have little interest in technology or the past. Their brethren from long ago, the Morlocks, however, although technologically competent, have devolved into cannibalistic underground workers. He deduces the division of mankind resulted from mutations induced by nuclear war - periodic air-raid sirens cause Weena and many Eloi to instinctively report to underground shelters run by the Morlocks. The Time Traveller goes down to rescue them, and encourages a leader among them to help them escape. Having escaped, and after throwing dead wood into the holes on the surface to feed a growing underground fire, they retreat to the river as underground explosions cause a cave-in. After getting to his machine, he is trapped behind a closed door with several Morlocks, whom he has to fight in order to escape. Battered, he makes it back to his scheduled dinner the next Friday January 5, 1900.
After relating his story, the Time Traveller leaves for a second journey, but Filby and Mrs Watchett note that he had taken three books from the shelves in his drawing room. Filby comments that George must've had a plan for a new Eloi civilisation. "Which three books would you have taken?" Filby inquires to Mrs. Watchett, adding " ... he has all the time in the world."
The film is noted for its then-novel use of time lapse photographic effects to show the world around the Time Traveller changing at breakneck speed as he travels through time. (Pal's earliest films had been works of stop-motion animation.)
Thirty-three years later, a combination sequel/documentary Time Machine: The Journey Back (1993 film), directed by Clyde Lucas, was produced. Rod Taylor hosted, with Bob Burns (also Ex Producer), Gene Warren Sr. and Wah Chang as guests. Michael J. Fox (who had himself portrayed a time traveller in the Back to the Future trilogy) spoke about time travelling in general. In the second half, written by original screenwriter David Duncan, the movie's original actors Rod Taylor, Alan Young and Whit Bissell reprise their roles. The Time Traveller returns to his laboratory in 1916, finding Filby there, and encourages his friend to join him in the far future — but Filby has doubts. (Time Machine: The Journey Back is featured as an extra on the DVD release of the 1960 film).
The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal
Main article: The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal
This film, produced and directed by Arnold Leibovit, is a biopic of George Pal. It contains a number of filmed elements from Pal's 1960 film version of The Time Machine.
1978 TV movie
A TV version was made in 1978, with time-lapse images of building walls being de-constructed, and geographic shifting from Los Angeles to Plymouth, Mass., and inland California. John Beck starred as Neil Perry, with Whit Bissell (from the original 1960 movie and also one of the stars of the 1966 television series The Time Tunnel) appearing as one of Perry's superiors. Though only going a few thousand years into the future, Perry finds the world of the Eloi and Morlocks, and learns the world he left will be destroyed by another of his own inventions. The character Weena was played by Priscilla Barnes of Three's Company fame.
1994 audio drama
In 1994 an audio drama was published on CD by Alien Voices, starring Leonard Nimoy as the Time Traveller (named John) and John de Lancie as David Filby. John de Lancie's children, Owen de Lancie and Keegan de Lancie, played the parts of the Eloi. The drama is approximately two hours long. Interestingly, this version of the story is more faithful to Wells's novella than either the 1960 movie or the 2002 movie.
2002 film
The 1960 film was remade in 2002, starring Guy Pearce as the Time Traveller, a mechanical engineering professor named Alexander Hartdegen, Mark Addy as his colleague David Filby, Sienna Guillory as Alex's ill-fated fiancée Emma, Phyllida Law as Mrs. Watchit, and Jeremy Irons as the uber-Morlock. Playing a quick cameo as a shopkeeper was Alan Young, who featured in the 1960 film. (H.G. Wells himself can also be said to have a "cameo" appearance, in the form of a photograph on the wall of Alex's home, near the front door.)
The film was directed by Wells's great-grandson Simon Wells, with an even more revised plot that incorporated the ideas of paradoxes and changing the past. The place is changed from Richmond, Surrey, to downtown New York City, where the Time Traveller moves forward in time to find answers to his questions on 'Practical Application of Time Travel;' first in 2030 New York, to witness an orbital lunar catastrophe in 2037, before moving on to 802,701 for the main plot. He later briefly finds himself in 635,427,810 with toxic clouds and a world laid waste (presumably by the Morlocks) with devastation and Morlock artefacts stretching out to the horizon.
It was met with generally mixed reviews and earned $56 million before VHS/DVD sales. The Time Machine used a design that was very reminiscent of the one in the Pal film, but was much larger and employed polished turned brass construction, along with rotating quartz/glasses reminiscent of the light gathering prismatic lenses common to lighthouses (In Wells's original book, the Time Traveller mentioned his 'scientific papers on optics'). Weena makes no appearance; Hartdegen instead becomes involved with a female Eloi named Mara, played by Samantha Mumba. In this film, the Eloi have, as a tradition, preserved a "stone language" that is identical to English. The Morlocks are much more barbaric and agile, and the Time Traveller has a direct impact on the plot.
2009 BBC Radio 3 broadcast
Robert Glenister stars as the Time Traveller, with William Gaunt as H. G. Wells in a new 100-minute radio dramatisation by Philip Osment, directed by Jeremy Mortimer as part of a BBC Radio Science Fiction season. This was the first adaptation of the novel for British radio. It was first broadcast on 22 February 2009 on BBC Radio 3. The other cast was:
* Time traveller - Robert Glenister
* Martha - Donnla Hughes
* Young HG Wells - Gunnar Cauthery
* Filby, friend of the young Wells - Stephen Critchlow
* Bennett, friend of the young Wells - Chris Pavlo
* Mrs Watchett, the traveller's housemaid - Manjeet Mann
* Weena, one of the Eloi and the traveller's partner - Jill Cardo
* Other parts - Robert Lonsdale, Inam Mirza and Dan Starkey
The adaptation retained the nameless status of the time traveller and set it as a true story told to the young Wells by the time traveller, which Wells then re-tells as an older man to the American journalist Martha whilst firewatching on the roof of Broadcasting House during the Blitz. It also retained the deleted ending from the novel as a recorded message sent back to Wells from the future by the traveller using a prototype of his machine, with the traveller escaping the anthropoid creatures to 30 million AD at the end of the universe before disappearing or dying there.
Wishbone episode
The Time Machine was featured in an episode of the PBS children's show Wishbone, entitled "Bark to the Future". Wishbone plays the role of the Time Traveller, where he meets Weena, takes her to an ancient library, and confronts the Morlocks. The parallel story has Wishbone's owner, Joe, relying on a calculator to solve percentage problems rather than his own intellect, recalling the mindset that created the lazy Eloi.
Sequels by other authors
Wells's novella has become one of the cornerstones of science-fiction literature. As a result, it has spawned many offspring. Works expanding on Wells's story include:
* The Return of the Time Machine by Egon Friedell, printed in 1972, from the 1946 German version. The author portrays himself as a character searching for the Time Traveller in different eras.
* The Hertford Manuscript by Richard Cowper, first published in 1976. It features a "manuscript" which reports the Time Traveller's activities after the end of the original story. According to this manuscript, the Time Traveller disappeared because his Time Machine had been damaged by the Morlocks without him knowing it. He only found out when it stopped operating during his next attempted time travel. He found himself on August 27, 1665, in London during the outbreak of the Great Plague of London. The rest of the novel is devoted to his efforts to repair the Time Machine and leave this time period before getting infected with the disease. He also has an encounter with Robert Hooke. He eventually dies of the disease on September 20, 1665. The story gives a list of subsequent owners of the manuscript until 1976. It also gives the name of the Time Traveller as Robert James Pensley, born to James and Martha Pensley in 1850 and disappearing without trace on June 18, 1894.
* Morlock Night by K.W. Jeter, first published in 1979. A steampunk novel in which the Morlocks, having studied the Traveller's machine, duplicate it and invade Victorian London.
* The Space Machine by Christopher Priest, first published in 1976. Because of the movement of planets, stars and galaxies, for a time machine to stay in one spot on Earth as it travels through time, it must also follow the Earth's trajectory through space. In Priest's book, the hero damages the Time Machine, and arrives on Mars, just before the start of the invasion described in The War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells himself appears as a minor character.
* Time Machine II by George Pal and Joe Morhaim, published in 1981. The Time Traveller, named George, and the pregnant Weena try to return to his time, but instead land in the London Blitz, dying during a bombing raid. Their newborn son is rescued by an American ambulance driver, and grows up in the United States under the name Christopher Jones. Sought out by the lookalike son of James Filby, Jones goes to England to collect his inheritance, leading ultimately to George's journals, and the Time Machine's original plans. He builds his own machine with 1970s upgrades, and seeks his parents in the future.
* The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter, first published in 1995. This sequel was officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. In its wide-ranging narrative, the Traveller's desire to return and rescue Weena is thwarted by the fact that he has changed history (by telling his tale to his friends, one of whom published the account). With a Morlock (in the new history, the Morlocks are intelligent and cultured), he travels through the multiverse as increasingly complicated timelines unravel around him, eventually meeting mankind's far future descendants, whose ambition is to travel into the multiverse of multiverses.[clarification needed] This sequel includes many nods to the prehistory of Wells's story in the names of characters and chapters.
* The 2003 short story "On the Surface" by Robert J. Sawyer begins with this quote from the Wells original: "I have suspected since that the Morlocks had even partially taken it [the time machine] to pieces while trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose." In the Sawyer story, the Morlocks develop a fleet of time machines and use them to conquer the same far future Wells depicted at the end of the original, by which time, because the sun has grown red and dim and thus no longer blinds them, they can reclaim the surface of the world.
* The Man Who Loved Morlocks and The Trouble With Weena (The Truth about Weena) are two different sequels, the former a novel and the latter a short story, by David J. Lake. Each of them concerns the Time Traveller's return to the future. In the former, he discovers that he cannot enter any period in time he has already visited, forcing him to travel in to the further future, where he finds love with a woman whose race evolved from Morlock stock. In the latter, he is accompanied by Wells, and succeeds in rescuing Weena and bringing her back to the 1890s, where her political ideas cause a peaceful revolution.
* In Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time series, the Time Traveller is a very minor character, his role consists of being shocked by the decadence of the inhabitants of the End of Time. H.G. Wells also appears briefly in this series when the characters visit Bromley in 1896.
* The Time Traveller makes a brief appearance in Allan and the Sundered Veil, a back-up story appearing in the first volume of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I, where he saves Allan Quatermain, John Carter and Randolph Carter from a horde of Morlocks.
* The time-travelling hero known as "The Rook" (who appeared in various comics from Warren Publishing) is the grandson of the original Time Traveller. In one story, he met the Time Traveller, and helps him stop the Morlocks from wiping out the Eloi.
* Philip José Farmer speculated that the Time Traveller was a member of the Wold Newton family. He is said to have been the great-uncle of Doc Savage.
* Burt Libe wrote two sequels: Beyond the Time Machine and Tangles in Time, telling of the Time Traveller finally settling down with Weena in the 33rd century. They have a few children, the youngest of whom is the main character in the second book.
* In 2006, Monsterwax Trading Cards combined The Time Machine with two of Wells's other stories, The Island of Dr. Moreau and The War of the Worlds. The resulting 102 card trilogy, by Ricardo Garijo, was entitled The Art of H. G. Wells. The continuing narrative links all three stories by way of an unnamed writer mentioned in Wells's first story, to the nephew of Ed Prendick (the narrator of Dr. Moreau), and another unnamed writer (narrator) in The War of the Worlds.
* In Ronald Wright's novel A Scientific Romance, a lonely museum curator on the eve of the millennium discovers a letter written by Wells shortly before his death, foretelling the imminent return of the Time Machine. The curator finds the machine, then uses it to travel into a post-apocalyptic future.
The Time Traveller
Although the Time Traveller's real name is never given in the original novel, other sources have named him.
One popular theory, encouraged by movies like Time After Time and certain episodes of the hit show Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, is that the Time Traveller is meant to be none other than H. G. Wells himself. Indeed, in the George Pál movie adaptation of The Time Machine, his name is given as George (also H. G. Wells's middle name). Due to the clarity of the DVD image, 'H.G. Wells' can be seen on the control panel of the device, making it obvious that the film's Time Traveller is H.G. Wells.
In Simon Wells' 2002 remake, the Time Traveller is named Alexander Hartdegen.
In The Time Ships, Stephen Baxter's sequels to The Time Machine, the Time Traveller encounters his younger self via time travel, who he nicknames 'Moses'. His younger self reacts with embarrassment to this, which implies that it may be a first name that he changed. This is a reference to H.G. Wells's story "The Chronic Argonauts", the story which grew into The Time Machine, in which the inventor of the Time Machine is named Dr. Moses Nebogipfel. (The surname of Wells's first inventor graces another character in Baxter's book, as explained above.)
The Hartford Manuscript, another sequel to The Time Machine, gives the Time Traveller's name as Robert James Pensley.
Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life by Philip José Farmer gives the Time Traveller's name as Bruce Clarke Wildman.
The Rook comic book series gives the Time Traveller's name as Adam Dane.
In the Doctor Who comic strip story "The Eternal Present", the character of Theophilus Tolliver is implied to be the Time Traveller of Wells's novel.
Also featured in Doctor Who is Wells, himself, appearing in the television serial Timelash. The events of this story are portrayed has having inspired Wells to write The Time Machine.
《時間機器》運用了某種近乎恐怖的手法和錯綜復雜的情節，展示了一個震撼人心的感人故事。時間旅行傢是對科學有所藐視的韋爾斯式的英雄（凡爾納式的英雄比較推崇科學技術），具有極強的能力，卻無法改變現實。整個作品給人以某種荒涼的感覺。
數十年來，時間旅行一直處於主流科學的邊緣。然而,近幾年內,該話題在一些理論物理學家中間已成了個人的研究愛好。這一變化部分是出於娛樂消遣——想象時間旅行可是件趣事。但此項研究也有其嚴肅的一面。理解因果關係是嘗試建立一個統一的物理學理論的關鍵部分。如果無限製的時間旅行是可能的，那麽在原則上，這樣一個統一理論的性質可能會受到極為嚴重的影響。
我們對時間最完善的理解來自Einstein的相對論。在這些理論誕生之前，時間被廣泛地認為是絶對的和普遍的，不管人們的物理狀態如何，時間對於每個人都一樣。在 Einstein狹義相對論中，他提出測量兩個事件的時間間隔取决於觀察者如何運動。至關重要的是，運動狀態不同的兩名觀察者對於同樣的兩個事件將會體驗到不同的持續時間。
經常用“雙生子佯謬”描述的那個效應：假定Sally和Sam是雙胞胎，Sally搭乘一艘飛船以高速駛嚮附近的一顆恆星去旅行，然後折返飛回地球，而Sam衹呆在傢裏。對於Sally而言，旅行大約持續了一年，但當她返回到地球並跨出宇宙飛船時，她發現地球上已經過去了10年，現在她的兄弟比她大九歲。儘管他們在同一天出生，可是Sally和Sam是不再具有相同的年齡。這個例子說明了一類有限的時間旅行。實際上，Sally已經跳躍到了九年後的地球的未來。
History
Wells had considered the notion of time travel before, in an earlier (but less well-known) work titled The Chronic Argonauts. He had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette, until the publisher asked him if he could instead write a serial novel on the same theme; Wells readily agreed, and was paid £100 on its publication by Heinemann in 1895. The story was first published in serial form in the New Review through 1894 and 1895. The book is based on the Block Theory of the Universe, which is a notion that time is a fourth space dimension.
The story reflects Wells's own socialist political views and the contemporary angst about industrial relations. It is also influenced by Ray Lankester's theories about social degeneration. Other science fiction works of the period, including Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, and the later Metropolis, dealt with similar themes.
Plot summary
The book's protagonist is an English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension, and his demonstration of a tabletop model machine for travelling through it. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator:
The Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to the year A.D. 802,701, where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, androgynous, and childlike people. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a frugivorous diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he concludes that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival.
Returning to the site where he arrived, the Time Traveller finds his time machine missing, and eventually works out that it has been dragged by some unknown party into a nearby structure with heavy doors, locked from the inside. Later in the dark, he is approached menacingly by the Morlocks, pale, apelike people who live in darkness underground, where he discovers the machinery and industry that makes the above-ground paradise possible. He alters his theory, speculating that the human race has evolved into two species: the leisured classes have become the ineffectual Eloi, and the downtrodden working classes have become the brutish light-fearing Morlocks. Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine, he explores the Morlock tunnels, learning that they feed on the Eloi. His revised analysis is that their relationship is not one of lords and servants but of livestock and ranchers, and with no real challenges facing either species. They have both lost the intelligence and character of Man at its peak.
Meanwhile, he saves an Eloi named Weena from drowning, and they develop an innocently affectionate relationship over the course of several days. He takes Weena with him on an expedition to a distant structure that turns out to be the remains of a museum, where he finds a fresh supply of matches and fashions a crude weapon against Morlocks, whom he fears he must fight to get back his machine. But the long and tiring journey back to Weena's home is too much for them, they are overcome by Morlocks in the night, and Weena is injured. The Traveller escapes only when a small fire he had left behind them to distract the Morlocks catches up to them as a forest fire; Weena is lost to the fire.
The Morlocks use the time machine as bait to ensnare the Traveller, not understanding that he will use it to escape. He travels further ahead to roughly 30 million years from his own time. There he sees some of the last living things on a dying Earth, menacing reddish crab-like creatures slowly wandering the blood-red beaches of a world covered in simple vegetation. He continues to make short jumps through time, seeing Earth's rotation gradually cease and the sun grow dimmer, and the world falling silent and freezing as the last degenerate living things die out.
Overwhelmed, he returns to his laboratory, at just three hours after he originally left. Interrupting dinner, he relates his adventures to his disbelieving visitors, producing as evidence two strange flowers Weena had put in his pocket. The original narrator takes over and relates that he returned to the Time Traveller's house the next day, finding him in final preparations for another journey. The Traveller promises to return in half an hour, but three years later, the narrator despairs of ever learning what became of him.
Deleted text
A section from the 11th chapter of the serial published in New Review (May, 1895) was deleted from the book. It was drafted at the suggestion of Wells's editor, William Ernest Henley, who wanted Wells to "oblige your editor" by lengthening out the text with, among other things, an illustration of "the ultimate degeneracy" of man. "There was a slight struggle," Wells later recalled, "between the writer and W. E. Henley who wanted, he said, to put a little 'writing' into the tale. But the writer was in reaction from that sort of thing, the Henley interpolations were cut out again, and he had his own way with his text." This portion of the story was published elsewhere as The Grey Man. This deleted text was also published by Forrest J. Ackerman in an issue of the American edition of Perry Rhodan.
The deleted text recounts an incident immediately after the Traveller's escape from the Morlocks. He finds himself in the distant future of an unrecognisable Earth, populated with furry, hopping herbivores. He stuns or kills one with a rock, and upon closer examination realizes they are probably the descendants of humans/Eloi/Morlocks. A gigantic, centipede-like arthropod approaches and the Traveller flees into the next day, finding that the creature has apparently eaten the tiny humanoid.
Film, TV, or theatrical adaptations
First adaptation
The first visual adaptation of the book was a live teleplay broadcast from Alexandra Palace on 25 January 1949 by the BBC, which starred Russell Napier as the Time Traveller and Mary Donn as Weena. No recording of this live broadcast was made; the only record of the production is the script and a few black and white still photographs. A reading of the script, however, suggests that this teleplay remained fairly faithful to the book.
Escape Radio broadcasts
The CBS radio anthology Escape adapted The Time Machine twice, in 1948 starring Jeff Corey, and again in 1950 starring John Dehner. In both episodes a script adapted by Irving Ravetch was used. The Time Traveller was named Dudley and was accompanied by his skeptical friend Fowler as they travelled to the year 100,080.
1960 film
George Pál (who also made a famous 1953 "modernised" version of Wells's The War of the Worlds) filmed The Time Machine in 1960. Rod Taylor (The Birds) starred, along with Yvette Mimieux as the young Eloi, Weena, Alan Young as his closest friend David Filby (and, in 1917 and 1966, his son James Filby), Sebastian Cabot as Dr Hillyer, Whit Bissell as Walter Kemp and Doris Lloyd as his housekeeper Mrs Watchett. The Time Traveller is addressed as George. The plate on the Time Machine which he builds, is inscribed 'Manufactured by H. George Wells'. This is clearly visible and easily read whenever the date indicator panel is shown in the film. The location is not stated anymore precisely than in the south of England, but is near a sharp bend of the river Thames, so is presumably still Richmond, Surrey.
This is more of an adventure tale than the book was; The story begins with the Time Traveller returning from his trip, unkempt and in disarray. He relates to his friends of what he has witnessed: wars' horrors first-hand in June, 1940 over London and a nuclear bomb in August, 1966. Travelling to 802,701 A.D., he finds world has settled into a vast garden. He meets the pacifist, illiterate and servile Eloi, who speak broken English, and have little interest in technology or the past. Their brethren from long ago, the Morlocks, however, although technologically competent, have devolved into cannibalistic underground workers. He deduces the division of mankind resulted from mutations induced by nuclear war - periodic air-raid sirens cause Weena and many Eloi to instinctively report to underground shelters run by the Morlocks. The Time Traveller goes down to rescue them, and encourages a leader among them to help them escape. Having escaped, and after throwing dead wood into the holes on the surface to feed a growing underground fire, they retreat to the river as underground explosions cause a cave-in. After getting to his machine, he is trapped behind a closed door with several Morlocks, whom he has to fight in order to escape. Battered, he makes it back to his scheduled dinner the next Friday January 5, 1900.
After relating his story, the Time Traveller leaves for a second journey, but Filby and Mrs Watchett note that he had taken three books from the shelves in his drawing room. Filby comments that George must've had a plan for a new Eloi civilisation. "Which three books would you have taken?" Filby inquires to Mrs. Watchett, adding " ... he has all the time in the world."
The film is noted for its then-novel use of time lapse photographic effects to show the world around the Time Traveller changing at breakneck speed as he travels through time. (Pal's earliest films had been works of stop-motion animation.)
Thirty-three years later, a combination sequel/documentary Time Machine: The Journey Back (1993 film), directed by Clyde Lucas, was produced. Rod Taylor hosted, with Bob Burns (also Ex Producer), Gene Warren Sr. and Wah Chang as guests. Michael J. Fox (who had himself portrayed a time traveller in the Back to the Future trilogy) spoke about time travelling in general. In the second half, written by original screenwriter David Duncan, the movie's original actors Rod Taylor, Alan Young and Whit Bissell reprise their roles. The Time Traveller returns to his laboratory in 1916, finding Filby there, and encourages his friend to join him in the far future — but Filby has doubts. (Time Machine: The Journey Back is featured as an extra on the DVD release of the 1960 film).
The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal
Main article: The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal
This film, produced and directed by Arnold Leibovit, is a biopic of George Pal. It contains a number of filmed elements from Pal's 1960 film version of The Time Machine.
1978 TV movie
A TV version was made in 1978, with time-lapse images of building walls being de-constructed, and geographic shifting from Los Angeles to Plymouth, Mass., and inland California. John Beck starred as Neil Perry, with Whit Bissell (from the original 1960 movie and also one of the stars of the 1966 television series The Time Tunnel) appearing as one of Perry's superiors. Though only going a few thousand years into the future, Perry finds the world of the Eloi and Morlocks, and learns the world he left will be destroyed by another of his own inventions. The character Weena was played by Priscilla Barnes of Three's Company fame.
1994 audio drama
In 1994 an audio drama was published on CD by Alien Voices, starring Leonard Nimoy as the Time Traveller (named John) and John de Lancie as David Filby. John de Lancie's children, Owen de Lancie and Keegan de Lancie, played the parts of the Eloi. The drama is approximately two hours long. Interestingly, this version of the story is more faithful to Wells's novella than either the 1960 movie or the 2002 movie.
2002 film
The 1960 film was remade in 2002, starring Guy Pearce as the Time Traveller, a mechanical engineering professor named Alexander Hartdegen, Mark Addy as his colleague David Filby, Sienna Guillory as Alex's ill-fated fiancée Emma, Phyllida Law as Mrs. Watchit, and Jeremy Irons as the uber-Morlock. Playing a quick cameo as a shopkeeper was Alan Young, who featured in the 1960 film. (H.G. Wells himself can also be said to have a "cameo" appearance, in the form of a photograph on the wall of Alex's home, near the front door.)
The film was directed by Wells's great-grandson Simon Wells, with an even more revised plot that incorporated the ideas of paradoxes and changing the past. The place is changed from Richmond, Surrey, to downtown New York City, where the Time Traveller moves forward in time to find answers to his questions on 'Practical Application of Time Travel;' first in 2030 New York, to witness an orbital lunar catastrophe in 2037, before moving on to 802,701 for the main plot. He later briefly finds himself in 635,427,810 with toxic clouds and a world laid waste (presumably by the Morlocks) with devastation and Morlock artefacts stretching out to the horizon.
It was met with generally mixed reviews and earned $56 million before VHS/DVD sales. The Time Machine used a design that was very reminiscent of the one in the Pal film, but was much larger and employed polished turned brass construction, along with rotating quartz/glasses reminiscent of the light gathering prismatic lenses common to lighthouses (In Wells's original book, the Time Traveller mentioned his 'scientific papers on optics'). Weena makes no appearance; Hartdegen instead becomes involved with a female Eloi named Mara, played by Samantha Mumba. In this film, the Eloi have, as a tradition, preserved a "stone language" that is identical to English. The Morlocks are much more barbaric and agile, and the Time Traveller has a direct impact on the plot.
2009 BBC Radio 3 broadcast
Robert Glenister stars as the Time Traveller, with William Gaunt as H. G. Wells in a new 100-minute radio dramatisation by Philip Osment, directed by Jeremy Mortimer as part of a BBC Radio Science Fiction season. This was the first adaptation of the novel for British radio. It was first broadcast on 22 February 2009 on BBC Radio 3. The other cast was:
* Time traveller - Robert Glenister
* Martha - Donnla Hughes
* Young HG Wells - Gunnar Cauthery
* Filby, friend of the young Wells - Stephen Critchlow
* Bennett, friend of the young Wells - Chris Pavlo
* Mrs Watchett, the traveller's housemaid - Manjeet Mann
* Weena, one of the Eloi and the traveller's partner - Jill Cardo
* Other parts - Robert Lonsdale, Inam Mirza and Dan Starkey
The adaptation retained the nameless status of the time traveller and set it as a true story told to the young Wells by the time traveller, which Wells then re-tells as an older man to the American journalist Martha whilst firewatching on the roof of Broadcasting House during the Blitz. It also retained the deleted ending from the novel as a recorded message sent back to Wells from the future by the traveller using a prototype of his machine, with the traveller escaping the anthropoid creatures to 30 million AD at the end of the universe before disappearing or dying there.
Wishbone episode
The Time Machine was featured in an episode of the PBS children's show Wishbone, entitled "Bark to the Future". Wishbone plays the role of the Time Traveller, where he meets Weena, takes her to an ancient library, and confronts the Morlocks. The parallel story has Wishbone's owner, Joe, relying on a calculator to solve percentage problems rather than his own intellect, recalling the mindset that created the lazy Eloi.
Sequels by other authors
Wells's novella has become one of the cornerstones of science-fiction literature. As a result, it has spawned many offspring. Works expanding on Wells's story include:
* The Return of the Time Machine by Egon Friedell, printed in 1972, from the 1946 German version. The author portrays himself as a character searching for the Time Traveller in different eras.
* The Hertford Manuscript by Richard Cowper, first published in 1976. It features a "manuscript" which reports the Time Traveller's activities after the end of the original story. According to this manuscript, the Time Traveller disappeared because his Time Machine had been damaged by the Morlocks without him knowing it. He only found out when it stopped operating during his next attempted time travel. He found himself on August 27, 1665, in London during the outbreak of the Great Plague of London. The rest of the novel is devoted to his efforts to repair the Time Machine and leave this time period before getting infected with the disease. He also has an encounter with Robert Hooke. He eventually dies of the disease on September 20, 1665. The story gives a list of subsequent owners of the manuscript until 1976. It also gives the name of the Time Traveller as Robert James Pensley, born to James and Martha Pensley in 1850 and disappearing without trace on June 18, 1894.
* Morlock Night by K.W. Jeter, first published in 1979. A steampunk novel in which the Morlocks, having studied the Traveller's machine, duplicate it and invade Victorian London.
* The Space Machine by Christopher Priest, first published in 1976. Because of the movement of planets, stars and galaxies, for a time machine to stay in one spot on Earth as it travels through time, it must also follow the Earth's trajectory through space. In Priest's book, the hero damages the Time Machine, and arrives on Mars, just before the start of the invasion described in The War of the Worlds. H.G. Wells himself appears as a minor character.
* Time Machine II by George Pal and Joe Morhaim, published in 1981. The Time Traveller, named George, and the pregnant Weena try to return to his time, but instead land in the London Blitz, dying during a bombing raid. Their newborn son is rescued by an American ambulance driver, and grows up in the United States under the name Christopher Jones. Sought out by the lookalike son of James Filby, Jones goes to England to collect his inheritance, leading ultimately to George's journals, and the Time Machine's original plans. He builds his own machine with 1970s upgrades, and seeks his parents in the future.
* The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter, first published in 1995. This sequel was officially authorized by the Wells estate to mark the centenary of the original's publication. In its wide-ranging narrative, the Traveller's desire to return and rescue Weena is thwarted by the fact that he has changed history (by telling his tale to his friends, one of whom published the account). With a Morlock (in the new history, the Morlocks are intelligent and cultured), he travels through the multiverse as increasingly complicated timelines unravel around him, eventually meeting mankind's far future descendants, whose ambition is to travel into the multiverse of multiverses.[clarification needed] This sequel includes many nods to the prehistory of Wells's story in the names of characters and chapters.
* The 2003 short story "On the Surface" by Robert J. Sawyer begins with this quote from the Wells original: "I have suspected since that the Morlocks had even partially taken it [the time machine] to pieces while trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose." In the Sawyer story, the Morlocks develop a fleet of time machines and use them to conquer the same far future Wells depicted at the end of the original, by which time, because the sun has grown red and dim and thus no longer blinds them, they can reclaim the surface of the world.
* The Man Who Loved Morlocks and The Trouble With Weena (The Truth about Weena) are two different sequels, the former a novel and the latter a short story, by David J. Lake. Each of them concerns the Time Traveller's return to the future. In the former, he discovers that he cannot enter any period in time he has already visited, forcing him to travel in to the further future, where he finds love with a woman whose race evolved from Morlock stock. In the latter, he is accompanied by Wells, and succeeds in rescuing Weena and bringing her back to the 1890s, where her political ideas cause a peaceful revolution.
* In Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time series, the Time Traveller is a very minor character, his role consists of being shocked by the decadence of the inhabitants of the End of Time. H.G. Wells also appears briefly in this series when the characters visit Bromley in 1896.
* The Time Traveller makes a brief appearance in Allan and the Sundered Veil, a back-up story appearing in the first volume of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume I, where he saves Allan Quatermain, John Carter and Randolph Carter from a horde of Morlocks.
* The time-travelling hero known as "The Rook" (who appeared in various comics from Warren Publishing) is the grandson of the original Time Traveller. In one story, he met the Time Traveller, and helps him stop the Morlocks from wiping out the Eloi.
* Philip José Farmer speculated that the Time Traveller was a member of the Wold Newton family. He is said to have been the great-uncle of Doc Savage.
* Burt Libe wrote two sequels: Beyond the Time Machine and Tangles in Time, telling of the Time Traveller finally settling down with Weena in the 33rd century. They have a few children, the youngest of whom is the main character in the second book.
* In 2006, Monsterwax Trading Cards combined The Time Machine with two of Wells's other stories, The Island of Dr. Moreau and The War of the Worlds. The resulting 102 card trilogy, by Ricardo Garijo, was entitled The Art of H. G. Wells. The continuing narrative links all three stories by way of an unnamed writer mentioned in Wells's first story, to the nephew of Ed Prendick (the narrator of Dr. Moreau), and another unnamed writer (narrator) in The War of the Worlds.
* In Ronald Wright's novel A Scientific Romance, a lonely museum curator on the eve of the millennium discovers a letter written by Wells shortly before his death, foretelling the imminent return of the Time Machine. The curator finds the machine, then uses it to travel into a post-apocalyptic future.
The Time Traveller
Although the Time Traveller's real name is never given in the original novel, other sources have named him.
One popular theory, encouraged by movies like Time After Time and certain episodes of the hit show Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, is that the Time Traveller is meant to be none other than H. G. Wells himself. Indeed, in the George Pál movie adaptation of The Time Machine, his name is given as George (also H. G. Wells's middle name). Due to the clarity of the DVD image, 'H.G. Wells' can be seen on the control panel of the device, making it obvious that the film's Time Traveller is H.G. Wells.
In Simon Wells' 2002 remake, the Time Traveller is named Alexander Hartdegen.
In The Time Ships, Stephen Baxter's sequels to The Time Machine, the Time Traveller encounters his younger self via time travel, who he nicknames 'Moses'. His younger self reacts with embarrassment to this, which implies that it may be a first name that he changed. This is a reference to H.G. Wells's story "The Chronic Argonauts", the story which grew into The Time Machine, in which the inventor of the Time Machine is named Dr. Moses Nebogipfel. (The surname of Wells's first inventor graces another character in Baxter's book, as explained above.)
The Hartford Manuscript, another sequel to The Time Machine, gives the Time Traveller's name as Robert James Pensley.
Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life by Philip José Farmer gives the Time Traveller's name as Bruce Clarke Wildman.
The Rook comic book series gives the Time Traveller's name as Adam Dane.
In the Doctor Who comic strip story "The Eternal Present", the character of Theophilus Tolliver is implied to be the Time Traveller of Wells's novel.
Also featured in Doctor Who is Wells, himself, appearing in the television serial Timelash. The events of this story are portrayed has having inspired Wells to write The Time Machine.
本書是英國科幻小說大師威爾斯的名著之一。書中描寫一個青年物理學家格裏芬發明了一種隱身術，把自己變成了來去無蹤的隱身人。天才的發明並沒有給這個極端的個人主義者帶來任何歡樂，反使他屢糟災難，以致一步步走嚮犯罪的深淵，直至變成一個可怕的殺人狂，而不可避免地走嚮自我毀滅。
獨特奇異的幻想藝術，絲絲入扣、引人入勝的故事情節，以及藴含深刻的社會內涵，都足以證明《隱身人》不愧是一部世界科幻小說的經典之作。
Plot summary
The book starts in the English village of Iping in West Sussex, as curiosity and fear are started up in the inhabitants when a mysterious stranger arrives to stay at the local inn, The Coach and Horses. The stranger wears a long, thick coat, gloves, his face is hidden entirely by bandages, large goggles, and a wide-brimmed hat. The stranger is extremely reclusive and demands to be left alone, spending most of his time in his room working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. He quickly becomes the talk of the village as he unnerves the locals.
Meanwhile, a series of mysterious burglaries occur in the village in which the victims catch no sight of the thief. One morning when the innkeepers pass the stranger's room, they enter in curiosity when they notice the stranger's clothes are scattered all over the floor but the stranger is nowhere to be seen. The furniture seems to spring alive and the bedclothes and a chair leap into mid-air and push them out of the room. Later in the day Mrs. Hall confronts the stranger about this, and the stranger reveals that he is invisible, removing his bandages and goggles to reveal nothing beneath. As Mrs. Hall flees in horror, the police attempt to catch the stranger, but he throws off all his clothes and escapes.
The Invisible Man flees to the downs, where he frightens a tramp, Thomas Marvel, with his invisibility and forces him to become his lab assistant. Together with Marvel, he returns to the village where Marvel steals the Invisible Man's books and apparatus from the inn while the Invisible Man himself steals the doctor's and vicar's clothes. But after the theft, Marvel attempts to betray the Invisible Man to the police, and the Invisible Man chases after him, threatening to kill him.
Marvel flees to the seaside town of Burdock where he takes refuge in an inn. The Invisible Man attempts to break in through the back door but he is overheard and shot by a black-bearded American, and flees the scene badly injured. He enters a nearby house to take refuge and dress his wound. The house turns out to belong to Dr. Kemp, whom the Invisible Man recognises, and he reveals to Kemp his true identity — Griffin, a brilliant medical student with whom Kemp studied at university.
Mr. Griffin explains to his old friend Kemp that after leaving university he was desperately poor. Determined to achieve something of scientific significance, he began to work on an experiment to make people and objects invisible, using money stolen from his own father, who committed suicide after being robbed by his son. Griffin experimented with a formula that altered the refractive index of objects, which resulted in light not bending when passing through the object, thereby making it invisible. He performed the experiment using a cat, but when the cat's owner, Griffin's neighbor, realized the cat was missing, she made a complaint to their landlord, and Griffin wound up performing the invisibility procedure on himself to hide from them. Griffin theorizes part of the reason he can be invisible stems from the fact he is albino, mentioning that food becomes visible in his stomach and remains so until digested, with the bizarre image passing through air in the meantime.
After burning the boarding house down to cover his tracks, he felt a sense of invincibility from being invisible. However, reality soon proved that sense misguided. After struggling to survive out in the open, he stole some clothing from a dingy backstreet shop and took residence at the Coach & Horses inn to reverse the experiment. He then explains to Kemp that he now plans to begin a Reign of Terror (The First Year of the Invisible Man), using his invisibility to terrorize the nation with Kemp as his secret confederate.
Realizing that Griffin is clearly insane, Kemp has no plans to help him and instead alerts the police. When the police arrive, Griffin violently assaults Kemp and a policeman before escaping, and the next day he leaves a note on Kemp's doorstep announcing that Kemp will be the first man killed in the Reign of Terror. Kemp remains cool and writes a note to the Colonel, detailing a plan to use himself as bait to trap the Invisible Man, but as a maidservant attempts to deliver the note she is attacked by Griffin and the note is stolen.
Just as the police accompany the attacked maid back to the house, the Invisible Man breaks in through the back door and makes for Kemp. Keeping his head cool, Kemp bolts from the house and runs down the hill to the town below, where he alerts a navvy that the Invisible Man is approaching. The crowd in the town, witnessing the pursuit, rally around Kemp. When Kemp is pinned down by Griffin, the navvy strikes him with a spade and knocks him to the ground, and he is violently assaulted by the workers. Kemp calls for the mob to stop, but it is too late. The Invisible Man dies of the injuries he has received, and his naked and battered body slowly becomes visible on the ground after he dies. Later it is revealed that Marvel has Griffin's notes, with the invisibility formula written in a mix of Russian and Greek which he cannot read, and with some pages washed out.
Characters
Griffin
"The Invisible Man" cover art.
Dr. Kemp
Dr. Kemp is a scientist living in the town of Port Burdock. He is an old friend of Griffin, who comes to his house to hide after Griffin's transformation into the "invisible man." Kemp has a hard time accepting the fact that his friend, who he had not seen for years, suddenly appears uninvited and invisible, but eventually he overcomes his shock and sits down and talks with Griffin and betrays him.
Narrative-wise, Kemp then allows Griffin to relate the story of how he began his experiments, and all that happened to him between his arrival on his old friend's doorstep and then. Kemp, realizing that Griffin is insane with power, is quick to summon Colonel Adye of the Port Burdock police. Adye fails to apprehend Griffin, who escapes and brands Kemp a traitor, vowing to kill him.
Despite the death threat, Kemp is no coward, and actively assists and advises Adye in quest to find and apprehend the Invisible Man while the police colonel serves as his bodyguard. Eventually Griffin overpowers Adye and comes after Kemp, who, rushing through the streets of Port Burdock, rouses the townspeople into a mob which attacks the Invisible Man and brings his reign of terror to an end.
The film
In the 1933 Universal film adaptation of the book, Kemp is given the first name Arthur and is played by William Harrigan.
Kemp of the film is a much less likable character, and isn't as fortunate as his literary counterpart. Here, Arthur Kemp is a "friend" of Dr. Jack Griffin, who serves as an assistant to Dr. Cranley. Unlike Griffin, Kemp is a thoroughly incompetent scientist, as well as an opportunistic coward. He continually criticises Griffin for his experiments with monocane, and secretly covets Griffin's fiancé (and Dr. Cranley's daughter) Flora.
When Griffin disappears and goes to the remote village of Iping, Kemp attempts to report his colleague's questionable experiments to Dr. Cranley, and tries to woo Flora. Although he manages to convince Cranley that Griffin is up to no good, however, he fails to persuade Flora to forget about her beloved Jack. Shortly after this, Griffin, now made invisible as a result of his monocane experiments and hunted as a criminal by the police in Iping, turns up in Kemp's house seeking his old colleague's assistance.
Although Kemp initially goes along with Griffin's plans, helping him retrieve his notebooks from the Lion's Head Inn (where, unbeknownst to Kemp, Griffin has murdered Inspector Bird), Kemp soon grows too afraid of Griffin to continue assisting him, and alerts Flora, Dr. Cranley, and the police to Griffin's whereabouts. Although Griffin is delighted to be reunited with Flora, his increasing madness frightens her away.
Shortly after, Kemp secretly phones the police, but is overheard by Griffin.
Kemp is marked for death by a furious Griffin, and despite intensive police protection and a daring plan by Inspector Lane to get Kemp safely out into the country disguised as a police officer, Griffin manages to make good on his threats: he ties Kemp up, puts him into his car, and then sends the car over a cliff. Kemp perishes in the crash.
Mr. Hall
Mr. Hall is the husband of Mrs. Hall and helps her run the Coach and Horses Inn. He is the first person in Iping to notice that the mysterious Griffin is invisible: when a dog bites him and tears his glove, Griffin retreats to his room and Hall follows to see if he is all right, only to see Griffin without his glove and handless (or so it appears to Hall).
Mr. Hall appears in the 1933 Universal film adaptation, where he is given the first name Herbert and seriously injured by Griffin. In the film, he is portrayed by Forrester Harvey.
Mrs. Hall
Mrs. Hall is the wife of Mr. Hall and the owner of the Coach and Horses Inn.
A very friendly, down-to-earth woman who enjoys socializing with her guests, Mrs. Hall is continually frustrated by the mysterious Griffin's refusal to talk with her, and his repeated temper tantrums.
Mrs. Hall appears in the 1933 Universal film adaptation, where she was played by Una O'Connor and given the first name Jenny. In the film version, her primary occupation is to scream.
Thomas Marvel
Thomas Marvel is a jolly old tramp unwittingly recruited to assist the Invisible Man as his first visible partner. He carries around the Invisible Man's scientific notebooks for him and, eventually, a large sum of money that Griffin had stolen from a bank. Eventually Thomas grows afraid of his unseen partner and flees to Port Burdock, taking both the notebooks and the money with him, where he seeks police protection.
Although the Invisible Man is furious and vows to kill Thomas for his betrayal, and even makes an attempt on his life before being driven off by a police officer, he becomes preoccupied with hiding from the law and retaliating against Dr. Kemp, and Thomas is spared.
Marvel eventually uses the stolen money to open his own inn, which he calls the Invisible Man, and becomes very wealthy. He also secretly studies Griffin's notes, fancying that one day he will figure out the secret of invisibility. However, he cannot read the foreign language that Griffin has written it in, and some pages have been washed clean after being in a ditch.
In Alan Moore's comics series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which Griffin is a major character, people have suggested that Marvel may have been the man killed by a mob at the end of the original novel, after being substituted by Griffin himself. The only problem with this suggestion is, as Campion Bond introduces the league to Griffin, he commented Griffin made a half-wit albino invisible first.
Marvel does not appear in the 1933 film.
Col. Adye
Col. Adye is the chief of police in the town of Port Burdock. He is called upon by Dr. Kemp when the Invisible Man turned up in Kemp's house talking of taking over the world with his "terrible secret" of invisibility. A very able-bodied and reliable officer, Adye not only saves Kemp from the Invisible Man's first attempt on his life but also spearheads the hunt for the unseen fugitive.
He is eventually shot by the Invisible Man with Kemp's revolver. Upon being shot, Adye is described as falling down and not getting back up. However, he is mentioned in the epilogue as being one of those who had questioned Thomas Marvel about the whereabouts of the Invisible Man's notebooks, and is never made clear whether this occurred prior to his being shot, or if it occurred afterwards and Adye survived.
Dr. Cuss
Dr. Cuss is a doctor living in the town of Iping.
Intrigued by tales of a bandaged stranger staying at the Coach and Horses Inn, Dr. Cuss goes to see him under the pretense of asking for a donation to the nurse's fund. The strange man, Griffin, scares Cuss away by pinching his nose with his invisible hand. Cuss went immediately to see Rev. Bunting, who not surprisingly did not believe the doctor's wild story.
Later, after Griffin had been exposed as The Invisible Man, Cuss and Bunting got ahold of his notebooks, but these were stolen back from them by the invisible Griffin, who took both men's clothes. Although the unlucky Reverend had all his clothing stolen by Griffin, Cuss only lost his trousers.
J. A. Jaffers
J. A. Jaffers is a constable in the town of Iping. He is called upon by Mr. and Mrs. Hall to arrest Griffin after they suspected him of robbing the Reverend Bunting. Like most of the people in Iping, Jaffers was both openminded and adaptable - He overcame his shock at the discovery that Griffin was invisible quickly, determined to arrest him in spite of this.
Jaffers appears in the 1933 Universal film adaptation.
The Rev Mr Bunting
The Rev Mr Bunting is a vicar in the town of Iping. Dr. Cuss went to see him following his first encounter with Griffin. Bunting laughed at Cuss' claims of an invisible hand pinching his nose, but the next night his home was burgled by the Invisible Man himself.
Later, Bunting and Cuss tried to read Griffin's notes but were stopped by the Invisible Man, who stole their clothes. Although Cuss escaped missing only his trousers, Bunting had his entire wardrobe purloined.
Adaptations
Films
* The Invisible Man, a 1933 film directed by James Whale and produced by Universal Pictures. Griffin was played by Claude Rains and given the first name "Jack". The film is considered one of the great Universal horror films of the 1930s, and it spawned a number of sequels, plus many spinoffs using the idea of an "invisible man" that were largely unrelated to Wells's original story and using a relative of Griffin as a secondary character possessing the invisibility formula. These were; The Invisible Man Returns (1940) with Vincent Price as Geoffrey Radcliffe, the film's Invisible Man; The Invisible Woman (1940) with Virginia Bruce as the title character and John Barrymore as the scientist who invents the invisibility process; Invisible Agent (1942) and The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944) both starring Jon Hall (as different Invisible Men); and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) with Arthur Franz as Tommy Nelson, a boxer framed for murder who takes the invisibility formula to find the real killer and clear his name. Vincent Price also provided the voice of the Invisible Man at the conclusion of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
* Tomei Ningen, a 1954 Japanese film, released by legendary studio Toho. It is a loose adaptation of the story.
* The New Invisible Man, a 1957 Mexican version starring Arturo de Cordova as the title character; this film is a remake of The Invisible Man Returns (1940).
* Mad Monster Party (1967) included the Invisible Man (voiced by Allen Swift) as part of the monster ensemble.
* The Invisible Woman, a 1983 TV-movie pilot for a comedy series starring Alexa Hamilton.
* Человек-невидимка (Pronunciation: Chelovek-nevidimka; translation: The Invisible Man), a 1984 Soviet movie directed by Aleksandr Zakharov, with Andrei Kharitonov as Griffin. The plot was changed: Griffin was shown as a scientist talented but not understood by his contemporaries, and Kemp (starring Romualdas Ramanauskas) as a vicious person who wanted to become a ruler of the world with Griffin's help. When Griffin rejected Kemp's proposal, the last did all his best to kill him (and finally succeeded). The movie remained unknown to the Western audience because of a violation of Wells's copyright.[citation needed]
* Amazon Women on the Moon, a 1987 comedy anthology film featured a spoof titled Son of the Invisible Man, with Ed Begley, Jr. playing the son of the original Invisible Man who believes he is invisible, but is in fact visible - creating an awkward situation when he confidently disrobes in front of everyone.
* Memoirs of an Invisible Man, a 1992 modernized version of the story, starring Chevy Chase as a man who is accidentally made invisible and is then hunted by a government agent who wishes to use him as a weapon.
* Hollow Man, a 2000 film starring Kevin Bacon, and directed by Paul Verhoeven; this film spawned a 2006 direct-to-video sequel Hollow Man 2 starring Christian Slater as "Michael Griffin" and directed by Claudio Fah.
* A feature film entitled The Invisible Man is scheduled to hit theaters in 2010.
Stage
* Ken Hill adapted the book to play form in 1991, and it debuted at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1991. It played in the West End in 1993 with Michael N. Harbour as Griffin.
The cast for the production at Stratford East in 1991 was as follows -; Jon Finch [Griffin], Brian Murphy [Thomas Marvel], Toni Palmer [Mrs Hall], Andrew Secombe [Squire Burdock], Geoffrey Freshwater [PC Jaffers/Dr Kemp], Caroline Longo [Miss Statchell], Liza Hayden [Millie], Miles Richardson [Dr Cuss/ Fearenside/Wadgers/Col. Adye], Philip Newman [Wicksteed], Jonathan Whaley [MC/ Teddy Henfrey/Rev. Bunting].
Radio
* The 2001 Radio Tales drama "The Invisible Man" is an adaptation of the novel for National Public Radio.
獨特奇異的幻想藝術，絲絲入扣、引人入勝的故事情節，以及藴含深刻的社會內涵，都足以證明《隱身人》不愧是一部世界科幻小說的經典之作。
Plot summary
The book starts in the English village of Iping in West Sussex, as curiosity and fear are started up in the inhabitants when a mysterious stranger arrives to stay at the local inn, The Coach and Horses. The stranger wears a long, thick coat, gloves, his face is hidden entirely by bandages, large goggles, and a wide-brimmed hat. The stranger is extremely reclusive and demands to be left alone, spending most of his time in his room working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. He quickly becomes the talk of the village as he unnerves the locals.
Meanwhile, a series of mysterious burglaries occur in the village in which the victims catch no sight of the thief. One morning when the innkeepers pass the stranger's room, they enter in curiosity when they notice the stranger's clothes are scattered all over the floor but the stranger is nowhere to be seen. The furniture seems to spring alive and the bedclothes and a chair leap into mid-air and push them out of the room. Later in the day Mrs. Hall confronts the stranger about this, and the stranger reveals that he is invisible, removing his bandages and goggles to reveal nothing beneath. As Mrs. Hall flees in horror, the police attempt to catch the stranger, but he throws off all his clothes and escapes.
The Invisible Man flees to the downs, where he frightens a tramp, Thomas Marvel, with his invisibility and forces him to become his lab assistant. Together with Marvel, he returns to the village where Marvel steals the Invisible Man's books and apparatus from the inn while the Invisible Man himself steals the doctor's and vicar's clothes. But after the theft, Marvel attempts to betray the Invisible Man to the police, and the Invisible Man chases after him, threatening to kill him.
Marvel flees to the seaside town of Burdock where he takes refuge in an inn. The Invisible Man attempts to break in through the back door but he is overheard and shot by a black-bearded American, and flees the scene badly injured. He enters a nearby house to take refuge and dress his wound. The house turns out to belong to Dr. Kemp, whom the Invisible Man recognises, and he reveals to Kemp his true identity — Griffin, a brilliant medical student with whom Kemp studied at university.
Mr. Griffin explains to his old friend Kemp that after leaving university he was desperately poor. Determined to achieve something of scientific significance, he began to work on an experiment to make people and objects invisible, using money stolen from his own father, who committed suicide after being robbed by his son. Griffin experimented with a formula that altered the refractive index of objects, which resulted in light not bending when passing through the object, thereby making it invisible. He performed the experiment using a cat, but when the cat's owner, Griffin's neighbor, realized the cat was missing, she made a complaint to their landlord, and Griffin wound up performing the invisibility procedure on himself to hide from them. Griffin theorizes part of the reason he can be invisible stems from the fact he is albino, mentioning that food becomes visible in his stomach and remains so until digested, with the bizarre image passing through air in the meantime.
After burning the boarding house down to cover his tracks, he felt a sense of invincibility from being invisible. However, reality soon proved that sense misguided. After struggling to survive out in the open, he stole some clothing from a dingy backstreet shop and took residence at the Coach & Horses inn to reverse the experiment. He then explains to Kemp that he now plans to begin a Reign of Terror (The First Year of the Invisible Man), using his invisibility to terrorize the nation with Kemp as his secret confederate.
Realizing that Griffin is clearly insane, Kemp has no plans to help him and instead alerts the police. When the police arrive, Griffin violently assaults Kemp and a policeman before escaping, and the next day he leaves a note on Kemp's doorstep announcing that Kemp will be the first man killed in the Reign of Terror. Kemp remains cool and writes a note to the Colonel, detailing a plan to use himself as bait to trap the Invisible Man, but as a maidservant attempts to deliver the note she is attacked by Griffin and the note is stolen.
Just as the police accompany the attacked maid back to the house, the Invisible Man breaks in through the back door and makes for Kemp. Keeping his head cool, Kemp bolts from the house and runs down the hill to the town below, where he alerts a navvy that the Invisible Man is approaching. The crowd in the town, witnessing the pursuit, rally around Kemp. When Kemp is pinned down by Griffin, the navvy strikes him with a spade and knocks him to the ground, and he is violently assaulted by the workers. Kemp calls for the mob to stop, but it is too late. The Invisible Man dies of the injuries he has received, and his naked and battered body slowly becomes visible on the ground after he dies. Later it is revealed that Marvel has Griffin's notes, with the invisibility formula written in a mix of Russian and Greek which he cannot read, and with some pages washed out.
Characters
Griffin
"The Invisible Man" cover art.
Dr. Kemp
Dr. Kemp is a scientist living in the town of Port Burdock. He is an old friend of Griffin, who comes to his house to hide after Griffin's transformation into the "invisible man." Kemp has a hard time accepting the fact that his friend, who he had not seen for years, suddenly appears uninvited and invisible, but eventually he overcomes his shock and sits down and talks with Griffin and betrays him.
Narrative-wise, Kemp then allows Griffin to relate the story of how he began his experiments, and all that happened to him between his arrival on his old friend's doorstep and then. Kemp, realizing that Griffin is insane with power, is quick to summon Colonel Adye of the Port Burdock police. Adye fails to apprehend Griffin, who escapes and brands Kemp a traitor, vowing to kill him.
Despite the death threat, Kemp is no coward, and actively assists and advises Adye in quest to find and apprehend the Invisible Man while the police colonel serves as his bodyguard. Eventually Griffin overpowers Adye and comes after Kemp, who, rushing through the streets of Port Burdock, rouses the townspeople into a mob which attacks the Invisible Man and brings his reign of terror to an end.
The film
In the 1933 Universal film adaptation of the book, Kemp is given the first name Arthur and is played by William Harrigan.
Kemp of the film is a much less likable character, and isn't as fortunate as his literary counterpart. Here, Arthur Kemp is a "friend" of Dr. Jack Griffin, who serves as an assistant to Dr. Cranley. Unlike Griffin, Kemp is a thoroughly incompetent scientist, as well as an opportunistic coward. He continually criticises Griffin for his experiments with monocane, and secretly covets Griffin's fiancé (and Dr. Cranley's daughter) Flora.
When Griffin disappears and goes to the remote village of Iping, Kemp attempts to report his colleague's questionable experiments to Dr. Cranley, and tries to woo Flora. Although he manages to convince Cranley that Griffin is up to no good, however, he fails to persuade Flora to forget about her beloved Jack. Shortly after this, Griffin, now made invisible as a result of his monocane experiments and hunted as a criminal by the police in Iping, turns up in Kemp's house seeking his old colleague's assistance.
Although Kemp initially goes along with Griffin's plans, helping him retrieve his notebooks from the Lion's Head Inn (where, unbeknownst to Kemp, Griffin has murdered Inspector Bird), Kemp soon grows too afraid of Griffin to continue assisting him, and alerts Flora, Dr. Cranley, and the police to Griffin's whereabouts. Although Griffin is delighted to be reunited with Flora, his increasing madness frightens her away.
Shortly after, Kemp secretly phones the police, but is overheard by Griffin.
Kemp is marked for death by a furious Griffin, and despite intensive police protection and a daring plan by Inspector Lane to get Kemp safely out into the country disguised as a police officer, Griffin manages to make good on his threats: he ties Kemp up, puts him into his car, and then sends the car over a cliff. Kemp perishes in the crash.
Mr. Hall
Mr. Hall is the husband of Mrs. Hall and helps her run the Coach and Horses Inn. He is the first person in Iping to notice that the mysterious Griffin is invisible: when a dog bites him and tears his glove, Griffin retreats to his room and Hall follows to see if he is all right, only to see Griffin without his glove and handless (or so it appears to Hall).
Mr. Hall appears in the 1933 Universal film adaptation, where he is given the first name Herbert and seriously injured by Griffin. In the film, he is portrayed by Forrester Harvey.
Mrs. Hall
Mrs. Hall is the wife of Mr. Hall and the owner of the Coach and Horses Inn.
A very friendly, down-to-earth woman who enjoys socializing with her guests, Mrs. Hall is continually frustrated by the mysterious Griffin's refusal to talk with her, and his repeated temper tantrums.
Mrs. Hall appears in the 1933 Universal film adaptation, where she was played by Una O'Connor and given the first name Jenny. In the film version, her primary occupation is to scream.
Thomas Marvel
Thomas Marvel is a jolly old tramp unwittingly recruited to assist the Invisible Man as his first visible partner. He carries around the Invisible Man's scientific notebooks for him and, eventually, a large sum of money that Griffin had stolen from a bank. Eventually Thomas grows afraid of his unseen partner and flees to Port Burdock, taking both the notebooks and the money with him, where he seeks police protection.
Although the Invisible Man is furious and vows to kill Thomas for his betrayal, and even makes an attempt on his life before being driven off by a police officer, he becomes preoccupied with hiding from the law and retaliating against Dr. Kemp, and Thomas is spared.
Marvel eventually uses the stolen money to open his own inn, which he calls the Invisible Man, and becomes very wealthy. He also secretly studies Griffin's notes, fancying that one day he will figure out the secret of invisibility. However, he cannot read the foreign language that Griffin has written it in, and some pages have been washed clean after being in a ditch.
In Alan Moore's comics series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which Griffin is a major character, people have suggested that Marvel may have been the man killed by a mob at the end of the original novel, after being substituted by Griffin himself. The only problem with this suggestion is, as Campion Bond introduces the league to Griffin, he commented Griffin made a half-wit albino invisible first.
Marvel does not appear in the 1933 film.
Col. Adye
Col. Adye is the chief of police in the town of Port Burdock. He is called upon by Dr. Kemp when the Invisible Man turned up in Kemp's house talking of taking over the world with his "terrible secret" of invisibility. A very able-bodied and reliable officer, Adye not only saves Kemp from the Invisible Man's first attempt on his life but also spearheads the hunt for the unseen fugitive.
He is eventually shot by the Invisible Man with Kemp's revolver. Upon being shot, Adye is described as falling down and not getting back up. However, he is mentioned in the epilogue as being one of those who had questioned Thomas Marvel about the whereabouts of the Invisible Man's notebooks, and is never made clear whether this occurred prior to his being shot, or if it occurred afterwards and Adye survived.
Dr. Cuss
Dr. Cuss is a doctor living in the town of Iping.
Intrigued by tales of a bandaged stranger staying at the Coach and Horses Inn, Dr. Cuss goes to see him under the pretense of asking for a donation to the nurse's fund. The strange man, Griffin, scares Cuss away by pinching his nose with his invisible hand. Cuss went immediately to see Rev. Bunting, who not surprisingly did not believe the doctor's wild story.
Later, after Griffin had been exposed as The Invisible Man, Cuss and Bunting got ahold of his notebooks, but these were stolen back from them by the invisible Griffin, who took both men's clothes. Although the unlucky Reverend had all his clothing stolen by Griffin, Cuss only lost his trousers.
J. A. Jaffers
J. A. Jaffers is a constable in the town of Iping. He is called upon by Mr. and Mrs. Hall to arrest Griffin after they suspected him of robbing the Reverend Bunting. Like most of the people in Iping, Jaffers was both openminded and adaptable - He overcame his shock at the discovery that Griffin was invisible quickly, determined to arrest him in spite of this.
Jaffers appears in the 1933 Universal film adaptation.
The Rev Mr Bunting
The Rev Mr Bunting is a vicar in the town of Iping. Dr. Cuss went to see him following his first encounter with Griffin. Bunting laughed at Cuss' claims of an invisible hand pinching his nose, but the next night his home was burgled by the Invisible Man himself.
Later, Bunting and Cuss tried to read Griffin's notes but were stopped by the Invisible Man, who stole their clothes. Although Cuss escaped missing only his trousers, Bunting had his entire wardrobe purloined.
Adaptations
Films
* The Invisible Man, a 1933 film directed by James Whale and produced by Universal Pictures. Griffin was played by Claude Rains and given the first name "Jack". The film is considered one of the great Universal horror films of the 1930s, and it spawned a number of sequels, plus many spinoffs using the idea of an "invisible man" that were largely unrelated to Wells's original story and using a relative of Griffin as a secondary character possessing the invisibility formula. These were; The Invisible Man Returns (1940) with Vincent Price as Geoffrey Radcliffe, the film's Invisible Man; The Invisible Woman (1940) with Virginia Bruce as the title character and John Barrymore as the scientist who invents the invisibility process; Invisible Agent (1942) and The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944) both starring Jon Hall (as different Invisible Men); and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951) with Arthur Franz as Tommy Nelson, a boxer framed for murder who takes the invisibility formula to find the real killer and clear his name. Vincent Price also provided the voice of the Invisible Man at the conclusion of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
* Tomei Ningen, a 1954 Japanese film, released by legendary studio Toho. It is a loose adaptation of the story.
* The New Invisible Man, a 1957 Mexican version starring Arturo de Cordova as the title character; this film is a remake of The Invisible Man Returns (1940).
* Mad Monster Party (1967) included the Invisible Man (voiced by Allen Swift) as part of the monster ensemble.
* The Invisible Woman, a 1983 TV-movie pilot for a comedy series starring Alexa Hamilton.
* Человек-невидимка (Pronunciation: Chelovek-nevidimka; translation: The Invisible Man), a 1984 Soviet movie directed by Aleksandr Zakharov, with Andrei Kharitonov as Griffin. The plot was changed: Griffin was shown as a scientist talented but not understood by his contemporaries, and Kemp (starring Romualdas Ramanauskas) as a vicious person who wanted to become a ruler of the world with Griffin's help. When Griffin rejected Kemp's proposal, the last did all his best to kill him (and finally succeeded). The movie remained unknown to the Western audience because of a violation of Wells's copyright.[citation needed]
* Amazon Women on the Moon, a 1987 comedy anthology film featured a spoof titled Son of the Invisible Man, with Ed Begley, Jr. playing the son of the original Invisible Man who believes he is invisible, but is in fact visible - creating an awkward situation when he confidently disrobes in front of everyone.
* Memoirs of an Invisible Man, a 1992 modernized version of the story, starring Chevy Chase as a man who is accidentally made invisible and is then hunted by a government agent who wishes to use him as a weapon.
* Hollow Man, a 2000 film starring Kevin Bacon, and directed by Paul Verhoeven; this film spawned a 2006 direct-to-video sequel Hollow Man 2 starring Christian Slater as "Michael Griffin" and directed by Claudio Fah.
* A feature film entitled The Invisible Man is scheduled to hit theaters in 2010.
Stage
* Ken Hill adapted the book to play form in 1991, and it debuted at Theatre Royal Stratford East in 1991. It played in the West End in 1993 with Michael N. Harbour as Griffin.
The cast for the production at Stratford East in 1991 was as follows -; Jon Finch [Griffin], Brian Murphy [Thomas Marvel], Toni Palmer [Mrs Hall], Andrew Secombe [Squire Burdock], Geoffrey Freshwater [PC Jaffers/Dr Kemp], Caroline Longo [Miss Statchell], Liza Hayden [Millie], Miles Richardson [Dr Cuss/ Fearenside/Wadgers/Col. Adye], Philip Newman [Wicksteed], Jonathan Whaley [MC/ Teddy Henfrey/Rev. Bunting].
Radio
* The 2001 Radio Tales drama "The Invisible Man" is an adaptation of the novel for National Public Radio.
赫胥黎是英國二十世紀三位最有影響的諷刺文學作傢之一.其代表作,小說《奇妙的新世界》出版於1932年.小說貌似科學幻想,實質上有較深的政治和道德含義.這本薄薄的十多萬字的小說發表後,很快就被譯成幾十種國傢文字.赫胥黎的《奇妙的新世界》、喬治·奧韋爾的《一九八四》和蘇聯作傢葉·紮亞京的《我們》被某些評論傢稱為該世紀的"反烏托邦三部麯".目前,《奇妙的新世界》被列為西方一百本必讀書之一.
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Title
Brave New World's ironic title derives from Miranda's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in it!
This line is word-by-word quoted in the novel by John the Savage, when he first sees Lenina.
The expression "brave new world" also appears in Émile Zola's Germinal (1885):
He laughed at his earlier idealism, his schoolboy vision of a brave new world in which justice would reign and men would be brothers.
and in Rudyard Kipling's 1919 poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings:
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins...
Translations of the novel into other languages often allude to similar expressions used in domestic works of literature in an attempt to capture the same irony: the French edition of the work is entitled Le Meilleur des mondes (The Best of All Worlds), an allusion to an expression used by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and satirized in Candide, Ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire (1759). The German title of the book is Schöne Neue Welt (Beautiful New World). First the word "brave" was translated to "Tapfer", which is the correct modern translation of "brave." Translators later recognized that, at Shakespeare's time, "brave" meant "beautiful" or "good looking".
Background
Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931 while he was living in Guatemala and El Salvador (a British writer, he moved to California in 1937). By this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, had published a collection of his poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four successful satirical novels: Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928). Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first dystopian work.
Brave New World was inspired by the H. G. Wells' utopian novel Men Like Gods. Wells' optimistic vision of the future gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. Contrary to the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a "negative utopia" (see dystopia), somewhat influenced by Wells' own The Sleeper Awakes and the works of D. H. Lawrence.
George Orwell believed that Brave New World "must be partly derived from" We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. However, in a 1962 letter, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World long before he had heard of We. According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying.
Huxley visited the newly opened and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant, part of Imperial Chemical Industries, or ICI, Billingham, and gives a fine and detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print[vague] of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the classic novel by this Billingham visit.
Although the novel is set in the future, it contains contemporary issues of the early 20th century. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the world. Mass production had made cars, telephones, and radios relatively cheap and widely available throughout the developed world. The political, cultural, economic and sociological upheavals of the then-recent Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War (1914–1918) were resonating throughout the world as a whole and the individual lives of most people. Accordingly, many of the novel's characters named after widely-recognized influential people of the time, for example, Polly Trotsky, Benito Hoover, Lenina and Fanny Crowne, Mustapha Mond, Helmholtz Watson, and Bernard Marx.
Huxley was able to use the setting and characters from his science fiction novel to express widely held opinions, particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early trip to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character. Not only was Huxley outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness, sexual promiscuity and the inward-looking nature of many Americans; he had also found a book by Henry Ford on the boat to America. There was a fear of Americanization in Europe, so to see America firsthand, as well as read the ideas and plans of one of its foremost citizens, spurred Huxley to write Brave New World with America in mind. The "feelies" are his response to the "talkie" motion pictures, and the sex-hormone chewing gum is parody of the ubiquitous chewing gum, which was something of a symbol of America at that time. In an article in the 4 May 1935 issue of the Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton explained that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias" — a time, mostly before the First World War, inspired by what H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were writing about socialism and a World State.
After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism. Brave New World is more of a revolt against Utopia than against Victoria.
For Brave New World, Huxley received nearly universal criticism from contemporary critics, although his work was later embraced. Even the few sympathetic critics tended to temper their praises with disparaging remarks.
Synopsis
edit] The Introduction (Chapters 1–6)
The novel opens in London in the "year of our Ford 632" (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The vast majority of the population is unified under The World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and everyone is happy. Natural reproduction has been done away with and children are created, 'decanted' and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, where they are divided into five castes (which are further split into 'Plus' and 'Minus' members) and designed to fulfill predetermined positions within the social and economic strata of the World State. Foetuses chosen to become members of the highest caste, 'Alpha', are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in "decanting bottles", while foetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes ('Beta', 'Gamma', 'Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth. Each 'Alpha' or 'Beta' is the product of one unique fertilized egg developing into one unique fetus. Members of lower castes are not unique but are instead created using the Bokanovsky process which enables a single egg to spawn (at the point of the story being told) up to 96 children and one ovary to produce thousands of children. People of these caste make up the majority of human society, and the production of such specialized children bolsters the efficiency and harmony of society, since these people are deliberately limited in their cognitive and physical abilities, as well as the scope of their ambitions and the complexity of their desires, thus rendering them easier to motivate, manipulate and control. All children are educated via the hypnopaedic process, which simultaneously provides each child with fact-based education and caste-appropriate subconscious messages to mold the child's life-long self-image, class conscientious, social outlook, habits, tastes, morals, ambitions and prejudices, and other values and ideals chosen by the leaders of the World State and their predetermined plans for producing future adult generations.
To maintain the World State's Command Economy for the indefinite future, all citizens are conditioned from birth to value consumption with such platitudes as "ending is better than mending," i.e., buy a new one instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption, and near-universal employment to meet society's material demands, is the bedrock of economic and social stability for the World State. Beyond providing social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play, the need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the ubiquitous availability and universally-endorsed consumption of the drug soma. Soma is an allusion to a mythical drink of the same name consumed by ancient Indo-Aryans. In the book, soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free "holidays", developed by the World State to provide such inner-directed personal experiences within the socially-managed context of State-run 'religious' organizations, social clubs, and the hypnopaedically-inculcated affinity to the State-produced drug as a self-medicating comfort mechanism in the face of stress or discomfort, thereby eliminating the need for religion or other personal allegiances outside or beyond the World State.
Recreational sex is an integral part of society. According to The World State, sex is a social activity, rather than a means of reproduction, and sexual activity is encouraged from early childhood. The few women who can reproduce are conditioned to use birth control (a "Malthusian belt", resembling a cartridge belt holding "the regulation supply of contraceptives", is a popular fashion accessory). The maxim "everyone belongs to everyone else" is repeated often, and the idea of a "family" is considered pornographic; sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because they are no longer needed. Marriage, natural birth, parenthood, and pregnancy are considered too obscene to be mentioned in casual conversation. Thus, society has developed a new idea of reproductive comprehension.
Spending time alone is considered an outrageous waste of time and money. Admitting to wanting to be an individual is shocking, horrifying, and embarrassing. This is why John, a character in the book, is later afforded celebrity-like status. Conditioning trains people to consume and never to enjoy being alone, so by spending an afternoon not playing "Obstacle Golf," or not in bed with a friend, one is forfeiting acceptance.
In The World State, people typically die at age 60 having maintained good health and youthfulness their whole life. Death isn't feared; anyone reflecting upon it is reassured by the knowledge that everyone is happy, and that society goes on. Since no one has family, they have no ties to mourn.
The conditioning system eliminates the need for professional competitiveness; people are literally bred to do their jobs and cannot desire another. There is no competition within castes; each caste member receives the same food, housing, and soma rationing as every other member of that caste. There is no desire to change one's caste, largely because a person's sleep-conditioning teaches that his or her caste is superior to the other four. To grow closer with members of the same class, citizens participate in mock religious services called Solidarity Services, in which twelve people consume large quantities of soma and sing hymns. The ritual progresses through group hypnosis and climaxes in an orgy. In geographic areas nonconducive to easy living and consumption, securely contained groups of "savages" are left to their own devices.
In its first chapters, the novel describes life in The World State as wonderful and introduces Lenina and Bernard. Lenina is a socially accepted woman, normal for her society, while Bernard, a psychologist, is an outcast. Although an Alpha Plus, Bernard is shorter in stature than the average of his caste—a quality shared by the lower castes, which gives him an inferiority complex. His work with sleep-teaching has led him to realize that what others believe to be their own deeply held beliefs are merely phrases repeated to children while they sleep. Still, he recognizes the necessity of such programming as the reason why his society meets the emotional needs of its citizens. Courting disaster, he is vocal about being different, once stating he dislikes soma because he'd "rather be himself". Bernard's differences fuel rumors that he was accidentally administered alcohol while incubated, a method used to keep Epsilons short.
Lenina, a woman who seldom questions her own motivations, is reprimanded by her friends because she is not promiscuous enough. However, she is still highly content in her role as a woman. Both fascinated and disturbed by Bernard, she responds to Bernard's advances to dispel her reputation for being too selective and monogamous.
Bernard's only friend is Helmholtz Watson, an Alpha Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing). The friendship is based on their similar experiences as misfits, but unlike Bernard, Watson's sense of loneliness stems from being too gifted, too handsome, and too physically strong. Helmholtz is drawn to Bernard as a confidant: he can talk to Bernard about his desire to write poetry.
The Reservation and the Savage (Chapters 7–9)
Bernard, desperately wanting Lenina's attention, tries to impress her by taking her on holiday to a Savage Reservation. The reservation, located in New Mexico, consists of a community named Malpais (which in Spanish means "bad country", one of many Spanish puns throughout the novel). From afar, Lenina thinks it will be exciting. In person, she finds the aged, toothless natives who mend their clothes rather than throw them away repugnant, and the situation is made worse when she discovers that she has left her soma tablets at the resort hotel. Bernard is fascinated, although he realizes his seduction plans have failed.
In typical tourist fashion, Bernard and Lenina watch what at first appears to be a quaint native ceremony. The village folk, whose culture resembles that of the Pueblo peoples such as the Hopi and Zuni, begin by singing, but the ritual quickly becomes a passion play where a village boy is whipped to unconsciousness.
Soon after, the couple encounters Linda, a woman formerly of The World State who has been living in Malpais since she came on a trip and became separated from her group and her date, whom she refers to as "Tomakin" but who is revealed to be Bernard's boss the DHC at the conditioning center, Thomas. She became pregnant because she mistimed her "Malthusian Drill" and there were no facilities for an abortion. Linda gave birth to a son, John (later referred to as John the Savage) who is now eighteen.
Through conversations with Linda and John, we learn that their life has been hard. For eighteen years, they have been treated as outsiders; the natives hate Linda for sleeping with all the men of the village, as she was conditioned to do, and John was mistreated and excluded for his mother's actions, not to mention the role of racism. John's one joy was that his mother had taught him to read, although he only had two books: a scientific manual from his mother's job, which he called a "beastly, beastly book" and refused to read, and a collection of the works of Shakespeare (a work banned in The World State). John has been denied the religious rituals of the village, although he has watched them and even has had some of his own religious experiences in the desert.
Old, weathered and tired, Linda wants to return to her familiar world in London; she is tired of a life without soma. John wants to see the "brave new world" his mother has told him so much about. Bernard wants to take them back as revenge against Thomas, who had just reassigned Bernard to Iceland as punishment for his antisocial beliefs. Bernard arranges permission for Linda and John to leave the reservation.
The Savage visits the World State (Chapters 10–18)
Upon his return to London, Bernard is confronted by Thomas Tomakin, the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre who, in front of an audience of higher-caste Centre workers, denounces Bernard for his antisocial behaviour. Bernard, thinking that for the first time in his life he has the upper hand, defends himself by presenting the Director with his long lost lover and unknown son, Linda and John. The humiliated Director resigns in shame and is himself sent to Iceland.
Spared from reassignment, Bernard makes John the toast of London. Pursued by the highest members of society, able to bed any woman he fancies, Bernard revels in attention he once scorned. Everyone who is anyone will endure Bernard to dine with the interesting, different, beautiful John. Even Lenina grows fond of the savage, while the savage falls in love with her. Bernard, intoxicated with attention, falls in love with himself. In short, John brings tremendous happiness upon the citizens of London.
The victory, however, is short lived. Linda, decrepit, toothless, friendless, goes on a permanent soma holiday while John, appalled by what he perceives to be an empty society, refuses to attend Bernard's parties. Society drops Bernard as swiftly as it had taken him. Bernard turns to the person he'd believed to be his one true friend, only to see Helmholtz fall into a quick, easy camaraderie with John. Bernard is left an outcast yet again as he watches the only two men he ever connected with find more of interest in each other than they ever did in him.
John and Helmholtz's island of peace is brief. John grows frustrated by a society he finds wicked and debased. He is moved by Lenina, but also loathes her sexual advances, which revolt and shame him. He is heartbroken when his mother succumbs to soma and dies in a hospital. John's grief bewilders and revolts the hospital workers, and their lack of reaction to Linda's death prompts John to try to force humanity from the workers by throwing their soma rations out a window. The ensuing riot brings the police, who soma-gas the crowd. Bernard and Helmholtz arrive to help John, but only Helmholtz helps him, while Bernard stands to the side, torn between risking involvement by helping or escaping the scene.
When they wake, Bernard, Helmholtz and John are brought before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe. Bernard and Helmholtz are told they will be exiled to islands of their choice. Mond explains that exile to the islands is not so much a threat to force freethinkers to reform and rejoin society but a place where they may act as they please, because they will not be an influence on the population. He also divulges that he too once risked banishment to an island because of some scientific experiments that were deemed controversial by the state, giving insight into his sympathetic tone. Helmholtz chooses the Falkland Islands, because of their terrible weather, so he could write well, but Bernard simply doesn't want to leave and struggles with the World Controller and is thrown out of the office. After Bernard and Helmholtz have left, Mustapha and John engage in a philosophical argument on the morals behind the godless society and then John is told the "experiment" will continue and he will not be sent to an island.
In the final chapter, John isolates himself from society in a lighthouse outside London where he finds his hermit life interrupted from mourning his mother by the more bitter memories of civilization. To atone, John brutally whips himself in the open, a ritual the Indians in his own village had said he was not capable of. His self-flagellation, caught on film and shown publicly, destroys his hermit life. Hundreds of gawking sightseers, intrigued by John's violent behavior, fly out to watch the savage in person. Even Lenina comes to watch, crying a tear John does not see. The sight of the woman whom he both adores and blames is too much for him; John attacks and whips her. This sight of genuine, unbridled emotion drives the crowd wild with excitement, and—handling it as they are conditioned to—they turn on each other, in a frenzy of beating and chanting that devolves into a mass orgy of soma and sex. In the morning, John, hopeless, alone, horrified by his drug use, and the orgy he participated in that countered his beliefs, makes one last attempt to escape civilization and atone. When thousands of gawking sightseers arrive that morning, frenzied at the prospect of seeing the savage perform again, they find John dead, hanging by the neck.
Characters
In order of appearance
* Thomas "Tomakin" Foster, Alpha, Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (D.H.C.) for London; later revealed to be the father of John the Savage.
* Henry Foster, Alpha, Administrator at the Hatchery and Lenina's current partner.
* Lenina Crowne, Beta, Vaccination-worker at the Hatchery; loved by John the Savage.
* Mustapha Mond, Alpha-Plus, World Controller for Western Europe (nine other controllers exist, presumably for different sections of the world).
* Assistant Director of Predestination.
* Bernard Marx, Alpha-Plus but anomalously small, psychologist (specializing in hypnopædia) and the false protagonist of the story. He dates Lenina for a short period of time.
* Fanny Crowne, Beta, embryo worker; a friend, but not a relation, of Lenina.
* Benito Hoover, Alpha, friend of Lenina; disliked by Bernard.
* Helmholtz Watson, Alpha-Plus, lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing), friend and confidant of Bernard Marx and John the Savage.
At the Solidarity Service
* Morgana Rothschild, Herbert Bakunin, Fifi Bradlaugh, Jim Bokanovsky, Clara Deterding, Joanna Diesel, Sarojini Engels, and "that great lout" Tom Kawaguchi.
* Miss Keate, headmistress of the high-tech glass and concrete Eton College.
* Arch-Community Songster, a quasi-religious figure based in Canterbury.
* Primo Mellon, a reporter for the upper-caste news-sheet Hourly Radio, who attempts to interview John the Savage and gets assaulted for his troubles.
* Darwin Bonaparte, a press photographer who brings worldwide attention to John's mother.
Of Malpais
* John the Savage ("Mr. Savage"), son of Linda and Thomas (Tomakin/The Director), an outcast in both primitive and modern society. While he does not appear until partway through the story, he becomes the protagonist shortly after his introduction. He commits suicide in the end.
* Linda, a Beta-Minus. John the Savage's mother, and Thomas's (Tomakin/The Director) long lost lover. She is from England and was pregnant with John when she got lost from Thomas in a trip to New Mexico. She is disliked by both savage people because of her "civilized" behaviour, and by civilized people because she is fat and looks old.
* Popé, a native of Malpais. Although he reinforces the behaviour that causes hatred for Linda in Malpais by sleeping with her and bringing her Mezcal, he still holds the traditional beliefs of his tribe. John also attempts to kill him, in his early years.
Background figures
These are fictional and factual characters who lived before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel:
* Henry Ford, who has become a messianic figure to The World State. "Our Ford" is used in place of "Our Lord", as a credit to popularizing the use of the assembly line.
* Sigmund Freud, "Our Freud" is sometimes said in place of "Our Ford" due to the link between Freud's psychoanalysis and the conditioning of humans, and Freud's popularization of the idea that sexual activity is essential to human happiness and need not be open to procreation. It is also strongly implied that citizens of the World State believe Freud and Ford to be the same person.
* H. G. Wells, "Dr. Wells", British writer and utopian socialist, whose book Men Like Gods was an incentive for Brave New World. "All's well that ends Wells" wrote Huxley in his letters, criticizing Wells for anthropological assumptions Huxley found unrealistic.
* Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, whose conditioning techniques are used to train infants.
* William Shakespeare, whose banned works are quoted throughout the novel by John, "the Savage". The plays quoted include Macbeth, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure and Othello. Mustapha Mond also knows them because he, as a World Controller, has access to a selection of books from throughout history, such as a Bible.
* Thomas Malthus, whose name is used to describe the contraceptive techniques (Malthusian belt) practiced by women of the World State.
* Reuben Rabinovitch, the character in whom the effects of sleep-learning, hypnopædia, are first noted.
Sources of names and references
The limited number of names that the World State assigned to its bottle-grown citizens can be traced to political and cultural figures who contributed to the bureaucratic, economic, and technological systems of Huxley's age, and presumably those systems in Brave New World:
* Bernard Marx, from George Bernard Shaw (or possibly Bernard of Clairvaux or possibly Claude Bernard) and Karl Marx.
* Lenina Crowne, from Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader during the Russian Revolution.
* Fanny Crowne, from Fanny Kaplan, famous for an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Lenin. Ironically, in the novel, Lenina and Fanny are friends.
* Polly Trotsky, from Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary leader.
* Benito Hoover, from Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy; and Herbert Hoover, then President of the United States.
* Helmholtz Watson, from the German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the American behaviorist John B. Watson.
* Darwin Bonaparte, from Napoleon Bonaparte, the leader of the First French Empire, and Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species.
* Herbert Bakunin, from Herbert Spencer, the English philosopher and Social Darwinist, and Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian philosopher and anarchist.
* Mustapha Mond, from Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, founder of Turkey after World War I, who pulled his country into modernisation and official secularism; and Sir Alfred Mond, an industrialist and founder of the Imperial Chemical Industries conglomerate.
* Primo Mellon, from Miguel Primo de Rivera, prime minister and dictator of Spain (1923–1930), and Andrew Mellon, an American banker.
* Sarojini Engels, from Friedrich Engels, co-author of The Communist Manifesto along with Karl Marx: and Sarojini Naidu, an Indian politician.
* Morgana Rothschild, from J P Morgan, US banking tycoon, and the Rothschild family, famous for its European banking operations.
* Fifi Bradlaugh, from the British political activist and atheist Charles Bradlaugh.
* Joanna Diesel, from Rudolf Diesel, the German engineer who invented the diesel engine.
* Clara Deterding, from Henri Deterding, one of the founders of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company.
* Tom Kawaguchi, from the Japanese Buddhist monk Ekai Kawaguchi, the first recorded Japanese traveler to Tibet and Nepal.
* Jean-Jacques Habibullah, from the French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Habibullah Khan, who served as Emir of Afghanistan in the early 20th century.
* Miss Keate, the Eton headmistress, from nineteenth-century headmaster John Keate.
* Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury, a parody of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Church's decision in August 1930 to approve limited use of contraception.
* Popé, from Popé, the Native American rebel who was blamed for the conflict now known as the Pueblo Revolt.
* John the Savage, after the term "noble savage" originally used in the verse drama The Conquest of Granada by John Dryden, and later erroneously associated with Rousseau.
Fordism and society
The World State is built upon the principles of Henry Ford's assembly line—mass production, homogeneity, predictability, and consumption of disposable consumer goods. At the same time as the World State lacks any supernatural-based religions, Ford himself is revered as a deity, and characters celebrate Ford Day and swear oaths by his name (e.g., "By Ford!"). In this sense, some fragments of traditional religion are present, such as Christian crosses, which had their tops cut off in order to be changed to a "T". The World State calendar numbers years in the "AF" era—"After Ford"—with year 1 AF being equivalent to 1908 AD, the year in which Ford's first Model T rolled off his assembly line. The novel's Gregorian calendar year is AD 2540, but it is referred to in the book as AF 632.
From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep (called "hypnopædia" in the book) to believe that their own class is best for them. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant and hallucinogenic drug called soma (named for an intoxicating drink in ancient India) distributed by the Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury, a secularised version of the Christian sacrament of Communion ("The Body of Christ").
The biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic engineering; Huxley wrote the book before the structure of DNA was known. However, Gregor Mendel's work with inheritance patterns in peas had been re-discovered in 1900 and the eugenics movement, based on artificial selection, was well established. Huxley's family included a number of prominent biologists including Thomas Huxley, half-brother and Nobel Laureate Andrew Huxley, and brother Julian Huxley who was a biologist and involved in the eugenics movement. Nonetheless, Huxley emphasizes conditioning over breeding (see nature versus nurture); as science writer Matt Ridley put it, Brave New World describes an "environmental not a genetic hell". Human embryos and fetuses are conditioned via a carefully designed regimen of chemical (such as exposure to hormones and toxins), thermal (exposure to intense heat or cold, as one's future career would dictate), and other environmental stimuli, although there is an element of selective breeding as well.
Ban, accusation of plagiarism
Brave New World has been banned and challenged at various times. In 1932, the book was banned in Ireland for its language, being anti-family and anti-religion. The American Library Association ranks Brave New World as #52 on their list of most challenged books. In 1980, it was removed from classrooms in Miller, Missouri among other challenges. In 1993, an attempt was made to remove the novel from a California school's required reading list because it "centered around negative activity".
In 1982, Polish author Antoni Smuszkiewicz in his book Zaczarowana gra presented accusations of plagiarism against Huxley. Smuszkiewicz presented similarities between Brave New World and two science fiction novels written by Polish author Mieczysław Smolarski, namely Miasto światłości (The City of the Sun, 1924) and Podróż poślubna pana Hamiltona (The Honeymoon Trip of Mr. Hamilton, 1928).
Comparisons with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Social critic Neil Postman contrasts the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.
Journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has himself published several articles on Huxley and a book on Orwell, notes the difference between the two texts in the introduction to his 1999 article "Why Americans Are Not Taught History":
We dwell in a present-tense culture that somehow, significantly, decided to employ the telling expression "You're history" as a choice reprobation or insult, and thus elected to speak forgotten volumes about itself. By that standard, the forbidding dystopia of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four already belongs, both as a text and as a date, with Ur and Mycenae, while the hedonist nihilism of Huxley still beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus. Orwell's was a house of horrors. He seemed to strain credulity because he posited a regime that would go to any lengths to own and possess history, to rewrite and construct it, and to inculcate it by means of coercion. Whereas Huxley ... rightly foresaw that any such regime could break but could not bend. In 1988, four years after 1984, the Soviet Union scrapped its official history curriculum and announced that a newly authorized version was somewhere in the works. This was the precise moment when the regime conceded its own extinction. For true blissed-out and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught.
Brave New World Revisited
1st UK edition
Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Row (US) 1958, Chatto & Windus (UK) 1959), written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World, was a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved toward or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess as to where the world might go in the future. In Brave New World Revisited, he concluded that the world was becoming like Brave New World much faster than he originally thought.
Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation as well as all the means by which populations can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion. Brave New World Revisited is different in tone because of Huxley's evolving thought, as well as his conversion to Hindu Vedanta in the interim between the two books.
The last chapter of the book aims to propose actions which could be taken in order to prevent a democracy from turning into the totalitarian world described in Brave New World. In Huxley's last novel, Island, he again expounds similar ideas to describe a utopian nation, which is generally known as a counterpart to his most famous work.
Related works
* The Scientific Outlook by philosopher Bertrand Russell. When Brave New World was released, Russell thought that Huxley's book was based on his book The Scientific Outlook that had been released the previous year. Russell contacted his own publisher and asked whether or not he should do something about this apparent plagiarism. His publisher advised him not to, and Russell followed this advice.
* The 1921 novel Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells. A utopian novel that was a source of inspiration for Huxley's dystopian Brave New World.
* In Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga, an isolated planet practicing genetic eugenics to form a perfect society is called 'Huxleys Haven'
* The 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman alludes to how television is goading modern Western culture to be like what we see in Brave New World, where people are not so much denied human rights like free speech, but are rather conditioned not to care.
* Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We."
* The Iron Maiden song by the same name on their album Brave New World whose cover art depicts a futuristic London described by Huxley.
* "Slave New World," a song by Brazilian band Sepultura from their album Chaos A.D.
* Brazilian rock singer Pitty's debut album, released in 2003, is called Admirável Chip Novo (Brave New Chip).
* Brave New World is the title song on the third album by the Steve Miller Band.
* The Motörhead album Hammered includes a song named Brave New World.
* Richard Ashcroft's first solo album Alone with Everybody includes a song named Brave New World.
* Demolition Man, a film starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock, is set in a not-too-distant future utopian society based on a Brave New World. Sandra Bullock's character is even named Lenina Huxley, referencing the author and character from the book. (1997)
* Reagan Youth had a song named "Brave New World".
* The Proletariat had an LP entitled "Soma Holiday."
* Greenwheel changed their name from "Hindsight" to "Soma Holiday," before settling on their current name. Their debut album (as Greenwheel) was entitled "Soma Holiday."
* Scottish techno record label Soma Quality Recordings was named after the drug Soma featured in a Brave New World
* On their album Here, Here, and Here, Meg & Dia have a track titled "Hug Me", a song written by Dia inspired by "Brave New World."
* The song "Soma Holiday" by Gods of Luxury is based on the novel and includes several quotes from the novel in its lyrics.
* The lyrics for Marilyn Manson's song "Ka-boom Ka-boom" from The Golden Age of Grotesque play on the title and idea of this book; in them, Manson suggests that society is a "depraved new world."
* Sam Endicott of The Bravery based the song I Have Seen The Future on Brave New World, as he said in an interview.
* The song "Soma" by The Strokes is loosely based on the novel. Producer and DJ deadmau5 also released a song called "Soma."
Adaptations
* Brave New World (radio broadcast) CBS Radio Workshop (27 January and 3 February 1956)
* Brave New World (film) (1980)
* Brave New World (film) (1998)
* Brave New World (film) (scheduled 2011) Ridley Scott, Leonardo DiCaprio collaborating
* Brave New World (stage adaptation) Brendon Burns, Solent Peoples Theatre 2003
* Schöne Neue Welt (rock musical) Roland Meier/Stefan Wurz, Kulturhaus Osterfeld Pforzheim, Germany, 1994
* Schöne Neue Welt (musical) GRIPS Theater Berlin, Germany, 2006
* Brave New World a song and album of Iron Maiden
* Brave New World Catalogue Number: SAFE 45 1982 (single) from UK vocalist Toyah WIllcox
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Title
Brave New World's ironic title derives from Miranda's speech in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in it!
This line is word-by-word quoted in the novel by John the Savage, when he first sees Lenina.
The expression "brave new world" also appears in Émile Zola's Germinal (1885):
He laughed at his earlier idealism, his schoolboy vision of a brave new world in which justice would reign and men would be brothers.
and in Rudyard Kipling's 1919 poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings:
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins...
Translations of the novel into other languages often allude to similar expressions used in domestic works of literature in an attempt to capture the same irony: the French edition of the work is entitled Le Meilleur des mondes (The Best of All Worlds), an allusion to an expression used by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and satirized in Candide, Ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire (1759). The German title of the book is Schöne Neue Welt (Beautiful New World). First the word "brave" was translated to "Tapfer", which is the correct modern translation of "brave." Translators later recognized that, at Shakespeare's time, "brave" meant "beautiful" or "good looking".
Background
Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931 while he was living in Guatemala and El Salvador (a British writer, he moved to California in 1937). By this time, Huxley had already established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, had published a collection of his poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four successful satirical novels: Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928). Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first dystopian work.
Brave New World was inspired by the H. G. Wells' utopian novel Men Like Gods. Wells' optimistic vision of the future gave Huxley the idea to begin writing a parody of the novel, which became Brave New World. Contrary to the most popular optimist utopian novels of the time, Huxley sought to provide a frightening vision of the future. Huxley referred to Brave New World as a "negative utopia" (see dystopia), somewhat influenced by Wells' own The Sleeper Awakes and the works of D. H. Lawrence.
George Orwell believed that Brave New World "must be partly derived from" We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. However, in a 1962 letter, Huxley says that he wrote Brave New World long before he had heard of We. According to We translator Natasha Randall, Orwell believed that Huxley was lying.
Huxley visited the newly opened and technologically advanced Brunner and Mond plant, part of Imperial Chemical Industries, or ICI, Billingham, and gives a fine and detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print[vague] of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the classic novel by this Billingham visit.
Although the novel is set in the future, it contains contemporary issues of the early 20th century. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the world. Mass production had made cars, telephones, and radios relatively cheap and widely available throughout the developed world. The political, cultural, economic and sociological upheavals of the then-recent Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War (1914–1918) were resonating throughout the world as a whole and the individual lives of most people. Accordingly, many of the novel's characters named after widely-recognized influential people of the time, for example, Polly Trotsky, Benito Hoover, Lenina and Fanny Crowne, Mustapha Mond, Helmholtz Watson, and Bernard Marx.
Huxley was able to use the setting and characters from his science fiction novel to express widely held opinions, particularly the fear of losing individual identity in the fast-paced world of the future. An early trip to the United States gave Brave New World much of its character. Not only was Huxley outraged by the culture of youth, commercial cheeriness, sexual promiscuity and the inward-looking nature of many Americans; he had also found a book by Henry Ford on the boat to America. There was a fear of Americanization in Europe, so to see America firsthand, as well as read the ideas and plans of one of its foremost citizens, spurred Huxley to write Brave New World with America in mind. The "feelies" are his response to the "talkie" motion pictures, and the sex-hormone chewing gum is parody of the ubiquitous chewing gum, which was something of a symbol of America at that time. In an article in the 4 May 1935 issue of the Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton explained that Huxley was revolting against the "Age of Utopias" — a time, mostly before the First World War, inspired by what H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were writing about socialism and a World State.
After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism. Brave New World is more of a revolt against Utopia than against Victoria.
For Brave New World, Huxley received nearly universal criticism from contemporary critics, although his work was later embraced. Even the few sympathetic critics tended to temper their praises with disparaging remarks.
Synopsis
edit] The Introduction (Chapters 1–6)
The novel opens in London in the "year of our Ford 632" (AD 2540 in the Gregorian Calendar). The vast majority of the population is unified under The World State, an eternally peaceful, stable global society in which goods and resources are plentiful (because the population is permanently limited to no more than two billion people) and everyone is happy. Natural reproduction has been done away with and children are created, 'decanted' and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres, where they are divided into five castes (which are further split into 'Plus' and 'Minus' members) and designed to fulfill predetermined positions within the social and economic strata of the World State. Foetuses chosen to become members of the highest caste, 'Alpha', are allowed to develop naturally while maturing to term in "decanting bottles", while foetuses chosen to become members of the lower castes ('Beta', 'Gamma', 'Delta', 'Epsilon') are subjected to in situ chemical interference to cause arrested development in intelligence or physical growth. Each 'Alpha' or 'Beta' is the product of one unique fertilized egg developing into one unique fetus. Members of lower castes are not unique but are instead created using the Bokanovsky process which enables a single egg to spawn (at the point of the story being told) up to 96 children and one ovary to produce thousands of children. People of these caste make up the majority of human society, and the production of such specialized children bolsters the efficiency and harmony of society, since these people are deliberately limited in their cognitive and physical abilities, as well as the scope of their ambitions and the complexity of their desires, thus rendering them easier to motivate, manipulate and control. All children are educated via the hypnopaedic process, which simultaneously provides each child with fact-based education and caste-appropriate subconscious messages to mold the child's life-long self-image, class conscientious, social outlook, habits, tastes, morals, ambitions and prejudices, and other values and ideals chosen by the leaders of the World State and their predetermined plans for producing future adult generations.
To maintain the World State's Command Economy for the indefinite future, all citizens are conditioned from birth to value consumption with such platitudes as "ending is better than mending," i.e., buy a new one instead of fixing the old one, because constant consumption, and near-universal employment to meet society's material demands, is the bedrock of economic and social stability for the World State. Beyond providing social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play, the need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the ubiquitous availability and universally-endorsed consumption of the drug soma. Soma is an allusion to a mythical drink of the same name consumed by ancient Indo-Aryans. In the book, soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free "holidays", developed by the World State to provide such inner-directed personal experiences within the socially-managed context of State-run 'religious' organizations, social clubs, and the hypnopaedically-inculcated affinity to the State-produced drug as a self-medicating comfort mechanism in the face of stress or discomfort, thereby eliminating the need for religion or other personal allegiances outside or beyond the World State.
Recreational sex is an integral part of society. According to The World State, sex is a social activity, rather than a means of reproduction, and sexual activity is encouraged from early childhood. The few women who can reproduce are conditioned to use birth control (a "Malthusian belt", resembling a cartridge belt holding "the regulation supply of contraceptives", is a popular fashion accessory). The maxim "everyone belongs to everyone else" is repeated often, and the idea of a "family" is considered pornographic; sexual competition and emotional, romantic relationships are rendered obsolete because they are no longer needed. Marriage, natural birth, parenthood, and pregnancy are considered too obscene to be mentioned in casual conversation. Thus, society has developed a new idea of reproductive comprehension.
Spending time alone is considered an outrageous waste of time and money. Admitting to wanting to be an individual is shocking, horrifying, and embarrassing. This is why John, a character in the book, is later afforded celebrity-like status. Conditioning trains people to consume and never to enjoy being alone, so by spending an afternoon not playing "Obstacle Golf," or not in bed with a friend, one is forfeiting acceptance.
In The World State, people typically die at age 60 having maintained good health and youthfulness their whole life. Death isn't feared; anyone reflecting upon it is reassured by the knowledge that everyone is happy, and that society goes on. Since no one has family, they have no ties to mourn.
The conditioning system eliminates the need for professional competitiveness; people are literally bred to do their jobs and cannot desire another. There is no competition within castes; each caste member receives the same food, housing, and soma rationing as every other member of that caste. There is no desire to change one's caste, largely because a person's sleep-conditioning teaches that his or her caste is superior to the other four. To grow closer with members of the same class, citizens participate in mock religious services called Solidarity Services, in which twelve people consume large quantities of soma and sing hymns. The ritual progresses through group hypnosis and climaxes in an orgy. In geographic areas nonconducive to easy living and consumption, securely contained groups of "savages" are left to their own devices.
In its first chapters, the novel describes life in The World State as wonderful and introduces Lenina and Bernard. Lenina is a socially accepted woman, normal for her society, while Bernard, a psychologist, is an outcast. Although an Alpha Plus, Bernard is shorter in stature than the average of his caste—a quality shared by the lower castes, which gives him an inferiority complex. His work with sleep-teaching has led him to realize that what others believe to be their own deeply held beliefs are merely phrases repeated to children while they sleep. Still, he recognizes the necessity of such programming as the reason why his society meets the emotional needs of its citizens. Courting disaster, he is vocal about being different, once stating he dislikes soma because he'd "rather be himself". Bernard's differences fuel rumors that he was accidentally administered alcohol while incubated, a method used to keep Epsilons short.
Lenina, a woman who seldom questions her own motivations, is reprimanded by her friends because she is not promiscuous enough. However, she is still highly content in her role as a woman. Both fascinated and disturbed by Bernard, she responds to Bernard's advances to dispel her reputation for being too selective and monogamous.
Bernard's only friend is Helmholtz Watson, an Alpha Plus lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing). The friendship is based on their similar experiences as misfits, but unlike Bernard, Watson's sense of loneliness stems from being too gifted, too handsome, and too physically strong. Helmholtz is drawn to Bernard as a confidant: he can talk to Bernard about his desire to write poetry.
The Reservation and the Savage (Chapters 7–9)
Bernard, desperately wanting Lenina's attention, tries to impress her by taking her on holiday to a Savage Reservation. The reservation, located in New Mexico, consists of a community named Malpais (which in Spanish means "bad country", one of many Spanish puns throughout the novel). From afar, Lenina thinks it will be exciting. In person, she finds the aged, toothless natives who mend their clothes rather than throw them away repugnant, and the situation is made worse when she discovers that she has left her soma tablets at the resort hotel. Bernard is fascinated, although he realizes his seduction plans have failed.
In typical tourist fashion, Bernard and Lenina watch what at first appears to be a quaint native ceremony. The village folk, whose culture resembles that of the Pueblo peoples such as the Hopi and Zuni, begin by singing, but the ritual quickly becomes a passion play where a village boy is whipped to unconsciousness.
Soon after, the couple encounters Linda, a woman formerly of The World State who has been living in Malpais since she came on a trip and became separated from her group and her date, whom she refers to as "Tomakin" but who is revealed to be Bernard's boss the DHC at the conditioning center, Thomas. She became pregnant because she mistimed her "Malthusian Drill" and there were no facilities for an abortion. Linda gave birth to a son, John (later referred to as John the Savage) who is now eighteen.
Through conversations with Linda and John, we learn that their life has been hard. For eighteen years, they have been treated as outsiders; the natives hate Linda for sleeping with all the men of the village, as she was conditioned to do, and John was mistreated and excluded for his mother's actions, not to mention the role of racism. John's one joy was that his mother had taught him to read, although he only had two books: a scientific manual from his mother's job, which he called a "beastly, beastly book" and refused to read, and a collection of the works of Shakespeare (a work banned in The World State). John has been denied the religious rituals of the village, although he has watched them and even has had some of his own religious experiences in the desert.
Old, weathered and tired, Linda wants to return to her familiar world in London; she is tired of a life without soma. John wants to see the "brave new world" his mother has told him so much about. Bernard wants to take them back as revenge against Thomas, who had just reassigned Bernard to Iceland as punishment for his antisocial beliefs. Bernard arranges permission for Linda and John to leave the reservation.
The Savage visits the World State (Chapters 10–18)
Upon his return to London, Bernard is confronted by Thomas Tomakin, the Director of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre who, in front of an audience of higher-caste Centre workers, denounces Bernard for his antisocial behaviour. Bernard, thinking that for the first time in his life he has the upper hand, defends himself by presenting the Director with his long lost lover and unknown son, Linda and John. The humiliated Director resigns in shame and is himself sent to Iceland.
Spared from reassignment, Bernard makes John the toast of London. Pursued by the highest members of society, able to bed any woman he fancies, Bernard revels in attention he once scorned. Everyone who is anyone will endure Bernard to dine with the interesting, different, beautiful John. Even Lenina grows fond of the savage, while the savage falls in love with her. Bernard, intoxicated with attention, falls in love with himself. In short, John brings tremendous happiness upon the citizens of London.
The victory, however, is short lived. Linda, decrepit, toothless, friendless, goes on a permanent soma holiday while John, appalled by what he perceives to be an empty society, refuses to attend Bernard's parties. Society drops Bernard as swiftly as it had taken him. Bernard turns to the person he'd believed to be his one true friend, only to see Helmholtz fall into a quick, easy camaraderie with John. Bernard is left an outcast yet again as he watches the only two men he ever connected with find more of interest in each other than they ever did in him.
John and Helmholtz's island of peace is brief. John grows frustrated by a society he finds wicked and debased. He is moved by Lenina, but also loathes her sexual advances, which revolt and shame him. He is heartbroken when his mother succumbs to soma and dies in a hospital. John's grief bewilders and revolts the hospital workers, and their lack of reaction to Linda's death prompts John to try to force humanity from the workers by throwing their soma rations out a window. The ensuing riot brings the police, who soma-gas the crowd. Bernard and Helmholtz arrive to help John, but only Helmholtz helps him, while Bernard stands to the side, torn between risking involvement by helping or escaping the scene.
When they wake, Bernard, Helmholtz and John are brought before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe. Bernard and Helmholtz are told they will be exiled to islands of their choice. Mond explains that exile to the islands is not so much a threat to force freethinkers to reform and rejoin society but a place where they may act as they please, because they will not be an influence on the population. He also divulges that he too once risked banishment to an island because of some scientific experiments that were deemed controversial by the state, giving insight into his sympathetic tone. Helmholtz chooses the Falkland Islands, because of their terrible weather, so he could write well, but Bernard simply doesn't want to leave and struggles with the World Controller and is thrown out of the office. After Bernard and Helmholtz have left, Mustapha and John engage in a philosophical argument on the morals behind the godless society and then John is told the "experiment" will continue and he will not be sent to an island.
In the final chapter, John isolates himself from society in a lighthouse outside London where he finds his hermit life interrupted from mourning his mother by the more bitter memories of civilization. To atone, John brutally whips himself in the open, a ritual the Indians in his own village had said he was not capable of. His self-flagellation, caught on film and shown publicly, destroys his hermit life. Hundreds of gawking sightseers, intrigued by John's violent behavior, fly out to watch the savage in person. Even Lenina comes to watch, crying a tear John does not see. The sight of the woman whom he both adores and blames is too much for him; John attacks and whips her. This sight of genuine, unbridled emotion drives the crowd wild with excitement, and—handling it as they are conditioned to—they turn on each other, in a frenzy of beating and chanting that devolves into a mass orgy of soma and sex. In the morning, John, hopeless, alone, horrified by his drug use, and the orgy he participated in that countered his beliefs, makes one last attempt to escape civilization and atone. When thousands of gawking sightseers arrive that morning, frenzied at the prospect of seeing the savage perform again, they find John dead, hanging by the neck.
Characters
In order of appearance
* Thomas "Tomakin" Foster, Alpha, Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (D.H.C.) for London; later revealed to be the father of John the Savage.
* Henry Foster, Alpha, Administrator at the Hatchery and Lenina's current partner.
* Lenina Crowne, Beta, Vaccination-worker at the Hatchery; loved by John the Savage.
* Mustapha Mond, Alpha-Plus, World Controller for Western Europe (nine other controllers exist, presumably for different sections of the world).
* Assistant Director of Predestination.
* Bernard Marx, Alpha-Plus but anomalously small, psychologist (specializing in hypnopædia) and the false protagonist of the story. He dates Lenina for a short period of time.
* Fanny Crowne, Beta, embryo worker; a friend, but not a relation, of Lenina.
* Benito Hoover, Alpha, friend of Lenina; disliked by Bernard.
* Helmholtz Watson, Alpha-Plus, lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing), friend and confidant of Bernard Marx and John the Savage.
At the Solidarity Service
* Morgana Rothschild, Herbert Bakunin, Fifi Bradlaugh, Jim Bokanovsky, Clara Deterding, Joanna Diesel, Sarojini Engels, and "that great lout" Tom Kawaguchi.
* Miss Keate, headmistress of the high-tech glass and concrete Eton College.
* Arch-Community Songster, a quasi-religious figure based in Canterbury.
* Primo Mellon, a reporter for the upper-caste news-sheet Hourly Radio, who attempts to interview John the Savage and gets assaulted for his troubles.
* Darwin Bonaparte, a press photographer who brings worldwide attention to John's mother.
Of Malpais
* John the Savage ("Mr. Savage"), son of Linda and Thomas (Tomakin/The Director), an outcast in both primitive and modern society. While he does not appear until partway through the story, he becomes the protagonist shortly after his introduction. He commits suicide in the end.
* Linda, a Beta-Minus. John the Savage's mother, and Thomas's (Tomakin/The Director) long lost lover. She is from England and was pregnant with John when she got lost from Thomas in a trip to New Mexico. She is disliked by both savage people because of her "civilized" behaviour, and by civilized people because she is fat and looks old.
* Popé, a native of Malpais. Although he reinforces the behaviour that causes hatred for Linda in Malpais by sleeping with her and bringing her Mezcal, he still holds the traditional beliefs of his tribe. John also attempts to kill him, in his early years.
Background figures
These are fictional and factual characters who lived before the events in this book, but are of note in the novel:
* Henry Ford, who has become a messianic figure to The World State. "Our Ford" is used in place of "Our Lord", as a credit to popularizing the use of the assembly line.
* Sigmund Freud, "Our Freud" is sometimes said in place of "Our Ford" due to the link between Freud's psychoanalysis and the conditioning of humans, and Freud's popularization of the idea that sexual activity is essential to human happiness and need not be open to procreation. It is also strongly implied that citizens of the World State believe Freud and Ford to be the same person.
* H. G. Wells, "Dr. Wells", British writer and utopian socialist, whose book Men Like Gods was an incentive for Brave New World. "All's well that ends Wells" wrote Huxley in his letters, criticizing Wells for anthropological assumptions Huxley found unrealistic.
* Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, whose conditioning techniques are used to train infants.
* William Shakespeare, whose banned works are quoted throughout the novel by John, "the Savage". The plays quoted include Macbeth, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure and Othello. Mustapha Mond also knows them because he, as a World Controller, has access to a selection of books from throughout history, such as a Bible.
* Thomas Malthus, whose name is used to describe the contraceptive techniques (Malthusian belt) practiced by women of the World State.
* Reuben Rabinovitch, the character in whom the effects of sleep-learning, hypnopædia, are first noted.
Sources of names and references
The limited number of names that the World State assigned to its bottle-grown citizens can be traced to political and cultural figures who contributed to the bureaucratic, economic, and technological systems of Huxley's age, and presumably those systems in Brave New World:
* Bernard Marx, from George Bernard Shaw (or possibly Bernard of Clairvaux or possibly Claude Bernard) and Karl Marx.
* Lenina Crowne, from Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader during the Russian Revolution.
* Fanny Crowne, from Fanny Kaplan, famous for an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Lenin. Ironically, in the novel, Lenina and Fanny are friends.
* Polly Trotsky, from Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary leader.
* Benito Hoover, from Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy; and Herbert Hoover, then President of the United States.
* Helmholtz Watson, from the German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the American behaviorist John B. Watson.
* Darwin Bonaparte, from Napoleon Bonaparte, the leader of the First French Empire, and Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species.
* Herbert Bakunin, from Herbert Spencer, the English philosopher and Social Darwinist, and Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian philosopher and anarchist.
* Mustapha Mond, from Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, founder of Turkey after World War I, who pulled his country into modernisation and official secularism; and Sir Alfred Mond, an industrialist and founder of the Imperial Chemical Industries conglomerate.
* Primo Mellon, from Miguel Primo de Rivera, prime minister and dictator of Spain (1923–1930), and Andrew Mellon, an American banker.
* Sarojini Engels, from Friedrich Engels, co-author of The Communist Manifesto along with Karl Marx: and Sarojini Naidu, an Indian politician.
* Morgana Rothschild, from J P Morgan, US banking tycoon, and the Rothschild family, famous for its European banking operations.
* Fifi Bradlaugh, from the British political activist and atheist Charles Bradlaugh.
* Joanna Diesel, from Rudolf Diesel, the German engineer who invented the diesel engine.
* Clara Deterding, from Henri Deterding, one of the founders of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company.
* Tom Kawaguchi, from the Japanese Buddhist monk Ekai Kawaguchi, the first recorded Japanese traveler to Tibet and Nepal.
* Jean-Jacques Habibullah, from the French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Habibullah Khan, who served as Emir of Afghanistan in the early 20th century.
* Miss Keate, the Eton headmistress, from nineteenth-century headmaster John Keate.
* Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury, a parody of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Church's decision in August 1930 to approve limited use of contraception.
* Popé, from Popé, the Native American rebel who was blamed for the conflict now known as the Pueblo Revolt.
* John the Savage, after the term "noble savage" originally used in the verse drama The Conquest of Granada by John Dryden, and later erroneously associated with Rousseau.
Fordism and society
The World State is built upon the principles of Henry Ford's assembly line—mass production, homogeneity, predictability, and consumption of disposable consumer goods. At the same time as the World State lacks any supernatural-based religions, Ford himself is revered as a deity, and characters celebrate Ford Day and swear oaths by his name (e.g., "By Ford!"). In this sense, some fragments of traditional religion are present, such as Christian crosses, which had their tops cut off in order to be changed to a "T". The World State calendar numbers years in the "AF" era—"After Ford"—with year 1 AF being equivalent to 1908 AD, the year in which Ford's first Model T rolled off his assembly line. The novel's Gregorian calendar year is AD 2540, but it is referred to in the book as AF 632.
From birth, members of every class are indoctrinated by recorded voices repeating slogans while they sleep (called "hypnopædia" in the book) to believe that their own class is best for them. Any residual unhappiness is resolved by an antidepressant and hallucinogenic drug called soma (named for an intoxicating drink in ancient India) distributed by the Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury, a secularised version of the Christian sacrament of Communion ("The Body of Christ").
The biological techniques used to control the populace in Brave New World do not include genetic engineering; Huxley wrote the book before the structure of DNA was known. However, Gregor Mendel's work with inheritance patterns in peas had been re-discovered in 1900 and the eugenics movement, based on artificial selection, was well established. Huxley's family included a number of prominent biologists including Thomas Huxley, half-brother and Nobel Laureate Andrew Huxley, and brother Julian Huxley who was a biologist and involved in the eugenics movement. Nonetheless, Huxley emphasizes conditioning over breeding (see nature versus nurture); as science writer Matt Ridley put it, Brave New World describes an "environmental not a genetic hell". Human embryos and fetuses are conditioned via a carefully designed regimen of chemical (such as exposure to hormones and toxins), thermal (exposure to intense heat or cold, as one's future career would dictate), and other environmental stimuli, although there is an element of selective breeding as well.
Ban, accusation of plagiarism
Brave New World has been banned and challenged at various times. In 1932, the book was banned in Ireland for its language, being anti-family and anti-religion. The American Library Association ranks Brave New World as #52 on their list of most challenged books. In 1980, it was removed from classrooms in Miller, Missouri among other challenges. In 1993, an attempt was made to remove the novel from a California school's required reading list because it "centered around negative activity".
In 1982, Polish author Antoni Smuszkiewicz in his book Zaczarowana gra presented accusations of plagiarism against Huxley. Smuszkiewicz presented similarities between Brave New World and two science fiction novels written by Polish author Mieczysław Smolarski, namely Miasto światłości (The City of the Sun, 1924) and Podróż poślubna pana Hamiltona (The Honeymoon Trip of Mr. Hamilton, 1928).
Comparisons with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Social critic Neil Postman contrasts the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.
Journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has himself published several articles on Huxley and a book on Orwell, notes the difference between the two texts in the introduction to his 1999 article "Why Americans Are Not Taught History":
We dwell in a present-tense culture that somehow, significantly, decided to employ the telling expression "You're history" as a choice reprobation or insult, and thus elected to speak forgotten volumes about itself. By that standard, the forbidding dystopia of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four already belongs, both as a text and as a date, with Ur and Mycenae, while the hedonist nihilism of Huxley still beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus. Orwell's was a house of horrors. He seemed to strain credulity because he posited a regime that would go to any lengths to own and possess history, to rewrite and construct it, and to inculcate it by means of coercion. Whereas Huxley ... rightly foresaw that any such regime could break but could not bend. In 1988, four years after 1984, the Soviet Union scrapped its official history curriculum and announced that a newly authorized version was somewhere in the works. This was the precise moment when the regime conceded its own extinction. For true blissed-out and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught.
Brave New World Revisited
1st UK edition
Brave New World Revisited (Harper & Row (US) 1958, Chatto & Windus (UK) 1959), written by Huxley almost thirty years after Brave New World, was a non-fiction work in which Huxley considered whether the world had moved toward or away from his vision of the future from the 1930s. He believed when he wrote the original novel that it was a reasonable guess as to where the world might go in the future. In Brave New World Revisited, he concluded that the world was becoming like Brave New World much faster than he originally thought.
Huxley analysed the causes of this, such as overpopulation as well as all the means by which populations can be controlled. He was particularly interested in the effects of drugs and subliminal suggestion. Brave New World Revisited is different in tone because of Huxley's evolving thought, as well as his conversion to Hindu Vedanta in the interim between the two books.
The last chapter of the book aims to propose actions which could be taken in order to prevent a democracy from turning into the totalitarian world described in Brave New World. In Huxley's last novel, Island, he again expounds similar ideas to describe a utopian nation, which is generally known as a counterpart to his most famous work.
Related works
* The Scientific Outlook by philosopher Bertrand Russell. When Brave New World was released, Russell thought that Huxley's book was based on his book The Scientific Outlook that had been released the previous year. Russell contacted his own publisher and asked whether or not he should do something about this apparent plagiarism. His publisher advised him not to, and Russell followed this advice.
* The 1921 novel Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells. A utopian novel that was a source of inspiration for Huxley's dystopian Brave New World.
* In Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga, an isolated planet practicing genetic eugenics to form a perfect society is called 'Huxleys Haven'
* The 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman alludes to how television is goading modern Western culture to be like what we see in Brave New World, where people are not so much denied human rights like free speech, but are rather conditioned not to care.
* Kurt Vonnegut said that in writing Player Piano (1952) he "cheerfully ripped off the plot of Brave New World, whose plot had been cheerfully ripped off from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We."
* The Iron Maiden song by the same name on their album Brave New World whose cover art depicts a futuristic London described by Huxley.
* "Slave New World," a song by Brazilian band Sepultura from their album Chaos A.D.
* Brazilian rock singer Pitty's debut album, released in 2003, is called Admirável Chip Novo (Brave New Chip).
* Brave New World is the title song on the third album by the Steve Miller Band.
* The Motörhead album Hammered includes a song named Brave New World.
* Richard Ashcroft's first solo album Alone with Everybody includes a song named Brave New World.
* Demolition Man, a film starring Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock, is set in a not-too-distant future utopian society based on a Brave New World. Sandra Bullock's character is even named Lenina Huxley, referencing the author and character from the book. (1997)
* Reagan Youth had a song named "Brave New World".
* The Proletariat had an LP entitled "Soma Holiday."
* Greenwheel changed their name from "Hindsight" to "Soma Holiday," before settling on their current name. Their debut album (as Greenwheel) was entitled "Soma Holiday."
* Scottish techno record label Soma Quality Recordings was named after the drug Soma featured in a Brave New World
* On their album Here, Here, and Here, Meg & Dia have a track titled "Hug Me", a song written by Dia inspired by "Brave New World."
* The song "Soma Holiday" by Gods of Luxury is based on the novel and includes several quotes from the novel in its lyrics.
* The lyrics for Marilyn Manson's song "Ka-boom Ka-boom" from The Golden Age of Grotesque play on the title and idea of this book; in them, Manson suggests that society is a "depraved new world."
* Sam Endicott of The Bravery based the song I Have Seen The Future on Brave New World, as he said in an interview.
* The song "Soma" by The Strokes is loosely based on the novel. Producer and DJ deadmau5 also released a song called "Soma."
Adaptations
* Brave New World (radio broadcast) CBS Radio Workshop (27 January and 3 February 1956)
* Brave New World (film) (1980)
* Brave New World (film) (1998)
* Brave New World (film) (scheduled 2011) Ridley Scott, Leonardo DiCaprio collaborating
* Brave New World (stage adaptation) Brendon Burns, Solent Peoples Theatre 2003
* Schöne Neue Welt (rock musical) Roland Meier/Stefan Wurz, Kulturhaus Osterfeld Pforzheim, Germany, 1994
* Schöne Neue Welt (musical) GRIPS Theater Berlin, Germany, 2006
* Brave New World a song and album of Iron Maiden
* Brave New World Catalogue Number: SAFE 45 1982 (single) from UK vocalist Toyah WIllcox
公元2035年，總部位於芝加哥的美國 USR公司開發出超能機器人産品--NS-5。隨着NS-5被大量傾銷，機器人開始充當起社會各個領域的重要角色。警探史普納(威爾·史密斯飾)始終留戀以往簡單的生活，愛聽老歌，喜歡老式的打扮。專門從事機器人心理研究的科學家蘇珊(布裏吉特·莫伊納罕飾)嚮來崇尚邏輯與科學，她堅信總有一天機器人會勝過人類。生活觀念南轅北轍的史普納和蘇珊卻在調查一樁疑似NS-5謀殺人類的案件中不期而遇。隨着調查的深入，人們發覺機器人似乎已經學會了自我思考，並且解開了控製他們的密碼，成為了完全獨立的“機器類”。
《機械公敵》-劇情簡介
公元2035年，總部位於芝加哥的美國USR公司開發出超能機器人産品--NS-5，其外形酷似人類，擁有強化耐久的鈦金屬外殼，可執行各種任務。從保母、廚師、快遞、遛狗到管理家庭收支，簡直是無所不能。一時間，機器人的數量成3倍趨勢增長，平均每5人便擁有1個機器人。隨着NS-5被大量傾銷，機器人開始充當起社會各個領域的重要角色。而發明它的USR公司也成為地球上有史以來最強大的集團。
警探史普納(威爾•史密斯WillSmith飾)始終留戀以往簡單的生活，愛聽老歌，喜歡老式的打扮。他厭惡科技和機器人，卻又不得不生活在由這兩者組成的世界裏。專門從事機器人心理研究的科學家蘇珊(布裏吉特•莫伊納罕BridgetMoynahan飾)嚮來崇尚邏輯與科學，她堅信總有一天機器人會勝過人類，並回過頭來幫助人類進步。
生活觀念南轅北轍的史普納和蘇珊卻在調查一樁疑似NS-5謀殺人類的案件中不期而遇……人類製造機器人時，通常會遵循所謂“機器人三大安全法則”來設計並控製它們。但是，隨着調查的深入，人們發覺機器人似乎已經學會了自我思考，並且解開了控製他們的密碼，成為了完全獨立的“機器類”。
人類必須開始重新思考如何面對機器人，但是，機器人或者人類自身都值得信賴嗎？
《機械公敵》-幕後製作
澳大利亞導演艾裏剋斯•布羅雅斯是一個製造幻想的天才，他的《移魂都市》（DarkCity）一直是廣受好評的CULT電影經典之作，後來的衆多電影，甚至包括《楚門的世界》（TrumanShow）和《駭客帝國》都曾深受其影響。對於本片的製作，他認為電影的重要作用是讓單純的幻想更富真實性。為了達到這個目的，艾裏剋斯集合了一個計算機特效的全明星組合，實現機器人模型、場景設計和數字虛擬形象的完美結合，拍攝了近1000個特效鏡頭。全新機器人造型，是本片吸引觀衆的一個重要元素。
影片的創作過程
電影最初的劇本叫《硬綫》（HARDWIRED），是一個經典樣式的懸疑謀殺故事，其主旨非常貼近阿西莫夫的“機器人三大定律”，可以說，故事的發展脈絡就是根據定律的邏輯推演來設計情節的。
迪斯尼導演布萊恩•辛格（BryanSinger）對這份最初的《硬綫》手稿進行了修改，當手稿最終被送到20世紀福剋斯公司以後，導演亞歷剋斯•普羅亞斯（AlexProyas）和作傢傑夫•溫塔（JeffVintar）共同努力，將它修改為一個適合大製作的更加宏大開放的電影劇本。趁着福剋斯公司在爭取阿西莫夫（IsaacAsimov）小說版權的時候，溫塔花了大約兩年左右的時間，將電影劇本編寫為類似阿西莫夫機器人小說係列中的一個故事。故事包含了女主角機器人心理學家蘇珊•卡爾文博士和機器人三大定律，這兩個元素是阿西莫夫《我，機器人》係列科幻小說裏面一直存在貫穿始終的。後來，希拉裏•塞茲（HillarySeitz）又為劇本動了手術。最後，在威爾•史密斯加盟影片後，阿基瓦•高斯曼（AkivaGoldsman）又為了他的角色再次對劇本進行了剪裁，形成了現在影片最終所呈現的面貌。儘管花了這麽長的時間和如此多人的辛勞，但確實是最初的《硬綫》作者高夫•贊恩裏（GeoffZanell）為本片的故事提供了主題。
阿西莫夫及作品
艾薩剋•阿西莫夫，美籍俄裔猶太人，本世紀最偉大的科幻小說傢。同樣也是文學碩士、化學博士和非常優秀的科普小說傢。淵博的學識和不懈的努力使阿西莫夫作品的數量非常巨大，並使他獲得了一係列的榮譽和褒奬。在逝世前不久，他曾自述出版過467部著作，但研究他的作品的專傢稱，他至少出版過480部著作。而且體裁廣泛，有嚴肅的歷史和科學論著，也有輕鬆的戲劇、幽默小說。
《我，機器人》是阿西莫夫諸多科幻著作中最有名的係列之一。另外一個著名的是《基地》係列。這兩個膾炙人口的係列和《其他機器人》等等故事，都各自獨立成篇，但當貫串起來，卻又是一部俯仰兩萬年的長篇史詩。阿西莫夫的科幻世界廣阔巨大，通過描繪銀河帝國的興亡史，來討論人性與政治、經濟、軍事等文明要素産生的互動影響。這種宏觀視野使他的作品充滿對人類未來的關懷和思考，可以說影響和改變了很多讀者對世界的看法。
本片片名《我，機器人》，對於科幻小說讀者可以說是如雷貫耳。係列小說由十幾個獨立成篇的故事分別組成，而在《引言》的開篇第一句話，阿西莫夫就提出了有名的“機器人三大定律”：
第一定律——機器人不得傷害人類，也不得見人類受到傷害而袖手旁觀。
第二定律一-機器人應服從人類的一切命令，但不得違反第一定律。
第三定律——機器人應保護自身的安全，但不得違反第一、第二定律。
由於本片的故事懸念來自根據機器人三大定律的邏輯推演，因此扮演警探的科幻電影專業戶威爾•史密斯說：“本片告訴我們：機器人並沒有問題，技術也不是問題，人類邏輯的局限纔是最大的問題。因此，到頭來我們纔發現，人類最大的敵人不是別人，正是人類自己。”
影片特技
對這部科幻題材來說，電腦特技理應是本片的主角。導演認為電影的重要作用是讓單純的幻想更富真實性。為了達到這個目的，他集合了一個計算機特效的全明星組合，由製作電影《指環王》而榮獲奧斯卡最佳視覺效果奬、享譽全球的新西蘭維塔公司團隊執行製作，實現了機器人模型、場景設計和數字虛擬形象的完美結合，為此一共拍攝了近1000個特效鏡頭。其中亮點顯然是流綫型、周身透明泛光的ＮＳ-5型機器人。桑尼除了眼睛是藍色的以外，和其他該型號的機器人沒區別，不過它的形體和聲音是由專門的演員加上緑幕技術結合電腦特效來做的。其餘的NS-5機器人是采用最新型的改進緑幕技術完成。NS-5高180釐米，具有456個活動零件，經由12位博士組裝完成，熔點六千華氏度，可負重800磅，能承受數千磅撞擊,電子智慧腦可復製人類自由意志，具有1ＴＢ（1000GB）內存，每秒能執行6M筆以上運算，擁有80種語言能力。能記住所有你記不住的任何內容,采用體貼細心的泰麗莎2.1.2版操作係統；安裝在頭骨內的是有耐久鈦金屬外殼保護的智慧腦以及萬能記憶網路（UniversalRetentionNetwork）……等着在影片中看看，2035年，我們每四個人將擁有的一個的機器人特效處理是否能如它的文字說明般真實可信吧！
《機械公敵》-幕後花絮
片子開頭，當史普納打開大門，一個頭上寫着42的機器人站在他門前的臺階上。很多科幻電影都有42這個號碼，是因為受到了道格拉斯.亞當斯的《銀河係漫遊指南》的影響。片子受到的《銀河係漫遊指南》影響的另一個例子，史普納的唯一好日子是“星期四”。在《指南》中，這是作傢登特一整周當中 “從不能理解……”的一天。在古董機器人櫥窗裏，陳列的是索尼公司的機器狗愛波AIBO。
片子裏威爾•史密斯開的車是一款叫做AudiRSQ的概念車，是奧迪特別為本片設計的，導演亞歷剋斯•普羅亞斯還為車的特別外形設計提供了建議。對於嫌疑犯機器人桑尼，劇組采用了在《指環王：雙塔奇兵》裏創造哥倫（Gollum）的同樣處理方法：由艾倫•圖代剋AlanTudyk為桑尼提供身體動作和聲音。威爾•史密斯在本片裏騎的摩托是一款2004年的MVAgustaF4-SPR，全球總共衹生産了300輛。技術參數：750cc，內置4缸引擎，147馬力，能推進到時速超過175英裏。
影片中大多數的車型是以2004年前的奧迪車，比如A2、A6和TT為模型改造的，甚至有些都沒有改，直接就用了。蘭寧博士的貓咪叫“阿西莫夫”。在戲劇性的追逐場面中，戴爾•史普納警探對約翰•伯金少尉說：“我要開始懷念過去的好日子了。”伯金回答：“什麽過去好日子？”史普納就說：“"那時候人還是被其他人殺死的。”在片子裏，最先提出這個“美好舊時光”的人並非是史普納，正是伯金。
影片最後，史普納的奶奶祈禱的句子是來自《聖經•詩篇》16：8“我將耶和華常擺在我面前．因他在我右邊、我便不至搖動”。桑尼的眼睛是藍色的，其他所有的NS-5型機器人的眼睛都是金色的。約翰•伯金少尉的臺詞：“不，老實說，人創造怪物，怪物殺人。每個人殺怪物、狼人。”這段臺詞和《侏羅紀公園》裏的很相似：馬爾科
姆博士說“神創造恐竜，神毀滅恐竜。神創造人類，人毀滅神，人類創造恐竜……”
《機械公敵》-影片看點
機器人、威爾•史密斯的電腦大作戰
“我認為，我們的動作電影已經做好了達到新的技術水平的時候。”好萊塢男星威爾•史密斯（《獨立日》、《絶地戰警》）此次身兼影片執行製作人，他饒有興趣地說，“你的故事必須讓人感興趣。所有的特效和爆炸都必須來的超酷纔行。”於是為本片全力投入電腦效果製作的是四屆奧斯卡特效得奬隊伍，他們為片中無所不能的機器老兄們製作了超過900個電腦獨立特效，以使得效果更加逼真。有人說片中白色透明的機器人外形頗有類似蘋果公司（Apple）産品風格，事實上，製作人帕特裏剋就是在蘋果産品iMac中找到了靈感：“當你穿過外殼看到（機器人）構造時，它們顯得就不那麽可怕了”，帕特裏剋笑道。
“領銜主演”機器人角色索尼的實際上是真人演員艾倫•圖代剋（《閃避球的奇跡》）。我們屏幕上將看到的機器人表演，采用了和《指環王三》裏怪物咕嚕的同樣真人和電腦結合的技術——緑屏、傳感器、動作捕捉和完美的電腦合成。“這是我最棒的角色，儘管屏幕上沒人看得到我本人，不過角色在電影中的經歷對我來說非常刺激。”機器人索尼的銀幕表現也將成為本片令人關註的焦點。
就本片的特效水片而言，僅僅提及以上是遠遠不夠的。三位金牌特效製作人加上數十位特效製作師，以及新西蘭知名的WETA（《指環王》係列）的鼎力協助，《機械公敵》全力描繪出一個2035年的芝加哥——機器人遍布，流光玻璃街道和未來建築繁屹的未來都市。但我們也不用擔心這僅是一部充滿花哨特效的電影，導演亞歷剋斯•普羅亞斯（《移魂都市》）表示，“我們把故事和情感放到第一位，如此電腦動畫將提高電影效果而不是分散觀衆的註意力。”
事實上，本片在敘事方法上多少有點《少數派報告》的影子，但結合阿西莫夫的機器人三大定律、好萊塢最炙手可熱的黑人影星威爾•史密斯還有“性感蘋果造型”的機器人這三大最吸引的噱頭，《機械公敵》必將成為七月票房大熱。問題衹有一個：這部影片能否最終成為像《終結者》一樣的科幻經典？
《機械公敵》-演員介紹
《機械公敵》威爾•史密斯
威爾•史密斯
美國演員，高中畢業後癡心於歌唱事業，遂决定放棄上大學，做全職的藝人。1989年首次獲得葛萊美奬“最佳饒舌歌演唱奬”。進而成為NBC電視影集《活力王子》(TheFreshPrinceofBelAir)的男主角。在樂壇獲得巨大成功之後，威爾•史密斯嚮幾個演藝公司的主管表示了他對演戲的興趣，這其中包括華納總裁班尼•梅迪納。梅迪納是在洛杉磯出生窮苦但卻在洛杉磯的的富人區貝浮力山莊的一個富人家庭度過了他的青少年時期。他當時正好在計劃根據他的親身經歷拍一部電視劇。梅迪納覺得威爾•史密斯是正好的人選。據好萊塢內部人士透露，當年威爾•史密斯在試鏡時念劇本念得如此精彩，美國國傢廣播電臺當場拍板决定上戲。1990年，《貝萊爾的新鮮王子》開始播放，深受廣大觀衆喜愛，一播就是六年。
儘管威爾•史密斯看起來象一個大大咧咧的小混混，其實他出身中等家庭，父親是工程師，母親是教育界人士。威爾•史密斯的書讀得更是出色，當年麻省理工學院給他全奬讓他去讀書，但是他因為要全身心投入演藝界，不得不拒絶。《貝萊爾的新鮮王子》的成功使威爾•史密斯與許多好萊塢的出色演員建立起了親密關係，這其中包括大量黑人演員，如瓊斯，比爾•考茲比，鬍比•歌德寶，以及丹澤爾•華盛頓。
1993年以主角身份躍登大銀幕，在一部諷刺紐約知識分子的文藝片《六度分離》之中，扮演一個自稱是黑人巨星薜尼鮑迪兒子的老千。1995年主演警匪動作片《絶地戰警》便一舉成名，《獨立日》、《黑超特警組》全球票房奏捷後，身價飆到巔峰。近幾年接拍了許多賣座的動作片。
《機械公敵》布裏吉特•莫伊納罕
布裏吉特•莫伊納罕
布麗姬•穆娜是好萊塢目前除了傑米•李•柯蒂斯和薛歌妮•韋弗之外為數不多可以胜任高智商的強硬角色而外形又不失優雅嫵媚的女演員之一。1970年生於紐約的Binghamton，和兩個哥哥一起在Longmeadow長大，結果她也如同假小子一般多動，愛好各種體育項目，高中是籃球隊隊長，選擇去上橄欖球課而不是戲劇班。布麗姬先是登上時尚T臺並逐漸小有名氣，出現在Glamour、Vogue等衆多著名雜志之上，之後又進入了紐約 CaymichaelPattenStudio學習表演。1999年，布麗姬作為嘉賓出演熱門劇《欲望都市》中的Natasha一角，次年影片《女狼俱樂部》中吞雲吐霧的酒吧女招待一角給觀衆留下了深刻印象，接下來又出現在了一係列備受觀註的熱門影片中，包括《諜海計中計》、《戰爭之王》、《我，機器人》以及《玩命記憶》等等，戲路也愈來愈廣阔。
布麗姬的科學家父親後來成了麻省阿默斯特大學(UMass)的一名管理人員，母親的職業是教師並且還在2005年和布麗姬一起出演過一則 Bostonarea的電視廣告。此外布麗姬•穆娜2004年開始和新英格蘭愛國者隊的明星四分位TomBrady約會，但在2006年的感恩節分手，07年布麗姬迎來了自己第一個孩子的降生。
《機械公敵》-穿幫鏡頭
連貫性錯誤：
蘭寧博士的貓出現的絶大多數場景，她的眼睛都是藍色的。但是在史普納跳過噴泉那場戲，貓的眼睛變成黃色了。史普納和少尉在酒吧喝酒，少尉酒瓶上面的商標，每次切換鏡頭角度一次，就變化一次。在隧道追逐戲後，史普納去檢查他的腳踝，開始他的腿是分開的，下一個鏡頭，他的左腿就疊放在了右腳上。當加爾文博士走進她的實驗室去問桑尼時，她得走下幾級臺階。攝像機從她背後推進的時候，可以看見她走了四步下臺階，但是，那兒一共就衹有三級臺階。
暴露錯誤：
史普納和加爾文博士試圖關閉VIKI，機器人襲擊他們的那場戲，一個長鏡頭拍攝了史普納對着他身邊四面射擊並跑動。這個明顯是CGI做的，因為有些瞬間可以看出畫面裏他的頭跟脖子或者身體分開沒挨着。
《機械公敵》-影片點評
未來，發達的高科技社會中發生的足以改變人類歷史的危機--《機械公敵》的故事藍本，最早來源於編劇傑夫•溫塔JeffVintar十多年以前創作的劇本《Hardwired》，它講述了一樁神秘的謀殺案，而機器人可能纔是幕後元兇。製片人勞倫斯•馬剋LaurenceMark對這個故事相當感興趣，與此同時，二十世紀福斯電影公司一直想拍一部有關機器人的大型電影，遂將之列入籌拍日程，並初步擬訂由亞歷剋斯•普羅亞斯AlexProyas執導。2000年初，傑夫•溫塔飛赴澳洲開始同導演普羅亞斯就《機械公敵》拍片計劃進行溝通，整個合作案足足花了兩年多。
開始時，該片被定位於未來背景下的謀殺驚悚片，接下來他們嘗試將格局放大以便有更多可發揮的空間。因為導演普羅亞斯對視覺風格獨到且優異的品味，主創人員最終達成共識，要將《機械公敵》拍成宏大背景下的史詩浩劫，他們的野心促使該片必須要在視覺特效上力爭有所突破。
在當時，製片人約翰•戴維斯JohnDavis名下的製片公司拿到了《機械公敵》的電影版權，而導演普羅亞斯在科幻大師艾薩剋•阿西莫夫IsaacAsimov的小說裏找到了劇本以外的視覺元素，阿西莫夫作品中的思想和人物很自然地融入編劇傑夫•溫塔的未來謀殺案劇本。
《機械公敵》-一句話評論
What will you do with yours?
機械公敵機械公敵
Laws are made to be broken
One man saw it coming.
情節過於簡單而令人失望，追逐和動作場面充斥着科幻電影常規濫用的CGI技術處理。
——芝加哥太陽報
非常熟練，但也明顯讓人失望，鬧獨立的機器人和流氓警察在一些片段裏顯得鬧哄哄的。
——倫敦時報
這部高科技電影，拍的好看但是顯得智商並不高。
——觀察傢
作為對人工智能技術的倫理探索，這部電影比《A.I.》要更謙遜、更迷人。
——BBC電影評論
動作場面十分引人入勝。雖然不能算是歷史性突破，但通過我們這個時代的數字技術，觀看機器人對打的場面着實令人興奮。
——視覺周刊
《機械公敵》-完全班底
威爾·史密斯：官方首選
據幾位製片人口徑一致的“官方”說法，威爾·史密斯是製作方的首選。同時，他還答應在該片中擔任監製(此前，他曾為由羅伯特·德尼羅和埃迪·墨菲主演的影片《作秀時刻》(Showtime)。擔任監製)，正是由於威爾的推薦，《美麗心靈》的金奬編劇阿齊瓦·高斯曼Akiva Goldsman也得已加入幕後陣容。
機械公敵機械公敵
“《機械公敵》最吸引我的是，它的中心概念是機器人沒有問題，科技並不是問題本身，人類邏輯的極限纔真的是問題，而最終，我們成為自己最大的敵人。”這是威爾·史密斯出演該片的最大體會。
布裏吉特·莫伊納罕：熱忱至上
依舊引用官方的說法：“她能夠非常貼切地傳達我們對這個角色的設計，也就是在機器人般冰冷的外表下，卻有着很人性的熱忱。”
相貌秀麗的布裏吉特·莫伊納罕從影片《妹力四射》(Coyote Ugly)中迅速崛起。在熱門劇集《欲望都市》中她也曾有上佳表現。影片《新手》(The Recruit)中她與阿爾·帕西諾和科林·法瑞爾有過愉快的合作。
導演：亞歷剋斯·普羅亞斯
這位來自澳洲且科班出身的導演，素來以擅長營造充滿神秘和未來感的影片而聞名。1994年，他憑一部改編自同名漫畫的《烏鴉》(The Crow)令世人所知。四年後，更是以那部《移魂都市》(Dark City)徵服了觀衆。此前，他還自編自導了其第一部描寫現實世界的青春片《車庫時光》(Garage Days)。
亞歷剋斯自小便是阿西莫夫的忠實讀者，他一直夢想着能拍一部如《機械公敵》的影片，這次他夢想成真了。
NS-5基本資料
高度180公分，耐久鈦金屬外殼，具456個活動零件，需經由12位博士組裝完成，熔點華氏六千度，可負重800磅，能承受數千磅撞擊。電子智慧腦可復製人類自由意志，具有1TB內存，每秒能執行6兆筆以上運算，擁有80種語言能力。
科幻大師阿西莫夫--劃時代的機器人三大安全法則：
1. 機器人不能傷害人類，或坐視人類受到傷害而袖手旁觀。
2. 除非違背第一法則，機器人必須服從人類的命令。
3. 在不違背第一和第二法則前提下，機器人必須保護自己。
《我，機器人》（I, Robot），是美國作傢艾薩剋·阿西莫夫出版於1950年的科幻
機械公敵機械公敵
小說短篇集，收錄9篇短篇小說。大多原載於1940年到1950年間的美國《超級科學故事》（Super Science Stories）雜志和《驚奇科幻小說》雜志（Astounding Science Fiction）。書中的短篇故事各自獨立，卻擁有共同的主題，探討人類與機器人之間的道德問題。這些故事結合之後，開創出阿西莫夫的機器人浩翰虛構歷史。
串連起這幾個故事的靈魂人物，是美國機器人與機械人股份有限公司(常簡稱為「美國機器人公司」)（U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc.）的機器人心理學家蘇珊·凱文（Dr. Susan Calvin）博士。在出版短篇集時，阿西莫夫藉由晚年凱文接受專訪，回憶過往如何運用「機器人心理學」（Robopsychology）跟行為失常機器人的接觸。著名的「機器人三定律」就是在這部短篇集裏初次登場。
想像一下未來，如果機器人有了主體意識，他們可以思考，可以决策，甚至可以瞧不起人類（你們這些手無縛雞之力、由蛋白質組成、每天要昏睡八個鐘頭的傢夥……），世界將會變得如何？
早在1950年，艾西莫夫就已經設想到了這些情景，並且以超越時代的思維，創建出宏觀的未來機器人世界。於是，偉大的「機器人學三大法則」就此誕生，成為科幻界無可撼動的鐵律：
一、機器人不得傷害人類，或袖手旁觀坐視人類受到傷害。
二、除非違背第一法則，機器人必須服從人類的命令。
三、在不違背第一法則及第二法則的情況下，機器人必須保護自己。
因此，巨大的水星采礦機器人SPD13，因為三大法則的衝突而在原地打轉；小巧可愛的太空站主控機器人QT1，不僅完全取代人的工作，甚至還開始思考關於造物主的哲學問題；據說可以透視心靈的機器人RB34，居然懂得用人類的心理，揣摩說出他們想聽的話；而想要在一大群Nester10號機器人中，找出一個隱藏其中逃脫者，竟成為人與機器人大玩心理遊戲的戰場……
艾西莫夫筆下的「機器人心理學家」蘇珊˙凱文，親身體驗這些事件的演進，也記下了20世紀末到21世紀中的機器人發展史──從簡單的褓姆型機器人，一直到全世界衹有四臺的超級電腦。隨着機器人越來越聰明，功能越來越強大，她不得不嘆道：「一開始機器人還不會說話，但最後他們卻挺立於人類與毀滅之間……」
本書曾於2004年被改編為電影《機械公敵》。電影衹從書中引用了機器人學三大法則和一些人名，主體內容並無直接相關；但是從《我，機器人》小說中，讀者可以找到電影的原始創意精神，並瞭解三大法則的真正涵義。
艾西莫夫的科幻小說相當簡單易讀，故事結構都很清楚，可說是非常大衆化的科幻作品。在20世紀科幻小說的寫作發展史裏，艾西莫夫與剋拉剋、海萊因齊名，被譽為最偉大的「三巨頭」。艾西莫夫完成了【機器人】、【帝國】、【基地】三大科幻小說係列，評價都非常高，而本書便是【機器人】係列裏第一本，同時也是最精采的一本。如果你想認識艾西莫夫和他的科幻小說，《我，機器人》絶對是你的首選！
《機械公敵》-影片觀後感
在機械公敵前面的時候，機器人桑尼說起它做了一個夢，在夢中，有一個人站在沙堆上，那人是領導機器人解放的領導者！所以人開始的時候都以為是威爾· 史密斯所扮演的戴爾。史普納！但在影片就要結束的最後那一個鏡頭裏，站在沙堆上的那“人”卻是機器人桑尼！
大傢都知道，桑尼已經學會了人類的思想！沒有人知道它站在沙堆上觀看着下面這無數機器人時有什麽想法！
但如果它當時擁有一個在人類中名為“徵服”的念頭後，會不會發生一些所有人都意想不到的結局呢？
Several of the stories feature the character of Dr. Susan Calvin, chief robopsychologist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., the major manufacturer of robots. Upon their publication in this collection, Asimov wrote a framing sequence presenting the stories as Calvin's reminiscences during an interview with her about her life's work, chiefly concerned with aberrant behaviour of robots, and the use of "robopsychology" to sort them out. The book also contains the short story in which Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics first appear. Other characters that appear in these short stories are Powell and Donovan, a field-testing team which locates flaws in USRMM's prototype models.
The collection's title is the same as a short story written by Eando Binder, but is not connected to it. Asimov wanted to call his collection Mind and Iron, and initially objected when the publisher changed the title.
Contents
* "Robbie"
* "Runaround"
* "Reason"
* "Catch that Rabbit"
* "Liar!"
* "Little Lost Robot"
* "Escape!"
* "Evidence"
* "The Evitable Conflict"
Publication history
Cover art for I, Robot featuring a scene from "Runaround".
* New York: Gnome Press, (Trade paperback "Armed Forces Edition", 1951)
* New York: Grosset & Dunlap, (hardcover, 1952)
* London: Grayson, (hardcover, 1952)
* British SF Book Club, (hardcover, 1954)
* New York: Signet Books, (mass market paperback, 1956)
* New York: Doubleday, (hardcover, 1963)
* London: Dobson, (hardcover, 1967)
* ISBN 0-449-23949-7 (mass market paperback, 1970)
* ISBN 0-345-31482-4 (mass market paperback, 1983)
* ISBN 0-606-17134-7 (prebound, 1991)
* ISBN 0-553-29438-5 (mass market paperback, 1991)
* ISBN 1-4014-0039-6 (e-book, 2001)
* ISBN 1-4014-0038-8 (e-book, 2001)
* ISBN 0-553-80370-0 (hardcover, 2004)
* ISBN 91-27-11227-6 (hardcover, 2005)
* ISBN 0-7857-7338-X (hardcover)
* ISBN 0-00-711963-1 (paperback, UK, new edition)
* ISBN 0-586-02532-4 (paperback, UK)
Film, TV and theatrical adaptations
At least three of the short stories from I, Robot have been adapted for television. The first was an 1962 episode of Out of this World hosted by Boris Karloff called "Little Lost Robot" with Maxine Audley as Susan Calvin. In the 1960s, two short stories from this collection were made into episodes of the television series Out of the Unknown: "The Prophet" (1967), based on "Reason"; and "Liar!" (1969). The 12th episode of the USSR science fiction TV series This Fantastic World, filmed in 1987 and entitled Don't Joke with Robots was based on works by Aleksandr Belyaev, Fredrik Kilander and Asimov's "Liar!" story.
In the late 1970s, Warner Brothers acquired the option to make a film based on the book, but no screenplay was ever accepted. The most notable attempt was one by Harlan Ellison, who collaborated with Asimov himself to create a version which captured the spirit of the original. Asimov is quoted as saying that this screenplay would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever made."
Ellison's script builds a framework around Asimov's short stories that involves a reporter named Robert Bratenahl tracking down information about Susan Calvin's alleged former lover Stephen Byerly. Asimov's stories are presented as flashbacks that differ from the originals in their stronger emphasis on Calvin's character. Ellison placed Calvin into stories in which she did not originally appear and fleshed out her character's role in ones where she did. In constructing the script as a series of flashbacks that focused on character development rather than action, Ellison used the film Citizen Kane as a role model.
Although acclaimed by critics, the screenplay is generally considered to have been unfilmable based upon the technology and average film budgets of the time. Asimov also believed that the film may have been scrapped because of a conflict between Ellison and the producers: when the producers suggested changes in the script, instead of being diplomatic as advised by Asimov, Ellison "reacted violently" and offended the producers. The script eventually appeared in book form under the title I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, in 1994 (reprinted 2004, ISBN 1-4165-0600-4).
"I, Robot" is the title of an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. The episode, based on the Eando Binder short story, first aired on 14 November 1964, during the second season. It was remade under the same title in 1995.
The film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was released by Twentieth Century Fox on July 16, 2004 in the United States. Its plot is not based on any one story in the collection but does incorporate elements of "Little Lost Robot" and other stories, and uses many of Asimov's characters and ideas about robots, including the Three Laws.
Influence
In 2004 The Saturday Evening Post said that I, Robot's Three Laws "revolutionized the science fiction genre and made robots far more interesting than they ever had been before." I, Robot has influenced many aspects of modern popular culture, particularly with respect to science fiction and technology. One example of this is in the technology industry. The name of the real-life modem manufacturer named U.S. Robotics was directly inspired by I, Robot. The name is taken from the name of a robot manufacturer ("United States Robots and Mechanical Men") that appears throughout Asimov's robot short stories.
Many works in the field of science fiction have also paid homage to Asimov's collection. The animated science fiction/comedy Futurama makes several references to I, Robot. The title of the episode "I, Roommate" is a spoof on I, Robot although the plot of the episode has little to do with the original stories. Additionally, the episode "The Cyber House Rules" included an optician named "Eye Robot" and the episode "Anthology of Interest II" included a segment called "I, Meatbag."[citation needed] Also in "Bender's Game" the psychiatric doctor is shown a logical fallacy and explodes when the assistant shouts "Liar!" a la "Liar!" . And an episode of the original Star Trek series, "I, Mudd" which depicts a planet of androids in need of humans references "I, Robot." Another reference appears in the title of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "I, Borg". in which Geordi La Forge befriends a lost member of the Borg collective and teaches it a sense of individuality and free will.
The Positronic brain, which Asimov named his robots' central processors, is what powers Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as other Soong type Androids. Positronic brains have been referenced in a number of other television shows including Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time... Space, Perry Rhodan, The Number of the Beast, and others.
Author Cory Doctorow has written a story called "I, Robot" as homage to Asimov, as well as "I row-boat", both released in the short-story collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. He has also said, "If I return to this theme, it will be with a story about uplifted cheese sandwiches, called 'I, Rarebit.'".
Other cultural references to the book are less directly related to science fiction and technology. The 1977 album I Robot, by The Alan Parsons Project, was inspired by Asimov's I, Robot. In its original conception, the album was to follow the themes and concepts presented in the short story collection. The Alan Parsons Project were not able to obtain the rights, so the album's concept was altered slightly (although the name was kept). The 2002 electronica album by experimental artist Edman Goodrich (known, at times, to operate under the aliases of "je, le roi!" and "The Ghost Quartet") shares the title of I, Robot, and is heavily influenced by Asimovian themes. The 2009 album, I, Human, by Singaporean band Deus Ex Machina draws heavily upon Asimov's principles on robotics and applies it to the concept of cloning. The satirical newspaper The Onion published an article entitled "I, Rowboat" in which an anthropomorphized rowboat gives a speech parodying much of the angst experienced by robots in Asimov's fiction, including a statement of the "Three Laws of Rowboatics."
The name of the movie itself is taken from Robert Graves' book I, Claudius.
《機械公敵》-劇情簡介
公元2035年，總部位於芝加哥的美國USR公司開發出超能機器人産品--NS-5，其外形酷似人類，擁有強化耐久的鈦金屬外殼，可執行各種任務。從保母、廚師、快遞、遛狗到管理家庭收支，簡直是無所不能。一時間，機器人的數量成3倍趨勢增長，平均每5人便擁有1個機器人。隨着NS-5被大量傾銷，機器人開始充當起社會各個領域的重要角色。而發明它的USR公司也成為地球上有史以來最強大的集團。
警探史普納(威爾•史密斯WillSmith飾)始終留戀以往簡單的生活，愛聽老歌，喜歡老式的打扮。他厭惡科技和機器人，卻又不得不生活在由這兩者組成的世界裏。專門從事機器人心理研究的科學家蘇珊(布裏吉特•莫伊納罕BridgetMoynahan飾)嚮來崇尚邏輯與科學，她堅信總有一天機器人會勝過人類，並回過頭來幫助人類進步。
生活觀念南轅北轍的史普納和蘇珊卻在調查一樁疑似NS-5謀殺人類的案件中不期而遇……人類製造機器人時，通常會遵循所謂“機器人三大安全法則”來設計並控製它們。但是，隨着調查的深入，人們發覺機器人似乎已經學會了自我思考，並且解開了控製他們的密碼，成為了完全獨立的“機器類”。
人類必須開始重新思考如何面對機器人，但是，機器人或者人類自身都值得信賴嗎？
《機械公敵》-幕後製作
澳大利亞導演艾裏剋斯•布羅雅斯是一個製造幻想的天才，他的《移魂都市》（DarkCity）一直是廣受好評的CULT電影經典之作，後來的衆多電影，甚至包括《楚門的世界》（TrumanShow）和《駭客帝國》都曾深受其影響。對於本片的製作，他認為電影的重要作用是讓單純的幻想更富真實性。為了達到這個目的，艾裏剋斯集合了一個計算機特效的全明星組合，實現機器人模型、場景設計和數字虛擬形象的完美結合，拍攝了近1000個特效鏡頭。全新機器人造型，是本片吸引觀衆的一個重要元素。
影片的創作過程
電影最初的劇本叫《硬綫》（HARDWIRED），是一個經典樣式的懸疑謀殺故事，其主旨非常貼近阿西莫夫的“機器人三大定律”，可以說，故事的發展脈絡就是根據定律的邏輯推演來設計情節的。
迪斯尼導演布萊恩•辛格（BryanSinger）對這份最初的《硬綫》手稿進行了修改，當手稿最終被送到20世紀福剋斯公司以後，導演亞歷剋斯•普羅亞斯（AlexProyas）和作傢傑夫•溫塔（JeffVintar）共同努力，將它修改為一個適合大製作的更加宏大開放的電影劇本。趁着福剋斯公司在爭取阿西莫夫（IsaacAsimov）小說版權的時候，溫塔花了大約兩年左右的時間，將電影劇本編寫為類似阿西莫夫機器人小說係列中的一個故事。故事包含了女主角機器人心理學家蘇珊•卡爾文博士和機器人三大定律，這兩個元素是阿西莫夫《我，機器人》係列科幻小說裏面一直存在貫穿始終的。後來，希拉裏•塞茲（HillarySeitz）又為劇本動了手術。最後，在威爾•史密斯加盟影片後，阿基瓦•高斯曼（AkivaGoldsman）又為了他的角色再次對劇本進行了剪裁，形成了現在影片最終所呈現的面貌。儘管花了這麽長的時間和如此多人的辛勞，但確實是最初的《硬綫》作者高夫•贊恩裏（GeoffZanell）為本片的故事提供了主題。
阿西莫夫及作品
艾薩剋•阿西莫夫，美籍俄裔猶太人，本世紀最偉大的科幻小說傢。同樣也是文學碩士、化學博士和非常優秀的科普小說傢。淵博的學識和不懈的努力使阿西莫夫作品的數量非常巨大，並使他獲得了一係列的榮譽和褒奬。在逝世前不久，他曾自述出版過467部著作，但研究他的作品的專傢稱，他至少出版過480部著作。而且體裁廣泛，有嚴肅的歷史和科學論著，也有輕鬆的戲劇、幽默小說。
《我，機器人》是阿西莫夫諸多科幻著作中最有名的係列之一。另外一個著名的是《基地》係列。這兩個膾炙人口的係列和《其他機器人》等等故事，都各自獨立成篇，但當貫串起來，卻又是一部俯仰兩萬年的長篇史詩。阿西莫夫的科幻世界廣阔巨大，通過描繪銀河帝國的興亡史，來討論人性與政治、經濟、軍事等文明要素産生的互動影響。這種宏觀視野使他的作品充滿對人類未來的關懷和思考，可以說影響和改變了很多讀者對世界的看法。
本片片名《我，機器人》，對於科幻小說讀者可以說是如雷貫耳。係列小說由十幾個獨立成篇的故事分別組成，而在《引言》的開篇第一句話，阿西莫夫就提出了有名的“機器人三大定律”：
第一定律——機器人不得傷害人類，也不得見人類受到傷害而袖手旁觀。
第二定律一-機器人應服從人類的一切命令，但不得違反第一定律。
第三定律——機器人應保護自身的安全，但不得違反第一、第二定律。
由於本片的故事懸念來自根據機器人三大定律的邏輯推演，因此扮演警探的科幻電影專業戶威爾•史密斯說：“本片告訴我們：機器人並沒有問題，技術也不是問題，人類邏輯的局限纔是最大的問題。因此，到頭來我們纔發現，人類最大的敵人不是別人，正是人類自己。”
影片特技
對這部科幻題材來說，電腦特技理應是本片的主角。導演認為電影的重要作用是讓單純的幻想更富真實性。為了達到這個目的，他集合了一個計算機特效的全明星組合，由製作電影《指環王》而榮獲奧斯卡最佳視覺效果奬、享譽全球的新西蘭維塔公司團隊執行製作，實現了機器人模型、場景設計和數字虛擬形象的完美結合，為此一共拍攝了近1000個特效鏡頭。其中亮點顯然是流綫型、周身透明泛光的ＮＳ-5型機器人。桑尼除了眼睛是藍色的以外，和其他該型號的機器人沒區別，不過它的形體和聲音是由專門的演員加上緑幕技術結合電腦特效來做的。其餘的NS-5機器人是采用最新型的改進緑幕技術完成。NS-5高180釐米，具有456個活動零件，經由12位博士組裝完成，熔點六千華氏度，可負重800磅，能承受數千磅撞擊,電子智慧腦可復製人類自由意志，具有1ＴＢ（1000GB）內存，每秒能執行6M筆以上運算，擁有80種語言能力。能記住所有你記不住的任何內容,采用體貼細心的泰麗莎2.1.2版操作係統；安裝在頭骨內的是有耐久鈦金屬外殼保護的智慧腦以及萬能記憶網路（UniversalRetentionNetwork）……等着在影片中看看，2035年，我們每四個人將擁有的一個的機器人特效處理是否能如它的文字說明般真實可信吧！
《機械公敵》-幕後花絮
片子開頭，當史普納打開大門，一個頭上寫着42的機器人站在他門前的臺階上。很多科幻電影都有42這個號碼，是因為受到了道格拉斯.亞當斯的《銀河係漫遊指南》的影響。片子受到的《銀河係漫遊指南》影響的另一個例子，史普納的唯一好日子是“星期四”。在《指南》中，這是作傢登特一整周當中 “從不能理解……”的一天。在古董機器人櫥窗裏，陳列的是索尼公司的機器狗愛波AIBO。
片子裏威爾•史密斯開的車是一款叫做AudiRSQ的概念車，是奧迪特別為本片設計的，導演亞歷剋斯•普羅亞斯還為車的特別外形設計提供了建議。對於嫌疑犯機器人桑尼，劇組采用了在《指環王：雙塔奇兵》裏創造哥倫（Gollum）的同樣處理方法：由艾倫•圖代剋AlanTudyk為桑尼提供身體動作和聲音。威爾•史密斯在本片裏騎的摩托是一款2004年的MVAgustaF4-SPR，全球總共衹生産了300輛。技術參數：750cc，內置4缸引擎，147馬力，能推進到時速超過175英裏。
影片中大多數的車型是以2004年前的奧迪車，比如A2、A6和TT為模型改造的，甚至有些都沒有改，直接就用了。蘭寧博士的貓咪叫“阿西莫夫”。在戲劇性的追逐場面中，戴爾•史普納警探對約翰•伯金少尉說：“我要開始懷念過去的好日子了。”伯金回答：“什麽過去好日子？”史普納就說：“"那時候人還是被其他人殺死的。”在片子裏，最先提出這個“美好舊時光”的人並非是史普納，正是伯金。
影片最後，史普納的奶奶祈禱的句子是來自《聖經•詩篇》16：8“我將耶和華常擺在我面前．因他在我右邊、我便不至搖動”。桑尼的眼睛是藍色的，其他所有的NS-5型機器人的眼睛都是金色的。約翰•伯金少尉的臺詞：“不，老實說，人創造怪物，怪物殺人。每個人殺怪物、狼人。”這段臺詞和《侏羅紀公園》裏的很相似：馬爾科
姆博士說“神創造恐竜，神毀滅恐竜。神創造人類，人毀滅神，人類創造恐竜……”
《機械公敵》-影片看點
機器人、威爾•史密斯的電腦大作戰
“我認為，我們的動作電影已經做好了達到新的技術水平的時候。”好萊塢男星威爾•史密斯（《獨立日》、《絶地戰警》）此次身兼影片執行製作人，他饒有興趣地說，“你的故事必須讓人感興趣。所有的特效和爆炸都必須來的超酷纔行。”於是為本片全力投入電腦效果製作的是四屆奧斯卡特效得奬隊伍，他們為片中無所不能的機器老兄們製作了超過900個電腦獨立特效，以使得效果更加逼真。有人說片中白色透明的機器人外形頗有類似蘋果公司（Apple）産品風格，事實上，製作人帕特裏剋就是在蘋果産品iMac中找到了靈感：“當你穿過外殼看到（機器人）構造時，它們顯得就不那麽可怕了”，帕特裏剋笑道。
“領銜主演”機器人角色索尼的實際上是真人演員艾倫•圖代剋（《閃避球的奇跡》）。我們屏幕上將看到的機器人表演，采用了和《指環王三》裏怪物咕嚕的同樣真人和電腦結合的技術——緑屏、傳感器、動作捕捉和完美的電腦合成。“這是我最棒的角色，儘管屏幕上沒人看得到我本人，不過角色在電影中的經歷對我來說非常刺激。”機器人索尼的銀幕表現也將成為本片令人關註的焦點。
就本片的特效水片而言，僅僅提及以上是遠遠不夠的。三位金牌特效製作人加上數十位特效製作師，以及新西蘭知名的WETA（《指環王》係列）的鼎力協助，《機械公敵》全力描繪出一個2035年的芝加哥——機器人遍布，流光玻璃街道和未來建築繁屹的未來都市。但我們也不用擔心這僅是一部充滿花哨特效的電影，導演亞歷剋斯•普羅亞斯（《移魂都市》）表示，“我們把故事和情感放到第一位，如此電腦動畫將提高電影效果而不是分散觀衆的註意力。”
事實上，本片在敘事方法上多少有點《少數派報告》的影子，但結合阿西莫夫的機器人三大定律、好萊塢最炙手可熱的黑人影星威爾•史密斯還有“性感蘋果造型”的機器人這三大最吸引的噱頭，《機械公敵》必將成為七月票房大熱。問題衹有一個：這部影片能否最終成為像《終結者》一樣的科幻經典？
《機械公敵》-演員介紹
《機械公敵》威爾•史密斯
威爾•史密斯
美國演員，高中畢業後癡心於歌唱事業，遂决定放棄上大學，做全職的藝人。1989年首次獲得葛萊美奬“最佳饒舌歌演唱奬”。進而成為NBC電視影集《活力王子》(TheFreshPrinceofBelAir)的男主角。在樂壇獲得巨大成功之後，威爾•史密斯嚮幾個演藝公司的主管表示了他對演戲的興趣，這其中包括華納總裁班尼•梅迪納。梅迪納是在洛杉磯出生窮苦但卻在洛杉磯的的富人區貝浮力山莊的一個富人家庭度過了他的青少年時期。他當時正好在計劃根據他的親身經歷拍一部電視劇。梅迪納覺得威爾•史密斯是正好的人選。據好萊塢內部人士透露，當年威爾•史密斯在試鏡時念劇本念得如此精彩，美國國傢廣播電臺當場拍板决定上戲。1990年，《貝萊爾的新鮮王子》開始播放，深受廣大觀衆喜愛，一播就是六年。
儘管威爾•史密斯看起來象一個大大咧咧的小混混，其實他出身中等家庭，父親是工程師，母親是教育界人士。威爾•史密斯的書讀得更是出色，當年麻省理工學院給他全奬讓他去讀書，但是他因為要全身心投入演藝界，不得不拒絶。《貝萊爾的新鮮王子》的成功使威爾•史密斯與許多好萊塢的出色演員建立起了親密關係，這其中包括大量黑人演員，如瓊斯，比爾•考茲比，鬍比•歌德寶，以及丹澤爾•華盛頓。
1993年以主角身份躍登大銀幕，在一部諷刺紐約知識分子的文藝片《六度分離》之中，扮演一個自稱是黑人巨星薜尼鮑迪兒子的老千。1995年主演警匪動作片《絶地戰警》便一舉成名，《獨立日》、《黑超特警組》全球票房奏捷後，身價飆到巔峰。近幾年接拍了許多賣座的動作片。
《機械公敵》布裏吉特•莫伊納罕
布裏吉特•莫伊納罕
布麗姬•穆娜是好萊塢目前除了傑米•李•柯蒂斯和薛歌妮•韋弗之外為數不多可以胜任高智商的強硬角色而外形又不失優雅嫵媚的女演員之一。1970年生於紐約的Binghamton，和兩個哥哥一起在Longmeadow長大，結果她也如同假小子一般多動，愛好各種體育項目，高中是籃球隊隊長，選擇去上橄欖球課而不是戲劇班。布麗姬先是登上時尚T臺並逐漸小有名氣，出現在Glamour、Vogue等衆多著名雜志之上，之後又進入了紐約 CaymichaelPattenStudio學習表演。1999年，布麗姬作為嘉賓出演熱門劇《欲望都市》中的Natasha一角，次年影片《女狼俱樂部》中吞雲吐霧的酒吧女招待一角給觀衆留下了深刻印象，接下來又出現在了一係列備受觀註的熱門影片中，包括《諜海計中計》、《戰爭之王》、《我，機器人》以及《玩命記憶》等等，戲路也愈來愈廣阔。
布麗姬的科學家父親後來成了麻省阿默斯特大學(UMass)的一名管理人員，母親的職業是教師並且還在2005年和布麗姬一起出演過一則 Bostonarea的電視廣告。此外布麗姬•穆娜2004年開始和新英格蘭愛國者隊的明星四分位TomBrady約會，但在2006年的感恩節分手，07年布麗姬迎來了自己第一個孩子的降生。
《機械公敵》-穿幫鏡頭
連貫性錯誤：
蘭寧博士的貓出現的絶大多數場景，她的眼睛都是藍色的。但是在史普納跳過噴泉那場戲，貓的眼睛變成黃色了。史普納和少尉在酒吧喝酒，少尉酒瓶上面的商標，每次切換鏡頭角度一次，就變化一次。在隧道追逐戲後，史普納去檢查他的腳踝，開始他的腿是分開的，下一個鏡頭，他的左腿就疊放在了右腳上。當加爾文博士走進她的實驗室去問桑尼時，她得走下幾級臺階。攝像機從她背後推進的時候，可以看見她走了四步下臺階，但是，那兒一共就衹有三級臺階。
暴露錯誤：
史普納和加爾文博士試圖關閉VIKI，機器人襲擊他們的那場戲，一個長鏡頭拍攝了史普納對着他身邊四面射擊並跑動。這個明顯是CGI做的，因為有些瞬間可以看出畫面裏他的頭跟脖子或者身體分開沒挨着。
《機械公敵》-影片點評
未來，發達的高科技社會中發生的足以改變人類歷史的危機--《機械公敵》的故事藍本，最早來源於編劇傑夫•溫塔JeffVintar十多年以前創作的劇本《Hardwired》，它講述了一樁神秘的謀殺案，而機器人可能纔是幕後元兇。製片人勞倫斯•馬剋LaurenceMark對這個故事相當感興趣，與此同時，二十世紀福斯電影公司一直想拍一部有關機器人的大型電影，遂將之列入籌拍日程，並初步擬訂由亞歷剋斯•普羅亞斯AlexProyas執導。2000年初，傑夫•溫塔飛赴澳洲開始同導演普羅亞斯就《機械公敵》拍片計劃進行溝通，整個合作案足足花了兩年多。
開始時，該片被定位於未來背景下的謀殺驚悚片，接下來他們嘗試將格局放大以便有更多可發揮的空間。因為導演普羅亞斯對視覺風格獨到且優異的品味，主創人員最終達成共識，要將《機械公敵》拍成宏大背景下的史詩浩劫，他們的野心促使該片必須要在視覺特效上力爭有所突破。
在當時，製片人約翰•戴維斯JohnDavis名下的製片公司拿到了《機械公敵》的電影版權，而導演普羅亞斯在科幻大師艾薩剋•阿西莫夫IsaacAsimov的小說裏找到了劇本以外的視覺元素，阿西莫夫作品中的思想和人物很自然地融入編劇傑夫•溫塔的未來謀殺案劇本。
《機械公敵》-一句話評論
What will you do with yours?
機械公敵機械公敵
Laws are made to be broken
One man saw it coming.
情節過於簡單而令人失望，追逐和動作場面充斥着科幻電影常規濫用的CGI技術處理。
——芝加哥太陽報
非常熟練，但也明顯讓人失望，鬧獨立的機器人和流氓警察在一些片段裏顯得鬧哄哄的。
——倫敦時報
這部高科技電影，拍的好看但是顯得智商並不高。
——觀察傢
作為對人工智能技術的倫理探索，這部電影比《A.I.》要更謙遜、更迷人。
——BBC電影評論
動作場面十分引人入勝。雖然不能算是歷史性突破，但通過我們這個時代的數字技術，觀看機器人對打的場面着實令人興奮。
——視覺周刊
《機械公敵》-完全班底
威爾·史密斯：官方首選
據幾位製片人口徑一致的“官方”說法，威爾·史密斯是製作方的首選。同時，他還答應在該片中擔任監製(此前，他曾為由羅伯特·德尼羅和埃迪·墨菲主演的影片《作秀時刻》(Showtime)。擔任監製)，正是由於威爾的推薦，《美麗心靈》的金奬編劇阿齊瓦·高斯曼Akiva Goldsman也得已加入幕後陣容。
機械公敵機械公敵
“《機械公敵》最吸引我的是，它的中心概念是機器人沒有問題，科技並不是問題本身，人類邏輯的極限纔真的是問題，而最終，我們成為自己最大的敵人。”這是威爾·史密斯出演該片的最大體會。
布裏吉特·莫伊納罕：熱忱至上
依舊引用官方的說法：“她能夠非常貼切地傳達我們對這個角色的設計，也就是在機器人般冰冷的外表下，卻有着很人性的熱忱。”
相貌秀麗的布裏吉特·莫伊納罕從影片《妹力四射》(Coyote Ugly)中迅速崛起。在熱門劇集《欲望都市》中她也曾有上佳表現。影片《新手》(The Recruit)中她與阿爾·帕西諾和科林·法瑞爾有過愉快的合作。
導演：亞歷剋斯·普羅亞斯
這位來自澳洲且科班出身的導演，素來以擅長營造充滿神秘和未來感的影片而聞名。1994年，他憑一部改編自同名漫畫的《烏鴉》(The Crow)令世人所知。四年後，更是以那部《移魂都市》(Dark City)徵服了觀衆。此前，他還自編自導了其第一部描寫現實世界的青春片《車庫時光》(Garage Days)。
亞歷剋斯自小便是阿西莫夫的忠實讀者，他一直夢想着能拍一部如《機械公敵》的影片，這次他夢想成真了。
NS-5基本資料
高度180公分，耐久鈦金屬外殼，具456個活動零件，需經由12位博士組裝完成，熔點華氏六千度，可負重800磅，能承受數千磅撞擊。電子智慧腦可復製人類自由意志，具有1TB內存，每秒能執行6兆筆以上運算，擁有80種語言能力。
科幻大師阿西莫夫--劃時代的機器人三大安全法則：
1. 機器人不能傷害人類，或坐視人類受到傷害而袖手旁觀。
2. 除非違背第一法則，機器人必須服從人類的命令。
3. 在不違背第一和第二法則前提下，機器人必須保護自己。
《我，機器人》（I, Robot），是美國作傢艾薩剋·阿西莫夫出版於1950年的科幻
機械公敵機械公敵
小說短篇集，收錄9篇短篇小說。大多原載於1940年到1950年間的美國《超級科學故事》（Super Science Stories）雜志和《驚奇科幻小說》雜志（Astounding Science Fiction）。書中的短篇故事各自獨立，卻擁有共同的主題，探討人類與機器人之間的道德問題。這些故事結合之後，開創出阿西莫夫的機器人浩翰虛構歷史。
串連起這幾個故事的靈魂人物，是美國機器人與機械人股份有限公司(常簡稱為「美國機器人公司」)（U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc.）的機器人心理學家蘇珊·凱文（Dr. Susan Calvin）博士。在出版短篇集時，阿西莫夫藉由晚年凱文接受專訪，回憶過往如何運用「機器人心理學」（Robopsychology）跟行為失常機器人的接觸。著名的「機器人三定律」就是在這部短篇集裏初次登場。
想像一下未來，如果機器人有了主體意識，他們可以思考，可以决策，甚至可以瞧不起人類（你們這些手無縛雞之力、由蛋白質組成、每天要昏睡八個鐘頭的傢夥……），世界將會變得如何？
早在1950年，艾西莫夫就已經設想到了這些情景，並且以超越時代的思維，創建出宏觀的未來機器人世界。於是，偉大的「機器人學三大法則」就此誕生，成為科幻界無可撼動的鐵律：
一、機器人不得傷害人類，或袖手旁觀坐視人類受到傷害。
二、除非違背第一法則，機器人必須服從人類的命令。
三、在不違背第一法則及第二法則的情況下，機器人必須保護自己。
因此，巨大的水星采礦機器人SPD13，因為三大法則的衝突而在原地打轉；小巧可愛的太空站主控機器人QT1，不僅完全取代人的工作，甚至還開始思考關於造物主的哲學問題；據說可以透視心靈的機器人RB34，居然懂得用人類的心理，揣摩說出他們想聽的話；而想要在一大群Nester10號機器人中，找出一個隱藏其中逃脫者，竟成為人與機器人大玩心理遊戲的戰場……
艾西莫夫筆下的「機器人心理學家」蘇珊˙凱文，親身體驗這些事件的演進，也記下了20世紀末到21世紀中的機器人發展史──從簡單的褓姆型機器人，一直到全世界衹有四臺的超級電腦。隨着機器人越來越聰明，功能越來越強大，她不得不嘆道：「一開始機器人還不會說話，但最後他們卻挺立於人類與毀滅之間……」
本書曾於2004年被改編為電影《機械公敵》。電影衹從書中引用了機器人學三大法則和一些人名，主體內容並無直接相關；但是從《我，機器人》小說中，讀者可以找到電影的原始創意精神，並瞭解三大法則的真正涵義。
艾西莫夫的科幻小說相當簡單易讀，故事結構都很清楚，可說是非常大衆化的科幻作品。在20世紀科幻小說的寫作發展史裏，艾西莫夫與剋拉剋、海萊因齊名，被譽為最偉大的「三巨頭」。艾西莫夫完成了【機器人】、【帝國】、【基地】三大科幻小說係列，評價都非常高，而本書便是【機器人】係列裏第一本，同時也是最精采的一本。如果你想認識艾西莫夫和他的科幻小說，《我，機器人》絶對是你的首選！
《機械公敵》-影片觀後感
在機械公敵前面的時候，機器人桑尼說起它做了一個夢，在夢中，有一個人站在沙堆上，那人是領導機器人解放的領導者！所以人開始的時候都以為是威爾· 史密斯所扮演的戴爾。史普納！但在影片就要結束的最後那一個鏡頭裏，站在沙堆上的那“人”卻是機器人桑尼！
大傢都知道，桑尼已經學會了人類的思想！沒有人知道它站在沙堆上觀看着下面這無數機器人時有什麽想法！
但如果它當時擁有一個在人類中名為“徵服”的念頭後，會不會發生一些所有人都意想不到的結局呢？
Several of the stories feature the character of Dr. Susan Calvin, chief robopsychologist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., the major manufacturer of robots. Upon their publication in this collection, Asimov wrote a framing sequence presenting the stories as Calvin's reminiscences during an interview with her about her life's work, chiefly concerned with aberrant behaviour of robots, and the use of "robopsychology" to sort them out. The book also contains the short story in which Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics first appear. Other characters that appear in these short stories are Powell and Donovan, a field-testing team which locates flaws in USRMM's prototype models.
The collection's title is the same as a short story written by Eando Binder, but is not connected to it. Asimov wanted to call his collection Mind and Iron, and initially objected when the publisher changed the title.
Contents
* "Robbie"
* "Runaround"
* "Reason"
* "Catch that Rabbit"
* "Liar!"
* "Little Lost Robot"
* "Escape!"
* "Evidence"
* "The Evitable Conflict"
Publication history
Cover art for I, Robot featuring a scene from "Runaround".
* New York: Gnome Press, (Trade paperback "Armed Forces Edition", 1951)
* New York: Grosset & Dunlap, (hardcover, 1952)
* London: Grayson, (hardcover, 1952)
* British SF Book Club, (hardcover, 1954)
* New York: Signet Books, (mass market paperback, 1956)
* New York: Doubleday, (hardcover, 1963)
* London: Dobson, (hardcover, 1967)
* ISBN 0-449-23949-7 (mass market paperback, 1970)
* ISBN 0-345-31482-4 (mass market paperback, 1983)
* ISBN 0-606-17134-7 (prebound, 1991)
* ISBN 0-553-29438-5 (mass market paperback, 1991)
* ISBN 1-4014-0039-6 (e-book, 2001)
* ISBN 1-4014-0038-8 (e-book, 2001)
* ISBN 0-553-80370-0 (hardcover, 2004)
* ISBN 91-27-11227-6 (hardcover, 2005)
* ISBN 0-7857-7338-X (hardcover)
* ISBN 0-00-711963-1 (paperback, UK, new edition)
* ISBN 0-586-02532-4 (paperback, UK)
Film, TV and theatrical adaptations
At least three of the short stories from I, Robot have been adapted for television. The first was an 1962 episode of Out of this World hosted by Boris Karloff called "Little Lost Robot" with Maxine Audley as Susan Calvin. In the 1960s, two short stories from this collection were made into episodes of the television series Out of the Unknown: "The Prophet" (1967), based on "Reason"; and "Liar!" (1969). The 12th episode of the USSR science fiction TV series This Fantastic World, filmed in 1987 and entitled Don't Joke with Robots was based on works by Aleksandr Belyaev, Fredrik Kilander and Asimov's "Liar!" story.
In the late 1970s, Warner Brothers acquired the option to make a film based on the book, but no screenplay was ever accepted. The most notable attempt was one by Harlan Ellison, who collaborated with Asimov himself to create a version which captured the spirit of the original. Asimov is quoted as saying that this screenplay would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever made."
Ellison's script builds a framework around Asimov's short stories that involves a reporter named Robert Bratenahl tracking down information about Susan Calvin's alleged former lover Stephen Byerly. Asimov's stories are presented as flashbacks that differ from the originals in their stronger emphasis on Calvin's character. Ellison placed Calvin into stories in which she did not originally appear and fleshed out her character's role in ones where she did. In constructing the script as a series of flashbacks that focused on character development rather than action, Ellison used the film Citizen Kane as a role model.
Although acclaimed by critics, the screenplay is generally considered to have been unfilmable based upon the technology and average film budgets of the time. Asimov also believed that the film may have been scrapped because of a conflict between Ellison and the producers: when the producers suggested changes in the script, instead of being diplomatic as advised by Asimov, Ellison "reacted violently" and offended the producers. The script eventually appeared in book form under the title I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, in 1994 (reprinted 2004, ISBN 1-4165-0600-4).
"I, Robot" is the title of an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. The episode, based on the Eando Binder short story, first aired on 14 November 1964, during the second season. It was remade under the same title in 1995.
The film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was released by Twentieth Century Fox on July 16, 2004 in the United States. Its plot is not based on any one story in the collection but does incorporate elements of "Little Lost Robot" and other stories, and uses many of Asimov's characters and ideas about robots, including the Three Laws.
Influence
In 2004 The Saturday Evening Post said that I, Robot's Three Laws "revolutionized the science fiction genre and made robots far more interesting than they ever had been before." I, Robot has influenced many aspects of modern popular culture, particularly with respect to science fiction and technology. One example of this is in the technology industry. The name of the real-life modem manufacturer named U.S. Robotics was directly inspired by I, Robot. The name is taken from the name of a robot manufacturer ("United States Robots and Mechanical Men") that appears throughout Asimov's robot short stories.
Many works in the field of science fiction have also paid homage to Asimov's collection. The animated science fiction/comedy Futurama makes several references to I, Robot. The title of the episode "I, Roommate" is a spoof on I, Robot although the plot of the episode has little to do with the original stories. Additionally, the episode "The Cyber House Rules" included an optician named "Eye Robot" and the episode "Anthology of Interest II" included a segment called "I, Meatbag."[citation needed] Also in "Bender's Game" the psychiatric doctor is shown a logical fallacy and explodes when the assistant shouts "Liar!" a la "Liar!" . And an episode of the original Star Trek series, "I, Mudd" which depicts a planet of androids in need of humans references "I, Robot." Another reference appears in the title of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "I, Borg". in which Geordi La Forge befriends a lost member of the Borg collective and teaches it a sense of individuality and free will.
The Positronic brain, which Asimov named his robots' central processors, is what powers Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as other Soong type Androids. Positronic brains have been referenced in a number of other television shows including Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time... Space, Perry Rhodan, The Number of the Beast, and others.
Author Cory Doctorow has written a story called "I, Robot" as homage to Asimov, as well as "I row-boat", both released in the short-story collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. He has also said, "If I return to this theme, it will be with a story about uplifted cheese sandwiches, called 'I, Rarebit.'".
Other cultural references to the book are less directly related to science fiction and technology. The 1977 album I Robot, by The Alan Parsons Project, was inspired by Asimov's I, Robot. In its original conception, the album was to follow the themes and concepts presented in the short story collection. The Alan Parsons Project were not able to obtain the rights, so the album's concept was altered slightly (although the name was kept). The 2002 electronica album by experimental artist Edman Goodrich (known, at times, to operate under the aliases of "je, le roi!" and "The Ghost Quartet") shares the title of I, Robot, and is heavily influenced by Asimovian themes. The 2009 album, I, Human, by Singaporean band Deus Ex Machina draws heavily upon Asimov's principles on robotics and applies it to the concept of cloning. The satirical newspaper The Onion published an article entitled "I, Rowboat" in which an anthropomorphized rowboat gives a speech parodying much of the angst experienced by robots in Asimov's fiction, including a statement of the "Three Laws of Rowboatics."
The name of the movie itself is taken from Robert Graves' book I, Claudius.
1996《我從外星來》（又名《喂，有人在嗎？》）（Hello? Is Anybody There?）
一艘太空船穿越廣袤的銀河，嚮着一顆藍藍緑緑的星球一地球前進。來自艾爾喬星的男孩米加打開艙門，對着夜空大喊：“喂，有人在嗎？”《喂，有人在嗎？》是喬斯坦.賈德繼《蘇菲的世界》、〈紙牌的秘密〉之後推出的最新力作。故事場景從西方哲學的原鄉歐洲大陸延展至無垠的外達空，敘述小男孩喬金和外星人米加的第三類接觸奇遇。〈蘇菲的世界〉提出了“你是誰？”、“世界從哪裏來？”等問題：〈喂，有人在嗎？〉問的是“我們是誰？”、“我們從哪裏來”？ 可以說是一本“小蘇菲”。作者透過深入淺出的童話形式，讓奇遇之謎和哲學主題不斷地碰撞，穿透夢境和現實，極具夢幻寫實趣味，也展現出一個至為恢宏的地球觀和宇宙觀。
一艘太空船穿越廣袤的銀河，嚮着一顆藍藍緑緑的星球一地球前進。來自艾爾喬星的男孩米加打開艙門，對着夜空大喊：“喂，有人在嗎？”《喂，有人在嗎？》是喬斯坦.賈德繼《蘇菲的世界》、〈紙牌的秘密〉之後推出的最新力作。故事場景從西方哲學的原鄉歐洲大陸延展至無垠的外達空，敘述小男孩喬金和外星人米加的第三類接觸奇遇。〈蘇菲的世界〉提出了“你是誰？”、“世界從哪裏來？”等問題：〈喂，有人在嗎？〉問的是“我們是誰？”、“我們從哪裏來”？ 可以說是一本“小蘇菲”。作者透過深入淺出的童話形式，讓奇遇之謎和哲學主題不斷地碰撞，穿透夢境和現實，極具夢幻寫實趣味，也展現出一個至為恢宏的地球觀和宇宙觀。
儒勒·凡爾納（Jules Verne，1828年2月8日－1905年3月24日），法國小說傢、博物學家，現代科幻小說的重要開創者之一。他一生寫了六十多部大大小小的科幻小說，總題為《在已知和未知的世界漫遊》。他以其大量著作和突出貢獻，被譽為“科幻小說之父”。由於凡爾納知識非常豐富，他小說作品的著述、描寫多有科學根據，所以當時他小說的幻想，如今成為了有趣的預言。
儒勒·凡爾納是根據Jules Verne法語發音的中文譯名，Jules Gabriel Verne的名字也曾被譯為“蕭魯士”、“威男”、“焦土威奴”和“查理士·培倫”。
凡爾納-生平
儒勒·加布裏埃爾·凡爾納（Jules Gabriel Verne）於1828年2月8日，生於法國南特。他的傢族有航海傳統，這一點深深地影響了他日後的寫作。童年時期，他曾私自出走到一艘商船上，企圖隨船出海，但被發現送還父母，從此更被嚴看管；他為此嚮父母保證以後衹“躺在床上在幻想中旅行”。
1847年，他被送到巴黎學習法律。但繁華的巴黎卻激發了他對戲劇的狂熱。1850年末，他的第一部劇作發表了。凡爾納的父親得知兒子無意繼續攻讀法律後大發雷霆，决定斷絶經濟援助。從此，年輕的凡爾納不得不靠寫作來賺錢，維持生計。
在巴黎圖書館花費了相當時間鑽研地理、工程和航天等科學後，凡爾納完成了他的第一部小說《氣球上的五星期》（Cinq semaines en ballon，1863）。但他試圖出版這本書的過程並不順利——連續16傢出版社拒絶了凡爾納，屢戰屢敗的凡爾納一氣之下把書稿投入火中，但他的妻子把書稿搶救出來；幸運的是，第17傢出版社終於同意出版本書。隨後，他又很快開始寫作後來成為早期科幻小說經典的作品：《地心遊記》（Voyage au centre de la terre，1864）、《從地球到月球》（De la terre à la lune，1866）和《海底兩萬裏》（20,000 lieues sous les mers，1873）
小說大獲成功，成了暢銷書，在歐洲大受歡迎。凡爾納也成了一位富翁。1876年，他購置了一艘大遊艇，開始環遊歐洲。他的最後一部小說是1905年出版的《大海的入侵》（L'invasion de la mer）。
教皇利奧十三世1884年接見他時曾對他說“我並不是不知道您的作品的科學價值，但我最珍重的卻是它們的純潔、道德價值和精神力量。”
儒勒·凡爾納於1905 年3月24日失去知覺，25日清晨8時去世。
凡爾納-創作之路
1828 年2月8日，凡爾納生於南特，1848年赴巴黎學習法律，寫過短篇小說和劇本。
1863年起，他開始發表科學幻想冒險小說，以總名稱為《在已知和未知的世界中奇異的漫遊》一舉成名。代表作為三部麯 《格蘭特船長的兒女》《海底兩萬裏》 《神秘島》 。
凡爾納總共創作了六十六部長篇小說或短篇小說集，還有幾個劇本，一册《法國地理》和一部六捲本的《偉大的旅行傢和偉大的旅行史》。主要作品還有《氣球上的五星期》.《地心遊記》.《機器島》.《漂逝的半島》.《八十天環遊地球》等20多部長篇科幻歷險小說。
凡爾納-作品特點
主要作品出版於19世紀末，其科幻小說中的許多設想和描述在20世紀成為了現實，所以他的一些作品現在讓人讀起來感覺並不“天馬行空”。其中最著名的莫過於在《海底兩萬裏》中尼莫（Nemo，這個名字在拉丁文中有“無人”的意思）船長的巨型潛水艇“鸚鵡蠃號”（Nautilus，過去有的中文版中曾按其發音譯為“諾第留斯號”）。美國建造的世界第一艘核動力潛艇鸚鵡蠃號（USS Nautilus SSN-571，1954年下水）雖然名承自一艘1803年時的美國海軍多桅縱帆船（Schooner）與之後襲名的兩艘傳統動力潛艇，但由於核動力潛艇擁有如小說中虛構的鸚鵡蠃號般超長的蓄航力，因此使用此命名多少帶有影射小說中之鸚鵡蠃號的雙關意味。法國的無人駕駛機器人潛水艇也以此命名。此外，《從地球到月球》當中，哥倫比亞號飛船（或說是炮彈）的發射地點在美國佛羅裏達州的坦帕，竟然與卡納維拉爾角（肯尼迪航天中心所在地）幾乎位於同一緯度綫上，兩地之間直綫距離僅120英裏，前者座落在佛羅裏達半島的西海岸，後者在東海岸。
凡爾納-主要作品
凡爾納的作品《八十日環遊世界》 凡爾納的作品《八十日環遊世界》
三部麯
《格蘭特船長的兒女》（1956年，中國青年出版社）。
《海底兩萬裏》
《神秘島》（1958年，中國青年出版社）。
探月兩部麯
《從地球到月球》，又名《月界旅行》。
《環繞月球》
探險
《八十日環遊世界》
《氣球上的五星期》
《徵服者羅比爾》
《太陽係歷險記》
《地心遊記》，又名《地底旅行》。
《兩年假期(十五少年漂流記)》
民族獨立和革命
《桑道夫伯爵》
《烽火島》
《多瑙河領航員》
其他
《漂逝的半島》
《十五歲的船長》
《機器島》
《隱身新娘》
《昂梯菲爾奇遇記》
《印度貴婦的五億法郎》
自20世紀以來，凡爾納的多部作品曾不止一次地被搬上過大屏幕，比如《格蘭特船長的兒女》（1936年，由前蘇聯拍攝），《海底兩萬裏》（1954年電影，1997年電視重拍），《地心遊記》（1959年），《環遊世界八十天》（2004年）。改編自凡爾納的《地心遊記》已於2008年重新以立體電腦特技搬上屏幕，該片名為《地心冒險》，由《神鬼傳奇》男角布蘭登·費雪主演，於8月14日上映 。
凡爾納-遺作
凡爾納死後，其遺著經整理出版的計有：
1905年：《世界盡頭的燈塔》（教育社）
1908年：《金火山》（教育社，此書前十四章係儒勒·凡爾納所寫，後四章係其子米歇爾補寫。）
1907年：《湯姆生公司分行》（P．貢多羅·德拉·李娃考證，此書大綱情節係儒勒·凡爾納擬就，由其子寫成。）
1908年：《流星追逐記》（此書前十七章為儒勒·凡爾納所寫，後四章係其子米歇爾續成。）《多瑙河的領航員》
1909年：《柔納當的海上遇難者》
1910年：《威廉·斯托裏茨的秘密》（小說結局曾加潤色）《永恆的亞當》《昨天和明天》（中短篇小說集，其中包括《拉東一傢人《升半咪音先生和降半音咪小姐》、《讓·摩榮娜的命運》、《洪堡》、《在二十世紀》、《2889年一個美國新聞記者的一天》、《永恆的亞當》。）
1914年：《巴沙剋長老會的驚人奇遇》
凡爾納-魯迅的中文譯本
魯迅先生曾在辛亥革命之前就根據當時在日本已被譯成日語的譯作（其先由法語譯成英語再譯日語），翻譯了Jules Gabriel Verne的兩部著名作品：
《月界旅行》（1903年10月，進化社）
《地底旅行》（1906年3月，啓新書局）
儒勒·凡爾納是根據Jules Verne法語發音的中文譯名，Jules Gabriel Verne的名字也曾被譯為“蕭魯士”、“威男”、“焦土威奴”和“查理士·培倫”。
凡爾納-生平
儒勒·加布裏埃爾·凡爾納（Jules Gabriel Verne）於1828年2月8日，生於法國南特。他的傢族有航海傳統，這一點深深地影響了他日後的寫作。童年時期，他曾私自出走到一艘商船上，企圖隨船出海，但被發現送還父母，從此更被嚴看管；他為此嚮父母保證以後衹“躺在床上在幻想中旅行”。
1847年，他被送到巴黎學習法律。但繁華的巴黎卻激發了他對戲劇的狂熱。1850年末，他的第一部劇作發表了。凡爾納的父親得知兒子無意繼續攻讀法律後大發雷霆，决定斷絶經濟援助。從此，年輕的凡爾納不得不靠寫作來賺錢，維持生計。
在巴黎圖書館花費了相當時間鑽研地理、工程和航天等科學後，凡爾納完成了他的第一部小說《氣球上的五星期》（Cinq semaines en ballon，1863）。但他試圖出版這本書的過程並不順利——連續16傢出版社拒絶了凡爾納，屢戰屢敗的凡爾納一氣之下把書稿投入火中，但他的妻子把書稿搶救出來；幸運的是，第17傢出版社終於同意出版本書。隨後，他又很快開始寫作後來成為早期科幻小說經典的作品：《地心遊記》（Voyage au centre de la terre，1864）、《從地球到月球》（De la terre à la lune，1866）和《海底兩萬裏》（20,000 lieues sous les mers，1873）
小說大獲成功，成了暢銷書，在歐洲大受歡迎。凡爾納也成了一位富翁。1876年，他購置了一艘大遊艇，開始環遊歐洲。他的最後一部小說是1905年出版的《大海的入侵》（L'invasion de la mer）。
教皇利奧十三世1884年接見他時曾對他說“我並不是不知道您的作品的科學價值，但我最珍重的卻是它們的純潔、道德價值和精神力量。”
儒勒·凡爾納於1905 年3月24日失去知覺，25日清晨8時去世。
凡爾納-創作之路
1828 年2月8日，凡爾納生於南特，1848年赴巴黎學習法律，寫過短篇小說和劇本。
1863年起，他開始發表科學幻想冒險小說，以總名稱為《在已知和未知的世界中奇異的漫遊》一舉成名。代表作為三部麯 《格蘭特船長的兒女》《海底兩萬裏》 《神秘島》 。
凡爾納總共創作了六十六部長篇小說或短篇小說集，還有幾個劇本，一册《法國地理》和一部六捲本的《偉大的旅行傢和偉大的旅行史》。主要作品還有《氣球上的五星期》.《地心遊記》.《機器島》.《漂逝的半島》.《八十天環遊地球》等20多部長篇科幻歷險小說。
凡爾納-作品特點
主要作品出版於19世紀末，其科幻小說中的許多設想和描述在20世紀成為了現實，所以他的一些作品現在讓人讀起來感覺並不“天馬行空”。其中最著名的莫過於在《海底兩萬裏》中尼莫（Nemo，這個名字在拉丁文中有“無人”的意思）船長的巨型潛水艇“鸚鵡蠃號”（Nautilus，過去有的中文版中曾按其發音譯為“諾第留斯號”）。美國建造的世界第一艘核動力潛艇鸚鵡蠃號（USS Nautilus SSN-571，1954年下水）雖然名承自一艘1803年時的美國海軍多桅縱帆船（Schooner）與之後襲名的兩艘傳統動力潛艇，但由於核動力潛艇擁有如小說中虛構的鸚鵡蠃號般超長的蓄航力，因此使用此命名多少帶有影射小說中之鸚鵡蠃號的雙關意味。法國的無人駕駛機器人潛水艇也以此命名。此外，《從地球到月球》當中，哥倫比亞號飛船（或說是炮彈）的發射地點在美國佛羅裏達州的坦帕，竟然與卡納維拉爾角（肯尼迪航天中心所在地）幾乎位於同一緯度綫上，兩地之間直綫距離僅120英裏，前者座落在佛羅裏達半島的西海岸，後者在東海岸。
凡爾納-主要作品
凡爾納的作品《八十日環遊世界》 凡爾納的作品《八十日環遊世界》
三部麯
《格蘭特船長的兒女》（1956年，中國青年出版社）。
《海底兩萬裏》
《神秘島》（1958年，中國青年出版社）。
探月兩部麯
《從地球到月球》，又名《月界旅行》。
《環繞月球》
探險
《八十日環遊世界》
《氣球上的五星期》
《徵服者羅比爾》
《太陽係歷險記》
《地心遊記》，又名《地底旅行》。
《兩年假期(十五少年漂流記)》
民族獨立和革命
《桑道夫伯爵》
《烽火島》
《多瑙河領航員》
其他
《漂逝的半島》
《十五歲的船長》
《機器島》
《隱身新娘》
《昂梯菲爾奇遇記》
《印度貴婦的五億法郎》
自20世紀以來，凡爾納的多部作品曾不止一次地被搬上過大屏幕，比如《格蘭特船長的兒女》（1936年，由前蘇聯拍攝），《海底兩萬裏》（1954年電影，1997年電視重拍），《地心遊記》（1959年），《環遊世界八十天》（2004年）。改編自凡爾納的《地心遊記》已於2008年重新以立體電腦特技搬上屏幕，該片名為《地心冒險》，由《神鬼傳奇》男角布蘭登·費雪主演，於8月14日上映 。
凡爾納-遺作
凡爾納死後，其遺著經整理出版的計有：
1905年：《世界盡頭的燈塔》（教育社）
1908年：《金火山》（教育社，此書前十四章係儒勒·凡爾納所寫，後四章係其子米歇爾補寫。）
1907年：《湯姆生公司分行》（P．貢多羅·德拉·李娃考證，此書大綱情節係儒勒·凡爾納擬就，由其子寫成。）
1908年：《流星追逐記》（此書前十七章為儒勒·凡爾納所寫，後四章係其子米歇爾續成。）《多瑙河的領航員》
1909年：《柔納當的海上遇難者》
1910年：《威廉·斯托裏茨的秘密》（小說結局曾加潤色）《永恆的亞當》《昨天和明天》（中短篇小說集，其中包括《拉東一傢人《升半咪音先生和降半音咪小姐》、《讓·摩榮娜的命運》、《洪堡》、《在二十世紀》、《2889年一個美國新聞記者的一天》、《永恆的亞當》。）
1914年：《巴沙剋長老會的驚人奇遇》
凡爾納-魯迅的中文譯本
魯迅先生曾在辛亥革命之前就根據當時在日本已被譯成日語的譯作（其先由法語譯成英語再譯日語），翻譯了Jules Gabriel Verne的兩部著名作品：
《月界旅行》（1903年10月，進化社）
《地底旅行》（1906年3月，啓新書局）
5 月 18 日清晨，古老的敦考剋教堂的神甫 5 點鐘就起床了，像往常一樣，為幾個虔誠的教徒舉行小彌撒。
他身穿教袍，就要走嚮聖壇的時刻，一個人興衝衝而又略帶不安地來到聖器保存室。這是個 60 歲左右的老水手，但仍然身強力壯、精力充沛，臉上的表情憨厚而開朗。
他身穿教袍，就要走嚮聖壇的時刻，一個人興衝衝而又略帶不安地來到聖器保存室。這是個 60 歲左右的老水手，但仍然身強力壯、精力充沛，臉上的表情憨厚而開朗。
如果我在這個故事中說到我自己，那是因為這個故事令人震驚的事件本身與我本人息息相關，這些事件在二十世紀所發生的事件中毫無疑問也是非同尋常，甚至可以說無與倫比的。有時候，我甚至自問這些事是否真正發生過，倘若這些栩栩如生的事不僅僅衹是我的想像而確實是深藏在我記憶中的真實事件，作為華盛頓聯邦署的督察長官，我常常懷有去調查一切，而且把那些不可思議的事非弄個水落石出不可的願望。因此，我自然對這些奇異怪事極有興致。從我年青時候起，我就受雇於政府，處理過各式各樣重要的事務，也接受過一些秘密使命，因此，我的上司將這樁奇事交給我負責也是情理中的事，正因為如此，我發現我自己不得不為這些難以理解的怪事而絞盡腦汁。
在閱讀這些前所未聞的記敘時，至關重要的是，讀者諸君務必相信我的話。因為，其中的若幹事實，都是我親眼所見的。倘若你不願相信我的話，也未嘗不可，因為連我本人也未必相信其真實性。
Plot outline
A series of unexplained happenings occur across the eastern United States, caused by objects moving with such great speed that they are nearly invisible. The first-person narrator John Strock, 'Head inspector in the federal police department' in Washington, DC, travels to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to investigate and discovers that all the phenomena are being caused by Robur, (a brilliant inventor who had previously appeared in Verne's Robur the Conqueror).
Robur had perfected a new invention, which he has dubbed the Terror. This is a ten-meter long vehicle, that is alternately speedboat, submarine, automobile, or aircraft. It can travel at the (then) unheard of speed of 150 miles per hour on land and at over 200 mph when flying.
Strock attempts to capture the Terror but instead is captured himself. The strange craft eludes its pursuers and heads to the Caribbean where Robur deliberately heads into a thunderstorm. The Terror is struck by lightning and falls into the ocean. Strock is rescued from the vehicle's wreckage but Robur's body is never found. The reader is left to judge whether he has actually died or not.
Literary significance & criticism
Master of the World contains a number of ideas current to Verne's time which are now widely known to be errors. A vehicle travelling at 200 mph is not invisible to the naked eye, nor does high speed reduce its weight.
Allusions/references
The novel's events take place in the summer of 1903, as characters refer to events of the Mount Pelée eruption on Martinique in 1902. Verne took a few liberties with American geography in the novel. The location in the book in the mountains of North Carolina is the city of Morganton, however, the specific mountain in the novel, called the Great Aerie, in name resembles Mount Airy, which is also in North Carolina, but not in the region near Morganton. Additionally, another portion of the novel takes place in a large deep natural lake in Kansas, whereas no such lake exists within that state.
Adaptations
* 1961 - Master of the World starring Vincent Price and Charles Bronson. In the script, Richard Matheson combined elements of this book (mainly the character, Strock) with more of the novel's predecessor, Robur the Conqueror (notably the Albatross rather than the Terror), and more sophisticated thematic elements of his own. An article in Filmfax magazine on American International Pictures included a photo of a model of the Terror for an unmade film called Stratofin, which was to be produced as the sequel to Master of the World.
* There is a more faithful version of this novel, with the same title as the 1961 film, that aired as a half-hour cartoon TV special in the late 1970s.
* Robur is a character in the 1995 novel The Bloody Red Baron as the chief airship engineer of the Central Powers. The chapter in which he and his airship flagship appear is titled "Master of the World".
* The Terror appears in the game Pirates of the Mysterious Islands.
在閱讀這些前所未聞的記敘時，至關重要的是，讀者諸君務必相信我的話。因為，其中的若幹事實，都是我親眼所見的。倘若你不願相信我的話，也未嘗不可，因為連我本人也未必相信其真實性。
Plot outline
A series of unexplained happenings occur across the eastern United States, caused by objects moving with such great speed that they are nearly invisible. The first-person narrator John Strock, 'Head inspector in the federal police department' in Washington, DC, travels to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to investigate and discovers that all the phenomena are being caused by Robur, (a brilliant inventor who had previously appeared in Verne's Robur the Conqueror).
Robur had perfected a new invention, which he has dubbed the Terror. This is a ten-meter long vehicle, that is alternately speedboat, submarine, automobile, or aircraft. It can travel at the (then) unheard of speed of 150 miles per hour on land and at over 200 mph when flying.
Strock attempts to capture the Terror but instead is captured himself. The strange craft eludes its pursuers and heads to the Caribbean where Robur deliberately heads into a thunderstorm. The Terror is struck by lightning and falls into the ocean. Strock is rescued from the vehicle's wreckage but Robur's body is never found. The reader is left to judge whether he has actually died or not.
Literary significance & criticism
Master of the World contains a number of ideas current to Verne's time which are now widely known to be errors. A vehicle travelling at 200 mph is not invisible to the naked eye, nor does high speed reduce its weight.
Allusions/references
The novel's events take place in the summer of 1903, as characters refer to events of the Mount Pelée eruption on Martinique in 1902. Verne took a few liberties with American geography in the novel. The location in the book in the mountains of North Carolina is the city of Morganton, however, the specific mountain in the novel, called the Great Aerie, in name resembles Mount Airy, which is also in North Carolina, but not in the region near Morganton. Additionally, another portion of the novel takes place in a large deep natural lake in Kansas, whereas no such lake exists within that state.
Adaptations
* 1961 - Master of the World starring Vincent Price and Charles Bronson. In the script, Richard Matheson combined elements of this book (mainly the character, Strock) with more of the novel's predecessor, Robur the Conqueror (notably the Albatross rather than the Terror), and more sophisticated thematic elements of his own. An article in Filmfax magazine on American International Pictures included a photo of a model of the Terror for an unmade film called Stratofin, which was to be produced as the sequel to Master of the World.
* There is a more faithful version of this novel, with the same title as the 1961 film, that aired as a half-hour cartoon TV special in the late 1970s.
* Robur is a character in the 1995 novel The Bloody Red Baron as the chief airship engineer of the Central Powers. The chapter in which he and his airship flagship appear is titled "Master of the World".
* The Terror appears in the game Pirates of the Mysterious Islands.
《從地球到月球》的故事情節比較簡單。美國南北戰爭結束後，巴爾的摩城大炮俱樂部（這是大炮發明傢的俱樂部）主席巴比康提議嚮月球發射一顆炮彈，建立地球與月球之間的聯繫。法國冒險傢米歇爾·阿爾當獲悉這一消息後建議造一顆空心炮彈，他準備乘這顆炮彈到月球去探險。巴比康、米歇爾·阿爾當和尼卻爾船長剋服了種種睏難，終於在18**年12月1日乘這顆炮彈出發了。但是他們沒有到達目的地，炮彈並沒有在月球上着陸，卻在離月球2800英裏的地方繞月運行。然而，其中的科幻構思至今令人稱道。
此書不靠文學色彩，沒有打鬥情節，完全憑藉“幻想裝置”打動我們。例如，那著名的“炮彈車廂” ——彈殼飛船。
從地球到月球-炮彈
這個炮彈的外部是直徑九英尺，高十二英尺。為了不超過規定的重量，他們把彈壁做得稍微薄一些，同時卻把炮彈底做得特別厚，因為它要承受低氮硝化纖維素燃燒時産生的氣體的全部壓力，其實，炸彈和錐形圓柱體的餾彈也是這樣，底部比較厚。
這個金屬塔的出人口是在圓惟形部分上開的一個小洞，跟蒸氣鍋爐上的那些洞口一樣大小。洞門是鋁板做的，關上洞門，再擰緊結實的翼形蠃釘，小洞就嚴絲合縫地給堵起來了。這樣，旅客們一到達黑夜的天體，就可以自由地走出他們的活動監獄。
但是，單單到那兒去是不夠的，路上也應該看看呀。沒有比這更容易的了。原來在皮墊子下面有四個舷窗，舷窗上裝着非常厚的凸透鏡，兩個在炮彈周圍，第三個在彈底，第四個在尖頂，所以旅客們一路上可以同時觀察已經離開了的地球、越來越近的月亮和挂滿了繁星的天空。不過舷窗外面嵌着結實的金屬護窗板，免得受到出發時的撞擊，衹消擰下裏面的蠃絲帽就很容易地把金屬板扔抑了。這樣炮彈裏的空氣就不會漏出去，而旅客們也可以進行觀察了。
現在飛船上的返回艙，和凡爾納在19世紀所設想的十分相似！應用至少經過充分研究的科學背景，是凡爾納有別於早期作傢的基本要素。凡爾納的特殊貢獻，就在於他喜歡作準確的科學敘述，而這樣的敘述在瑪麗·雪萊或愛倫·坡和納撒尼爾·霍桑的作品中是缺少的。凡爾納的小說情節不一定十分有趣，但他的科學想象卻總是引人入勝的。不講究文學色彩、完全靠科學敘述取勝的科幻小說傢，在凡爾納之後，有一位是俄國的科學家齊奧爾科夫斯基，他在預言人類徵服太空方面大膽構思，以燃料為動力的火箭成為宇航的工具，比凡爾納的用哥倫比亞大炮發射彈殼飛船有了進一步的可行性。
其次，凡爾納嚮19世紀的讀者展示了一個“科學奇跡”成為現實的理想世界，而20世紀，他的一些科學幻想真的成了現實。例如，阿波羅登月。《科幻世界》對此進行了比較
凡爾納月球炮彈與阿波羅登月對照表
項目 凡爾納 阿波羅登月
宇航員人數 3 3
航速 36000英尺/秒 35533英尺/秒
航時 97小時13分20秒 103小時30分
降落地點 兩者僅相差十幾公裏
發射點 同為佛羅裏達卡納維拉爾角
——引自《科幻世界》1998年第10期
凡爾納說過：“在我的傳奇故事中，我必定要把我的所謂發明建立在現實基礎上，而且在應用它們時，必定讓它們的結構安排和使用的材料不完全脫離同時代的工程技術和知識領域。”因此，他的小說雖然是虛構的，但是對科學細節的描寫卻讓人相信。讀者喜愛的正是他筆下亦真亦幻的發明創造所帶來的奇跡，啓發真正科學研究正是他筆下亦真亦幻的發明創造所帶來的奇跡。
還有，其科幻構思中不僅包含科技奇跡而且包含經濟奇跡和社會奇跡，他通過形象思維嚮我們講述了“科學是生産力”，這已經在無形中涉及了社會科學領域。
The story is also notable in that Verne attempted to do some rough calculations as to the requirements for the cannon and, considering the total lack of any data on the subject at the time, some of his figures are surprisingly close to reality. However, his scenario turned out to be impractical for safe manned space travel since a much longer muzzle would have been required to reach escape velocity while limiting acceleration to survivable limits for the passengers.
The real-life Apollo program bears similarities to the story:
* Verne's cannon was called Columbiad; the Apollo 11 command module (Apollo CSM) was named Columbia.
* The spacecraft crew consisted of three persons in each case.
* The physical dimensions of the projectile are very close to the dimensions of the Apollo CSM.
* Verne's voyage blasted off from Florida, as did all Apollo missions. (Verne correctly states in the book that objects launch into space most easily if they are launched towards the zenith of a particular location, and that the zenith would better line up with the moon's orbit from near the Earth's equator. In the book Florida and Texas compete for the launch, with Florida winning.)
* The names of the crew, Ardan, Barbicane, and Nicholl, are vaguely similar to Bill Anders, Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell, the crew of Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to travel to the moon, although it didn't actually land.
* The cost of the program in the book is almost similar to the total cost of the Apollo program until Apollo 8.
The character of "Michel Ardan" in the novel was inspired by Félix Nadar.
Plot
It's been some time since the end of the American Civil War. The Gun Club, a society based in Baltimore and dedicated to the design of weapons of all kinds (especially cannons), meets when Impey Barbicane, its president, calls them to support his idea: according to his calculations, a cannon can shoot a projectile so that it reaches the moon. After receiving the whole support of his companions, a few of them meet to decide the place from where the projectile will be shot, the dimensions and makings of both the cannon and the projectile, and which kind of powder are they to use.
An old enemy of Barbicane, a Captain Nicholl of Philadelphia, designer of plate armor, declares that the enterprise is absurd and makes a series of bets with Barbicane, each of them of increasing amount over the impossibility of such feat.
The first obstacle, the money, and over which Nicholl has bet 1000 dollars, is raised from most countries in America and Europe, in which the mission reaches variable success (while the USA gives 4 million dollars, England doesn't give a farthing, being envious of the United States in matters of science), but in the end nearly five and a half million dollars are raised, which ensures the financial feasibility of the project.
After deciding the place for the launch (Stone's Hill in "Tampa Town", Florida; predating Kennedy Space Center's placement in Florida by almost 100 years; Verne gives the exact position as 27°7' northern latitude and 5°7' western longitude, of course relative to the meridian of Washington that is 27°7′0″N 82°9′0″W / 27.116667°N 82.15°W / 27.116667; -82.15 ), the Gun Club travels there and starts the construction of the Columbiad cannon, which requires the excavation of a 900-foot-deep (270 m) and 60-foot-wide (18 m) circular hole, which is made in the nick of time, but a surprise awaits Barbicane: Michel Ardan, a French adventurer, plans to travel aboard the projectile.
During a meeting between Ardan, the Gun Club and the inhabitants of Florida, Nicholl appears and challenges Barbicane to a duel, which is successfully stopped when Ardan, warned by J. T. Maston, secretary of the Gun Club, meets the rivals in the forest they have agreed to duel in. Meanwhile, Barbicane finds the solution to the problem of surviving the incredible acceleration that the explosion would cause. Ardan suggests Barbicane and Nicholl to travel with him in the projectile, and the offer is accepted.
In the end, the projectile is successfully launched, but the destinies of the three astronauts are left inconclusive. The sequel, Around the Moon, deals with what happens to the three men in their travel from the Earth to the Moon.
Technical feasibility of a space cannon
In his 1903 publication on space travel, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky refuted Verne's idea of using a cannon for space travel. He concluded that a gun would have to be impossibly long. The gun in the story would subject the payload to about 22000 g of acceleration (see formula).
Gerald Bull and the Project HARP proved after 1961 that a cannon can shoot a 180 kg (400 lb) projectile up to 180 kilometres (110 mi) of height and reach 32 percent of the needed escape velocity.[citation needed] Additionally, during the Plumbbob nuclear test series, a 900 kg (2,000 lb) capping plate made of steel was blasted away. Myths say that it entered outer space because it did reach a speed of between two and six times the escape velocity, but engineers[who?] believe it melted in the atmosphere.
Influence on popular culture
The novel was adapted as the opera Le voyage dans la lune in 1875, with music by Jacques Offenbach.
In H. G. Wells' 1901 The First Men in the Moon (also relating to the first voyagers to the Moon) the protagonist, Mr. Bedford, mentions Verne's novel to his companion, Professor Cavor, who replies (in a possible dig at Verne) that he does not know what Bedford is referring to.
The novel (along with Wells' The First Men in the Moon) inspired the first science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon, made in 1902 by Georges Méliès. In 1958, another film adaptation of this story was released, titled From the Earth to the Moon. It was one of the last films made under the RKO Pictures banner. The story also became the basis for the very loose adaptation Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon (1967), a caper-style British comedy starring Burl Ives and Terry-Thomas.
The novel and its sequel were the inspiration for the computer game Voyage: Inspired by Jules Verne.
Among its other homages to classic science fiction, an issue of Planetary involved the Planetary group finding that the Gun Club had been successful in launching the projectile, but that a miscalculation led to a slowly decaying orbit over the decades with the astronauts long dead from lack of air and food.
Barbicane appears in Kevin J. Anderson's novel Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius as an Ottoman official whose chief rival, Robur, designs a number of innovative weapons to counteract him, including an attempt to launch a three-man mission to the Moon.
During their return journey from the moon, the crew of Apollo 11 made reference to Jules Verne's book during a TV broadcast on July 23 . The mission's commander, astronaut Neil Armstrong, said, "A hundred years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the Moon. His spaceship, Columbia [sic], took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing a trip to the Moon. It seems appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew as the modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet Earth and the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow."
Disneyland Paris
The first incarnation of the roller coaster Space Mountain in Disneyland Paris, named Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune, was based loosely on this novel, the ambience being that of the book being noted throughout the ride with its rivet and boiler plate effect. The ride includes the "Columbiad", which recoils with a bang and produces smoke as each car passes, giving riders the perception of being shot into space.
The attraction was built after the opening of Euro Disneyland and opened in 1995. The attraction's exterior was designed using a Verene era retro-futuristic influence, in keeping with the rest of Discoveryland.
During 2005, the ride was refurbished and renamed Space Mountain: Mission 2 as part of the Happiest Celebration on Earth. The ride no longer features any of the original storyline based on the novel, with the exception of the name of the cannon (Columbiad) and "Baltimore Gun Club" signs.
In 1995 the BBC made a documentary about the creation of Space Mountain, called "Shoot For The Moon". The 44-minute programme followed Tim Delaney and his team in bringing the book From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne to life. The programme shows the development of the attraction, from conception over construction up to testing and fine-tuning the final attraction, including its soundtrack. The documentary, originally broadcast on BBC2 in the UK, was also aired on other channels in many countries.
Space Mountain is also located next to the walk-through attraction "Les Mystères du Nautilus" based on Walt Disney's adaptation of Jules Verne's other famous literary work Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
此書不靠文學色彩，沒有打鬥情節，完全憑藉“幻想裝置”打動我們。例如，那著名的“炮彈車廂” ——彈殼飛船。
從地球到月球-炮彈
這個炮彈的外部是直徑九英尺，高十二英尺。為了不超過規定的重量，他們把彈壁做得稍微薄一些，同時卻把炮彈底做得特別厚，因為它要承受低氮硝化纖維素燃燒時産生的氣體的全部壓力，其實，炸彈和錐形圓柱體的餾彈也是這樣，底部比較厚。
這個金屬塔的出人口是在圓惟形部分上開的一個小洞，跟蒸氣鍋爐上的那些洞口一樣大小。洞門是鋁板做的，關上洞門，再擰緊結實的翼形蠃釘，小洞就嚴絲合縫地給堵起來了。這樣，旅客們一到達黑夜的天體，就可以自由地走出他們的活動監獄。
但是，單單到那兒去是不夠的，路上也應該看看呀。沒有比這更容易的了。原來在皮墊子下面有四個舷窗，舷窗上裝着非常厚的凸透鏡，兩個在炮彈周圍，第三個在彈底，第四個在尖頂，所以旅客們一路上可以同時觀察已經離開了的地球、越來越近的月亮和挂滿了繁星的天空。不過舷窗外面嵌着結實的金屬護窗板，免得受到出發時的撞擊，衹消擰下裏面的蠃絲帽就很容易地把金屬板扔抑了。這樣炮彈裏的空氣就不會漏出去，而旅客們也可以進行觀察了。
現在飛船上的返回艙，和凡爾納在19世紀所設想的十分相似！應用至少經過充分研究的科學背景，是凡爾納有別於早期作傢的基本要素。凡爾納的特殊貢獻，就在於他喜歡作準確的科學敘述，而這樣的敘述在瑪麗·雪萊或愛倫·坡和納撒尼爾·霍桑的作品中是缺少的。凡爾納的小說情節不一定十分有趣，但他的科學想象卻總是引人入勝的。不講究文學色彩、完全靠科學敘述取勝的科幻小說傢，在凡爾納之後，有一位是俄國的科學家齊奧爾科夫斯基，他在預言人類徵服太空方面大膽構思，以燃料為動力的火箭成為宇航的工具，比凡爾納的用哥倫比亞大炮發射彈殼飛船有了進一步的可行性。
其次，凡爾納嚮19世紀的讀者展示了一個“科學奇跡”成為現實的理想世界，而20世紀，他的一些科學幻想真的成了現實。例如，阿波羅登月。《科幻世界》對此進行了比較
凡爾納月球炮彈與阿波羅登月對照表
項目 凡爾納 阿波羅登月
宇航員人數 3 3
航速 36000英尺/秒 35533英尺/秒
航時 97小時13分20秒 103小時30分
降落地點 兩者僅相差十幾公裏
發射點 同為佛羅裏達卡納維拉爾角
——引自《科幻世界》1998年第10期
凡爾納說過：“在我的傳奇故事中，我必定要把我的所謂發明建立在現實基礎上，而且在應用它們時，必定讓它們的結構安排和使用的材料不完全脫離同時代的工程技術和知識領域。”因此，他的小說雖然是虛構的，但是對科學細節的描寫卻讓人相信。讀者喜愛的正是他筆下亦真亦幻的發明創造所帶來的奇跡，啓發真正科學研究正是他筆下亦真亦幻的發明創造所帶來的奇跡。
還有，其科幻構思中不僅包含科技奇跡而且包含經濟奇跡和社會奇跡，他通過形象思維嚮我們講述了“科學是生産力”，這已經在無形中涉及了社會科學領域。
The story is also notable in that Verne attempted to do some rough calculations as to the requirements for the cannon and, considering the total lack of any data on the subject at the time, some of his figures are surprisingly close to reality. However, his scenario turned out to be impractical for safe manned space travel since a much longer muzzle would have been required to reach escape velocity while limiting acceleration to survivable limits for the passengers.
The real-life Apollo program bears similarities to the story:
* Verne's cannon was called Columbiad; the Apollo 11 command module (Apollo CSM) was named Columbia.
* The spacecraft crew consisted of three persons in each case.
* The physical dimensions of the projectile are very close to the dimensions of the Apollo CSM.
* Verne's voyage blasted off from Florida, as did all Apollo missions. (Verne correctly states in the book that objects launch into space most easily if they are launched towards the zenith of a particular location, and that the zenith would better line up with the moon's orbit from near the Earth's equator. In the book Florida and Texas compete for the launch, with Florida winning.)
* The names of the crew, Ardan, Barbicane, and Nicholl, are vaguely similar to Bill Anders, Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell, the crew of Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to travel to the moon, although it didn't actually land.
* The cost of the program in the book is almost similar to the total cost of the Apollo program until Apollo 8.
The character of "Michel Ardan" in the novel was inspired by Félix Nadar.
Plot
It's been some time since the end of the American Civil War. The Gun Club, a society based in Baltimore and dedicated to the design of weapons of all kinds (especially cannons), meets when Impey Barbicane, its president, calls them to support his idea: according to his calculations, a cannon can shoot a projectile so that it reaches the moon. After receiving the whole support of his companions, a few of them meet to decide the place from where the projectile will be shot, the dimensions and makings of both the cannon and the projectile, and which kind of powder are they to use.
An old enemy of Barbicane, a Captain Nicholl of Philadelphia, designer of plate armor, declares that the enterprise is absurd and makes a series of bets with Barbicane, each of them of increasing amount over the impossibility of such feat.
The first obstacle, the money, and over which Nicholl has bet 1000 dollars, is raised from most countries in America and Europe, in which the mission reaches variable success (while the USA gives 4 million dollars, England doesn't give a farthing, being envious of the United States in matters of science), but in the end nearly five and a half million dollars are raised, which ensures the financial feasibility of the project.
After deciding the place for the launch (Stone's Hill in "Tampa Town", Florida; predating Kennedy Space Center's placement in Florida by almost 100 years; Verne gives the exact position as 27°7' northern latitude and 5°7' western longitude, of course relative to the meridian of Washington that is 27°7′0″N 82°9′0″W / 27.116667°N 82.15°W / 27.116667; -82.15 ), the Gun Club travels there and starts the construction of the Columbiad cannon, which requires the excavation of a 900-foot-deep (270 m) and 60-foot-wide (18 m) circular hole, which is made in the nick of time, but a surprise awaits Barbicane: Michel Ardan, a French adventurer, plans to travel aboard the projectile.
During a meeting between Ardan, the Gun Club and the inhabitants of Florida, Nicholl appears and challenges Barbicane to a duel, which is successfully stopped when Ardan, warned by J. T. Maston, secretary of the Gun Club, meets the rivals in the forest they have agreed to duel in. Meanwhile, Barbicane finds the solution to the problem of surviving the incredible acceleration that the explosion would cause. Ardan suggests Barbicane and Nicholl to travel with him in the projectile, and the offer is accepted.
In the end, the projectile is successfully launched, but the destinies of the three astronauts are left inconclusive. The sequel, Around the Moon, deals with what happens to the three men in their travel from the Earth to the Moon.
Technical feasibility of a space cannon
In his 1903 publication on space travel, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky refuted Verne's idea of using a cannon for space travel. He concluded that a gun would have to be impossibly long. The gun in the story would subject the payload to about 22000 g of acceleration (see formula).
Gerald Bull and the Project HARP proved after 1961 that a cannon can shoot a 180 kg (400 lb) projectile up to 180 kilometres (110 mi) of height and reach 32 percent of the needed escape velocity.[citation needed] Additionally, during the Plumbbob nuclear test series, a 900 kg (2,000 lb) capping plate made of steel was blasted away. Myths say that it entered outer space because it did reach a speed of between two and six times the escape velocity, but engineers[who?] believe it melted in the atmosphere.
Influence on popular culture
The novel was adapted as the opera Le voyage dans la lune in 1875, with music by Jacques Offenbach.
In H. G. Wells' 1901 The First Men in the Moon (also relating to the first voyagers to the Moon) the protagonist, Mr. Bedford, mentions Verne's novel to his companion, Professor Cavor, who replies (in a possible dig at Verne) that he does not know what Bedford is referring to.
The novel (along with Wells' The First Men in the Moon) inspired the first science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon, made in 1902 by Georges Méliès. In 1958, another film adaptation of this story was released, titled From the Earth to the Moon. It was one of the last films made under the RKO Pictures banner. The story also became the basis for the very loose adaptation Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon (1967), a caper-style British comedy starring Burl Ives and Terry-Thomas.
The novel and its sequel were the inspiration for the computer game Voyage: Inspired by Jules Verne.
Among its other homages to classic science fiction, an issue of Planetary involved the Planetary group finding that the Gun Club had been successful in launching the projectile, but that a miscalculation led to a slowly decaying orbit over the decades with the astronauts long dead from lack of air and food.
Barbicane appears in Kevin J. Anderson's novel Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius as an Ottoman official whose chief rival, Robur, designs a number of innovative weapons to counteract him, including an attempt to launch a three-man mission to the Moon.
During their return journey from the moon, the crew of Apollo 11 made reference to Jules Verne's book during a TV broadcast on July 23 . The mission's commander, astronaut Neil Armstrong, said, "A hundred years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage to the Moon. His spaceship, Columbia [sic], took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing a trip to the Moon. It seems appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew as the modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet Earth and the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow."
Disneyland Paris
The first incarnation of the roller coaster Space Mountain in Disneyland Paris, named Space Mountain: De la Terre à la Lune, was based loosely on this novel, the ambience being that of the book being noted throughout the ride with its rivet and boiler plate effect. The ride includes the "Columbiad", which recoils with a bang and produces smoke as each car passes, giving riders the perception of being shot into space.
The attraction was built after the opening of Euro Disneyland and opened in 1995. The attraction's exterior was designed using a Verene era retro-futuristic influence, in keeping with the rest of Discoveryland.
During 2005, the ride was refurbished and renamed Space Mountain: Mission 2 as part of the Happiest Celebration on Earth. The ride no longer features any of the original storyline based on the novel, with the exception of the name of the cannon (Columbiad) and "Baltimore Gun Club" signs.
In 1995 the BBC made a documentary about the creation of Space Mountain, called "Shoot For The Moon". The 44-minute programme followed Tim Delaney and his team in bringing the book From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne to life. The programme shows the development of the attraction, from conception over construction up to testing and fine-tuning the final attraction, including its soundtrack. The documentary, originally broadcast on BBC2 in the UK, was also aired on other channels in many countries.
Space Mountain is also located next to the walk-through attraction "Les Mystères du Nautilus" based on Walt Disney's adaptation of Jules Verne's other famous literary work Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
日內瓦城位於同名的日內瓦湖西畔，城中有羅訥河流過，將它分隔成兩部分；而該河又在中央被一座小島一分為二。
這小島宛若一艘荷蘭大遊輪停泊在河中央。在現代建築還沒出現之前，這裏是一片奇形怪狀的屋群，層層疊疊，你這我擋，很煞風景。小島太小了，事實上，一些房屋被擠到水濱，任憑風吹浪打。房子的橫梁，因為成年纍月地遭到河水的侵蝕，已經發黑，看上去活像巨蟹的爪子。窄窄的河道，如蜘蛛網般在這片古老的土地上延伸，河水在黑暗中顫動着，仿佛原始橡樹林中簌簌抖動的葉子。羅訥河則隱藏在這一片屋群組成的森林之後，吐着白沫，無限痛苦地着。
這小島宛若一艘荷蘭大遊輪停泊在河中央。在現代建築還沒出現之前，這裏是一片奇形怪狀的屋群，層層疊疊，你這我擋，很煞風景。小島太小了，事實上，一些房屋被擠到水濱，任憑風吹浪打。房子的橫梁，因為成年纍月地遭到河水的侵蝕，已經發黑，看上去活像巨蟹的爪子。窄窄的河道，如蜘蛛網般在這片古老的土地上延伸，河水在黑暗中顫動着，仿佛原始橡樹林中簌簌抖動的葉子。羅訥河則隱藏在這一片屋群組成的森林之後，吐着白沫，無限痛苦地着。
這部故事題為“冰島怪獸”，估計沒有一個人會相信它。這無關緊要，我仍認為將它公諸於世確有必要。相信也好，不相信也好，悉聽尊便吧！
這個饒有興味而又驚心動魄的冒險故事，始於德索拉西翁①群島。恐怕再也設想不出比這更合適的地點了。這個島名是一七七九年庫剋②船長給它起的。我在那裏小住過幾個星期，根據我的所見所聞，我可以肯定地說，著名英國航海傢給它起的這個凄慘的名字，是完全名副其實的，“荒涼群島”，這個島名就足以說明一切了。
這個饒有興味而又驚心動魄的冒險故事，始於德索拉西翁①群島。恐怕再也設想不出比這更合適的地點了。這個島名是一七七九年庫剋②船長給它起的。我在那裏小住過幾個星期，根據我的所見所聞，我可以肯定地說，著名英國航海傢給它起的這個凄慘的名字，是完全名副其實的，“荒涼群島”，這個島名就足以說明一切了。
我們是卡爾費馬特鎮上的小學的一群孩子，總共 30 來人，20 來個 6 歲至12 歲的男孩子，10 來個 4 歲至 9 歲的小姑娘。如果你想知道這個小鎮的正確位置，根據我的地圖册第 47 頁，這是在瑞士信奉天主教的一個州裏，離康斯坦茨湖①不遠，在阿邦澤爾②的群山腳下。
這個故事富於浪漫的傳奇色彩，但絶非無聊的杜撰。但是否因它描述的並非真情實物，就可能得出結論，說這個故事不是真的呢？如果那樣想就大錯而特錯了。我們生活的時代什麽都可能發生，甚至有理由認為一切都已發生在這個時代。如果這個故事在今天看來太過玄妙，但明天它必成為真實。科學的發展保證了現在和未來的繁榮昌盛，沒人會簡單地把本故事與一般的傳說等同起來。況且處在這個重實際、講實效的19世紀末，神怪傳說早已不吃香了。布列塔尼不再是兇惡的矮妖橫行的土地，蘇格蘭也不盛傳善良的小精靈和地精，挪威也無謂阿則、厄爾弗、西貝弗、瓦爾甚男諸神的故土，甚至特蘭西瓦尼亞的神秘幽深的喀爾巴阡山脈中也不再是鬼影憧憧了。但還得註意的是，特蘭西瓦尼亞地區的人還是對遠古時代的各種迷信傳說深信不疑。
Title
The original French title was Le Château des Carpathes and in English there are some alternate titles, such as The Castle of the Carpathians and Rodolphe de Gortz; or the Castle of the Carpathians.
Synopsis
In the village of Werst in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania (then part of Austria-Hungary, today part of Romania), some mysterious things are occurring and the villagers believe that Chort (the devil) occupies the castle. A visitor of the region, Count Franz de Télek, is intrigued by the stories and decides to go to the castle and investigate and finds that the owner of the castle is Baron Rodolphe de Gortz, one of his acquaintances, as years ago, they were rivals for the affections of the celebrated Italian prima donna La Stilla. The Count thought that La Stilla was dead, but he sees her image and voice coming from the castle, but we later on find that it was only a holographic image.
Title
The original French title was Le Château des Carpathes and in English there are some alternate titles, such as The Castle of the Carpathians and Rodolphe de Gortz; or the Castle of the Carpathians.
Synopsis
In the village of Werst in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania (then part of Austria-Hungary, today part of Romania), some mysterious things are occurring and the villagers believe that Chort (the devil) occupies the castle. A visitor of the region, Count Franz de Télek, is intrigued by the stories and decides to go to the castle and investigate and finds that the owner of the castle is Baron Rodolphe de Gortz, one of his acquaintances, as years ago, they were rivals for the affections of the celebrated Italian prima donna La Stilla. The Count thought that La Stilla was dead, but he sees her image and voice coming from the castle, but we later on find that it was only a holographic image.
此篇為凡爾納的代表作之一，《地心遊記》講述李登布羅剋教授在一本古老的書籍裏偶然得到了一張羊皮紙，發現前人曾到地心旅行，李登布羅剋教授决心也作同樣的旅行。他和侄子從漢堡出發，到冰島請一位嚮導，他們按照前人的指引，由冰島的一個火山口下降，經過三個月的旅行，歷盡艱險和種種奇觀，最後回到了地面。
同名電影
中文名:地心遊記
英文名:Journey to the Center of the Earth
其他中文片名：地心探險記
其他影片別名：Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth / Trip to the Center of the Earth
《地心遊記》《地心遊記》
類型：冒險 / 科幻 / 幻想
發行年代：1959
導演： Henry Levin
編劇： Charles Brackett / Robert Burns /
上映日期：法國：2005-03-23 / 法國：1999-12-08 /
宣傳語：A fabulous world below the world
演員表： Robert Adler .... Groom
Molly Roden .... Housekeeper (uncredited)
Mollie Glessing .... News vendor (uncredited)
Peter Wright .... Laird (uncredited)
Arlene Dahl .... Mrs. Carla Goetaborg
Peter Ronson .... Hans Belker
Mary Brady .... Kirsty (uncredited)
Frederick Halliday .... Chancellor (uncredited)
Robert 'Red' Gene West .... Bearded Man at Newspaper Stand/University Student (uncredited)
Kendrick Huxham .... Scots newsman (uncredited)
國傢/地區：美國
對白語言：英語
級別：Australia:PG / Finland:K-12 / Iceland:Unrated / UK:U / USA:G
劇情梗概：
根據十九世紀法國科幻作傢凡爾納大作《地心遊記》改編的作品。講述李登布羅剋教授在一本古老的書籍裏偶然得到了一張羊皮紙，發現前人曾到地心旅行，李登布羅剋教授决心也作同樣的旅行。他和侄子從漢堡出發，到冰島請一位嚮導，他們按照前人的指引，由冰島的一個火山口下降，經過三個月的旅行，歷盡艱險和種種奇觀，最後回到了地面。
《地心遊記》-本片相關影評
被拍壞掉的冒險電影
——看《地心遊記》
事實上，如果不是看到布蘭登的大名，我想自己也不會觀看《地心遊記》。一直以來，對大多數科幻不甚感冒。
影片開始，當肖恩（喬什•哈徹森飾）跟着教授（布蘭登•弗雷澤飾）出現在漢娜（安妮塔•布裏姆飾）的傢中時，電影的結局便變得毫無懸念——無論怎樣麯折、驚險，堅决捍衛皆大歡喜的大團圓式結局的好萊塢，絶不敢冒天下之大不韙拿一個孩子與男、女主角的生命安全當做兒戲。
電影剛開始，當三人不斷地從一個高度跌落到另外一個高度時，雖然在鐵軌飛車片段看到《奪寶奇兵》裏似曾相識的畫面，在墜洞的情節也隱隱看得到《魔窟》和《暗夜襲擊》的影子，着實吊足胃口，但當渾身熒光閃爍的小鳥飛出來時，一切對冒險片的期盼便頃刻間化為烏有。
整部片子的所謂特技，效果極為一般。總感覺要麽太過，要麽太假，背景與人物、道具什麽的，缺乏一種真實的融合感——尤其在地心裏的海洋波濤洶涌與巨大的史前巨獸吞吃牙齒怪異的魚類時，那些特技場景粗糙得甚至有些令人倒胃口。不知道是不是由於沒有配合3D眼鏡，總之，平面視角沒能感受到來自畫面的衝擊。
英雄救美、逢兇化吉、義救親侄的劇情老套不說，且天馬行空編撰的地球內部構造（倒退一百年也許還能蒙得過）完全與真實的地質構造大相庭徑——地心裏還有恐竜，乖乖，兩千多度，怕是鐵竜也早化成蒸竜了吧？就算翻拍，也無法諒解編劇的死腦筋，如今的觀衆也許人人都念過幾天書，誰都對地球的構造有一個定勢的科學認知，你這樣生搬硬套翻過期舊挂歷，能打動觀衆的眼球？
而布蘭登扮演的教授角色，在本片前半部分和後半部分的急劇轉型，恐怕是最不能容忍的。原本布蘭登在《泰山》和《盜墓迷城》係列中，留給大傢都是一種有點玩世不恭但膽識過人的大男孩印象——就算在《盜墓迷城3》中布蘭登的孩子都戀愛了，但在心目中這種印象依舊——而在本劇中，前半部分似乎導演想把布蘭登刻意塑造成一個笨手笨腳、學識淵博，甚至不拘小節的迂腐學者形象。孰料進入地心深處後，這個剛還連倒挂金鈎自救都不會的呆笨更年期科學家旋即改頭換面——那個玩世不恭、威風凜凜的大男孩回來啦，身手敏捷地拯救自己的侄子和美人於數千公裏深的地心中。
一句話，整部影片被拍壞掉了。
From a scientific point of view, this story has not aged quite as well as other Verne stories, since most of his ideas about what the interior of the Earth contains have since been soundly refuted. However, a redeeming point to the story is Verne's own belief, told within the novel from the viewpoint of a character, that the inside of the Earth does indeed differ from that which the characters anticipate. One of Verne's main ideas with his stories was also to educate the readers, and by placing the different extinct creatures the characters meet in their correct geological era, he is able to show how the world looked a long time ago, stretching from the ice age to the dinosaurs.
The book was inspired by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man of 1863 (and probably also influenced by Lyell's earlier ground-breaking work "Principles Of Geology", published 1830 - 33). By that time geologists had abandoned a literal biblical account of Earth's development and it was generally thought that the end of the last glacial period marked the first appearance of humanity, but Lyell drew on new findings to put the origin of human beings much further back in the deep geological past. Lyell's book also influenced Louis Figuier's 1867 second edition of La Terre avant le déluge which included dramatic illustrations of savage men and women wearing animal skins and wielding stone axes, in place of the Garden of Eden shown in the 1863 edition.
同名電影
中文名:地心遊記
英文名:Journey to the Center of the Earth
其他中文片名：地心探險記
其他影片別名：Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth / Trip to the Center of the Earth
《地心遊記》《地心遊記》
類型：冒險 / 科幻 / 幻想
發行年代：1959
導演： Henry Levin
編劇： Charles Brackett / Robert Burns /
上映日期：法國：2005-03-23 / 法國：1999-12-08 /
宣傳語：A fabulous world below the world
演員表： Robert Adler .... Groom
Molly Roden .... Housekeeper (uncredited)
Mollie Glessing .... News vendor (uncredited)
Peter Wright .... Laird (uncredited)
Arlene Dahl .... Mrs. Carla Goetaborg
Peter Ronson .... Hans Belker
Mary Brady .... Kirsty (uncredited)
Frederick Halliday .... Chancellor (uncredited)
Robert 'Red' Gene West .... Bearded Man at Newspaper Stand/University Student (uncredited)
Kendrick Huxham .... Scots newsman (uncredited)
國傢/地區：美國
對白語言：英語
級別：Australia:PG / Finland:K-12 / Iceland:Unrated / UK:U / USA:G
劇情梗概：
根據十九世紀法國科幻作傢凡爾納大作《地心遊記》改編的作品。講述李登布羅剋教授在一本古老的書籍裏偶然得到了一張羊皮紙，發現前人曾到地心旅行，李登布羅剋教授决心也作同樣的旅行。他和侄子從漢堡出發，到冰島請一位嚮導，他們按照前人的指引，由冰島的一個火山口下降，經過三個月的旅行，歷盡艱險和種種奇觀，最後回到了地面。
《地心遊記》-本片相關影評
被拍壞掉的冒險電影
——看《地心遊記》
事實上，如果不是看到布蘭登的大名，我想自己也不會觀看《地心遊記》。一直以來，對大多數科幻不甚感冒。
影片開始，當肖恩（喬什•哈徹森飾）跟着教授（布蘭登•弗雷澤飾）出現在漢娜（安妮塔•布裏姆飾）的傢中時，電影的結局便變得毫無懸念——無論怎樣麯折、驚險，堅决捍衛皆大歡喜的大團圓式結局的好萊塢，絶不敢冒天下之大不韙拿一個孩子與男、女主角的生命安全當做兒戲。
電影剛開始，當三人不斷地從一個高度跌落到另外一個高度時，雖然在鐵軌飛車片段看到《奪寶奇兵》裏似曾相識的畫面，在墜洞的情節也隱隱看得到《魔窟》和《暗夜襲擊》的影子，着實吊足胃口，但當渾身熒光閃爍的小鳥飛出來時，一切對冒險片的期盼便頃刻間化為烏有。
整部片子的所謂特技，效果極為一般。總感覺要麽太過，要麽太假，背景與人物、道具什麽的，缺乏一種真實的融合感——尤其在地心裏的海洋波濤洶涌與巨大的史前巨獸吞吃牙齒怪異的魚類時，那些特技場景粗糙得甚至有些令人倒胃口。不知道是不是由於沒有配合3D眼鏡，總之，平面視角沒能感受到來自畫面的衝擊。
英雄救美、逢兇化吉、義救親侄的劇情老套不說，且天馬行空編撰的地球內部構造（倒退一百年也許還能蒙得過）完全與真實的地質構造大相庭徑——地心裏還有恐竜，乖乖，兩千多度，怕是鐵竜也早化成蒸竜了吧？就算翻拍，也無法諒解編劇的死腦筋，如今的觀衆也許人人都念過幾天書，誰都對地球的構造有一個定勢的科學認知，你這樣生搬硬套翻過期舊挂歷，能打動觀衆的眼球？
而布蘭登扮演的教授角色，在本片前半部分和後半部分的急劇轉型，恐怕是最不能容忍的。原本布蘭登在《泰山》和《盜墓迷城》係列中，留給大傢都是一種有點玩世不恭但膽識過人的大男孩印象——就算在《盜墓迷城3》中布蘭登的孩子都戀愛了，但在心目中這種印象依舊——而在本劇中，前半部分似乎導演想把布蘭登刻意塑造成一個笨手笨腳、學識淵博，甚至不拘小節的迂腐學者形象。孰料進入地心深處後，這個剛還連倒挂金鈎自救都不會的呆笨更年期科學家旋即改頭換面——那個玩世不恭、威風凜凜的大男孩回來啦，身手敏捷地拯救自己的侄子和美人於數千公裏深的地心中。
一句話，整部影片被拍壞掉了。
From a scientific point of view, this story has not aged quite as well as other Verne stories, since most of his ideas about what the interior of the Earth contains have since been soundly refuted. However, a redeeming point to the story is Verne's own belief, told within the novel from the viewpoint of a character, that the inside of the Earth does indeed differ from that which the characters anticipate. One of Verne's main ideas with his stories was also to educate the readers, and by placing the different extinct creatures the characters meet in their correct geological era, he is able to show how the world looked a long time ago, stretching from the ice age to the dinosaurs.
The book was inspired by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man of 1863 (and probably also influenced by Lyell's earlier ground-breaking work "Principles Of Geology", published 1830 - 33). By that time geologists had abandoned a literal biblical account of Earth's development and it was generally thought that the end of the last glacial period marked the first appearance of humanity, but Lyell drew on new findings to put the origin of human beings much further back in the deep geological past. Lyell's book also influenced Louis Figuier's 1867 second edition of La Terre avant le déluge which included dramatic illustrations of savage men and women wearing animal skins and wielding stone axes, in place of the Garden of Eden shown in the 1863 edition.
隨着大地的一聲巨大震動，空中出現了比北極光還要明亮的不同尋常的光輝，剎那間使得所有星星全都黯然失色。地中海頃刻之間變得空空如也，隨後海水又回到海裏形成洶涌澎湃的波濤。大地上出現震耳欲聾的轟鳴，除了有一種來自地球內部的爆裂聲外，還有巨大的波濤互相撞擊的聲響和颶風的呼嘯聲。在天空、海上和地面突然出現如此巨大的變化後，故事的主人公們突然發現他們在一個完全陌生的星球上，開始了他們無法拒絶的太陽係歷險。
“砰！……砰！……”
兩位對手幾乎同時開槍。50米開外，一頭從那裏經過的母牛脊梁上白白地挨了一槍。它與事情毫不相幹。
兩位對手都沒有擊中對方。
這兩位决鬥的紳士是誰？不知道。要是知道的話，說不定他們的名字從此就會留傳後世呢。唯一知道的是，他們中年紀較大的那位是英國人，年紀較輕的那位是美國人。不過，如果需要把那頭無辜的反芻動物剛纔吃最後一簇青草的地點標出來，這倒是容易，就在尼亞加拉瀑布的右岸，離美國和加拿大之間的那座懸索橋不遠，在瀑布下遊3英裏①的地方。
Plot summary
The story begins with strange lights and sounds, including blaring trumpet music, reported in the skies all over the world. The events are capped by the mysterious appearance of black flags with gold suns atop tall historic landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty in New York, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. These events are all the work of the mysterious Robur (the specific epithet for English Oak, Quercus robur, and figuratively taken to mean "strength"), a brilliant inventor who intrudes on a meeting of a flight-enthusiast's club called the Weldon Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Members of the Weldon Institute are all firm believers that mankind shall master the skies using “lighter than air” craft, and that "heavier than air" craft such as airplanes and helicopters would be unfeasible. The institute has been constructing a giant dirigible called the Goahead, and are having a heated discussion of where to place its propeller (in front to pull it, or behind to push it) when Robur appears at the meeting and is admitted to speak to them. He chastises the group for being balloon-boosters when "heavier than air" flying apparatuses are the future. When asked if Robur himself has "made conquest of the air," he states that he has, leading to him accepting the title "Robur the Conqueror." During his short time at the Weldon Institute Robur so incenses the members that they chase him outside and are about to attack him. Robur then seemingly vanishes to the mob, but he has actually been borne away in a flying machine.
Later that night Robur kidnaps the Weldon Institute's secretary, president, and the president’s valet. He takes them on board his ship, a huge rotorcraft vessel called the Albatross which has many vertical propellers so as to operate similar to a helicopter, and horizontal propellers to provide lateral movement. It bears the same black flag with golden sun that has been sighted on so many landmarks, and the music in the sky is explained to be one of the crewmen playing a trumpet. To demonstrate the vessel's superiority, Robur takes his captives around the world in the course of three weeks. The president and secretary are angry at Robur for kidnapping them and unwilling to admit that the Albatross is a fantastic vessel, or that their notions of "lighter than air" superiority are wrong. They demand that Robur release them, but he is aloof and always says that they shall remain as long as he desires it. Fearing they will be held captive forever, the two formulate plans to both escape and destroy the Albatross.
After the horizontal propellers are damaged in a storm, the Albatross is anchored over the Chatham Islands for repairs. While the crew is busy at work the two Weldon Institute members light a fuse and make their escape. They try to bring the valet with them but can not find him, only later discovering that the coward had escaped already without them. The Albatross explodes and its wreckage, along with Robur and his crew, plunge into the ocean. Meanwhile the three escapees are safe on a small but inhabited island and are later rescued by a ship, then make a long journey back to Philadelphia.
The Weldon Institute members return and rather than describe their adventures or admit that Robur had created a flying machine greater than their expectations of the Goahead, they simply conclude the argument the group was having during their last meeting. Rather than have only one propeller to their dirigible, they decide to have one propeller in front and another behind similar to Robur's design. Seven months after their return the Goahead is completed and making its maiden voyage with the president, secretary, and an aeronaut. The speed and maneuverability of the dirigible marvels a huge crowd, but are trivial if compared to Robur’s Albatross. Suddenly, out of the sky there appears the Albatross. It is revealed that when the Albatross exploded, enough of it was intact so that at least some of the propellers operated and slowed its descent, saving the crew. The crew used the remains of the Albatross as a raft until they were rescued by a ship. Later, Robur and the crew made it back to his secret X Island, where the original Albatross was built. Robur has built a new Albatross and now intends to exact revenge by showing it is superior to the Weldon Institute’s Goahead.
As an earthbound crowd watches in horror, the Albatross completes several moves, nearly ramming the Goahead. Fearing it is under attack, the Goahead makes horizontal, then vertical, maneuvers to avoid being hit. The Goahead is obviously at the Albatross’s mercy, however, as the Goahead is too slow. The Goahead then ascends very high into the sky in the hope of losing the Albatross, but its balloon bursts. As it falls the Albatross matches its speed and saves the occupants.
Having shown his dominance of the skies, Robur returns the three men to the ground and says that nations are not yet fit to know his secrets. He leaves with the promise that someday he will reveal his secrets of flight.
Influences
Film
The story was made into a 1961 movie, Master of the World, with Vincent Price as Robur. The movie kept the basic concept but added elements of intrigue and a romance to the plot.
In this version, Robur is an idealist who plans to conquer the world in order to put an end to tyranny and war. Using the Albatross he plans to bomb the nations of the world until he is acknowledged its ruler.
Instead of the Weldon Institute members, he kidnaps Mr. Prudent of Philadelphia, an armaments manufacturer, along with his daughter Dorothy and her fiance Phillip Evans. Charles Bronson plays Strock, the reluctant hero who comes to admire Robur, but not enough to let him carry out his plans.
The name Albatross is retained, though the novel's description and early illustrations that suggest a flush-decked clipper ship with propellers on its masts instead of sails, is replaced by a more contemporary design resembling a classic airship, or dirigible; though still given propellers for lift. The vessel is described in the film as being a 'heavier than air machine of several tons,' a statement later explained as the vessel 'is made entirely of paper, mixed with dextrin and clay, and squeezed in a hydraulic press...'
This construction also seems to render the Albatross impervious to contemporary weapons fire.
Novels
* In Kim Newman's alternate history novel The Bloody Red Baron, Robur (along with other such characters as Rotwang, Count Orlok, and Doctor Mabuse) work for Count Dracula during World War I.
* In Kevin J. Anderson's Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius, Robur is an official of the Ottoman Empire locked in a power struggle against his rival, Barbicane.
Comics
A graphic novel trilogy by writers Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier and artist Gil Formosa:
* Volume 1 De la Lune à la Terre (Albin Michel, 2003) (From the Moon to the Earth, Heavy Metal, December 2003)
* Volume 2 20.000 Ans sous les Mers (Albin Michel, 2004) (20,000 Years Under the Seas, Heavy Metal, Fall 2005)
* Volume 3 Voyage au Centre de la Lune (Albin Michel, 2005) (Journey to the Center of the Moon)
In it, Robur (who is also an alias of Captain Nemo) is the leader of the resistance when H. G. Wells' Selenites invade the Earth. Other fictional characters which appear in the series include Fantômas, Josephine Balsamo, The Shadow and Professor Cavor.
Robur appears in Batman: Master of the Future, by Brian Augustyn and Eduardo Barreto, part of DC Comics' Elseworlds series. The story mixes a Victorian-era Batman, with the film Master of the World.
Robur is mentioned several times in the three current volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. He is first mentioned in Volume 1 corresponding with Captain Mors, another fictional air-based character. An entry in the supplementary The New Traveller's Almanac in the back of Volume 2 indicates that Robur is conscripted to lead Les Hommes Mysterieux ("The Mysterious Men"), which is a French analogue to the British team. Their fateful encounter with the League is detailed in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier.
兩位對手幾乎同時開槍。50米開外，一頭從那裏經過的母牛脊梁上白白地挨了一槍。它與事情毫不相幹。
兩位對手都沒有擊中對方。
這兩位决鬥的紳士是誰？不知道。要是知道的話，說不定他們的名字從此就會留傳後世呢。唯一知道的是，他們中年紀較大的那位是英國人，年紀較輕的那位是美國人。不過，如果需要把那頭無辜的反芻動物剛纔吃最後一簇青草的地點標出來，這倒是容易，就在尼亞加拉瀑布的右岸，離美國和加拿大之間的那座懸索橋不遠，在瀑布下遊3英裏①的地方。
Plot summary
The story begins with strange lights and sounds, including blaring trumpet music, reported in the skies all over the world. The events are capped by the mysterious appearance of black flags with gold suns atop tall historic landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty in New York, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. These events are all the work of the mysterious Robur (the specific epithet for English Oak, Quercus robur, and figuratively taken to mean "strength"), a brilliant inventor who intrudes on a meeting of a flight-enthusiast's club called the Weldon Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Members of the Weldon Institute are all firm believers that mankind shall master the skies using “lighter than air” craft, and that "heavier than air" craft such as airplanes and helicopters would be unfeasible. The institute has been constructing a giant dirigible called the Goahead, and are having a heated discussion of where to place its propeller (in front to pull it, or behind to push it) when Robur appears at the meeting and is admitted to speak to them. He chastises the group for being balloon-boosters when "heavier than air" flying apparatuses are the future. When asked if Robur himself has "made conquest of the air," he states that he has, leading to him accepting the title "Robur the Conqueror." During his short time at the Weldon Institute Robur so incenses the members that they chase him outside and are about to attack him. Robur then seemingly vanishes to the mob, but he has actually been borne away in a flying machine.
Later that night Robur kidnaps the Weldon Institute's secretary, president, and the president’s valet. He takes them on board his ship, a huge rotorcraft vessel called the Albatross which has many vertical propellers so as to operate similar to a helicopter, and horizontal propellers to provide lateral movement. It bears the same black flag with golden sun that has been sighted on so many landmarks, and the music in the sky is explained to be one of the crewmen playing a trumpet. To demonstrate the vessel's superiority, Robur takes his captives around the world in the course of three weeks. The president and secretary are angry at Robur for kidnapping them and unwilling to admit that the Albatross is a fantastic vessel, or that their notions of "lighter than air" superiority are wrong. They demand that Robur release them, but he is aloof and always says that they shall remain as long as he desires it. Fearing they will be held captive forever, the two formulate plans to both escape and destroy the Albatross.
After the horizontal propellers are damaged in a storm, the Albatross is anchored over the Chatham Islands for repairs. While the crew is busy at work the two Weldon Institute members light a fuse and make their escape. They try to bring the valet with them but can not find him, only later discovering that the coward had escaped already without them. The Albatross explodes and its wreckage, along with Robur and his crew, plunge into the ocean. Meanwhile the three escapees are safe on a small but inhabited island and are later rescued by a ship, then make a long journey back to Philadelphia.
The Weldon Institute members return and rather than describe their adventures or admit that Robur had created a flying machine greater than their expectations of the Goahead, they simply conclude the argument the group was having during their last meeting. Rather than have only one propeller to their dirigible, they decide to have one propeller in front and another behind similar to Robur's design. Seven months after their return the Goahead is completed and making its maiden voyage with the president, secretary, and an aeronaut. The speed and maneuverability of the dirigible marvels a huge crowd, but are trivial if compared to Robur’s Albatross. Suddenly, out of the sky there appears the Albatross. It is revealed that when the Albatross exploded, enough of it was intact so that at least some of the propellers operated and slowed its descent, saving the crew. The crew used the remains of the Albatross as a raft until they were rescued by a ship. Later, Robur and the crew made it back to his secret X Island, where the original Albatross was built. Robur has built a new Albatross and now intends to exact revenge by showing it is superior to the Weldon Institute’s Goahead.
As an earthbound crowd watches in horror, the Albatross completes several moves, nearly ramming the Goahead. Fearing it is under attack, the Goahead makes horizontal, then vertical, maneuvers to avoid being hit. The Goahead is obviously at the Albatross’s mercy, however, as the Goahead is too slow. The Goahead then ascends very high into the sky in the hope of losing the Albatross, but its balloon bursts. As it falls the Albatross matches its speed and saves the occupants.
Having shown his dominance of the skies, Robur returns the three men to the ground and says that nations are not yet fit to know his secrets. He leaves with the promise that someday he will reveal his secrets of flight.
Influences
Film
The story was made into a 1961 movie, Master of the World, with Vincent Price as Robur. The movie kept the basic concept but added elements of intrigue and a romance to the plot.
In this version, Robur is an idealist who plans to conquer the world in order to put an end to tyranny and war. Using the Albatross he plans to bomb the nations of the world until he is acknowledged its ruler.
Instead of the Weldon Institute members, he kidnaps Mr. Prudent of Philadelphia, an armaments manufacturer, along with his daughter Dorothy and her fiance Phillip Evans. Charles Bronson plays Strock, the reluctant hero who comes to admire Robur, but not enough to let him carry out his plans.
The name Albatross is retained, though the novel's description and early illustrations that suggest a flush-decked clipper ship with propellers on its masts instead of sails, is replaced by a more contemporary design resembling a classic airship, or dirigible; though still given propellers for lift. The vessel is described in the film as being a 'heavier than air machine of several tons,' a statement later explained as the vessel 'is made entirely of paper, mixed with dextrin and clay, and squeezed in a hydraulic press...'
This construction also seems to render the Albatross impervious to contemporary weapons fire.
Novels
* In Kim Newman's alternate history novel The Bloody Red Baron, Robur (along with other such characters as Rotwang, Count Orlok, and Doctor Mabuse) work for Count Dracula during World War I.
* In Kevin J. Anderson's Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius, Robur is an official of the Ottoman Empire locked in a power struggle against his rival, Barbicane.
Comics
A graphic novel trilogy by writers Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier and artist Gil Formosa:
* Volume 1 De la Lune à la Terre (Albin Michel, 2003) (From the Moon to the Earth, Heavy Metal, December 2003)
* Volume 2 20.000 Ans sous les Mers (Albin Michel, 2004) (20,000 Years Under the Seas, Heavy Metal, Fall 2005)
* Volume 3 Voyage au Centre de la Lune (Albin Michel, 2005) (Journey to the Center of the Moon)
In it, Robur (who is also an alias of Captain Nemo) is the leader of the resistance when H. G. Wells' Selenites invade the Earth. Other fictional characters which appear in the series include Fantômas, Josephine Balsamo, The Shadow and Professor Cavor.
Robur appears in Batman: Master of the Future, by Brian Augustyn and Eduardo Barreto, part of DC Comics' Elseworlds series. The story mixes a Victorian-era Batman, with the film Master of the World.
Robur is mentioned several times in the three current volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. He is first mentioned in Volume 1 corresponding with Captain Mors, another fictional air-based character. An entry in the supplementary The New Traveller's Almanac in the back of Volume 2 indicates that Robur is conscripted to lead Les Hommes Mysterieux ("The Mysterious Men"), which is a French analogue to the British team. Their fateful encounter with the League is detailed in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier.
“馬思通先生，您竟敢說婦女們不可能對數理科學和實驗科學作出自己的貢獻？”
“十分遺憾，思柯碧夫人，我並不想這樣說。”馬思通答道，“女數學家嘛，有名的從古到今也有過那麽幾位，尤其是的，這我當然承認。不過，根據女子大腦的結構來看，她們决不可能成為阿基米德或牛頓式的人物。”
“噢！馬思通先生，我要代表女性嚮您提出……”
“思柯碧夫人，女性生來嫵媚漂亮，所以不善於進行超驗的推理。”
“照您這麽說，一個女人就是看到蘋果從樹上落下，也不能像十七世紀末那位著名的英國學者一樣，從中發現萬有引力定律啦？”
“十分遺憾，思柯碧夫人，我並不想這樣說。”馬思通答道，“女數學家嘛，有名的從古到今也有過那麽幾位，尤其是的，這我當然承認。不過，根據女子大腦的結構來看，她們决不可能成為阿基米德或牛頓式的人物。”
“噢！馬思通先生，我要代表女性嚮您提出……”
“思柯碧夫人，女性生來嫵媚漂亮，所以不善於進行超驗的推理。”
“照您這麽說，一個女人就是看到蘋果從樹上落下，也不能像十七世紀末那位著名的英國學者一樣，從中發現萬有引力定律啦？”
《海底兩萬裏》寫於1870年，是儒勒·凡爾納著名的三部麯的第二部，第一部是《格蘭特船長的兒女》 、第三部是《神秘島》 。這部作品敘述法國生物學者阿竜納斯在海洋深處旅行的故事。這事發生在一八六六年，當時海上發現了一隻被斷定為獨角鯨的大怪物，他接受邀請參加追捕，在追捕過程中不幸落水，泅到怪物的脊背上。其實這怪物並非什麽獨角鯨，而是一艘構造奇妙的潛水船。潛水船是船長尼摩在大洋中的一座荒島上秘密建造的，船身堅固，利用海洋發電。尼摩船長邀請阿竜納斯作海底旅行。他們從太平洋出發，經過珊瑚島、印度洋、紅海、地中海，進入大西洋，看到許多罕見的海生動植物和水中的奇異景象，又經歷了擱淺、土人圍攻、同鯊魚搏鬥、冰山封路、章魚襲擊等許多險情。最後，當潛水船到達挪威海岸時，阿竜納斯不辭而別，把他所知道的海底秘密公佈於世。
海底兩萬裏-介紹
書中人物寥寥，有名有姓的衹有四個半——“亞伯拉罕·林肯”號驅逐艦艦長法拉格特，衹在小說開頭部分曇花一現，姑且算半個；內景衹是一艘潛水艇。但就是這麽四個半人，這麽一艘潛水艇，在將近一年的時間中，縱橫海底兩萬裏，為我們演繹出一個個故事，展現出一幅幅畫面；故事麯折驚險，引人入勝，畫面多姿多彩，氣象萬千。這樣一部小說，讀來既使人賞心悅目，也令人動魄驚心。 故事並不復雜：法國人阿羅納剋斯，一位博物學家，應邀赴美參加一項科學考察活動。其時，海上出了個怪物，在全世界鬧得沸沸揚揚。科考活動結束之後，博物學家正準備束裝就道，返回法國，卻接到美國海軍部的邀請，於是改弦更張，登上了一艘驅逐艦，參與“把那個怪物從海洋中清除出去 ”的活動。經過千辛萬苦，“怪物”未被清除，驅逐艦反被“怪物”重創，博物學家和他的僕人以及為清除“怪物”被特意請到驅逐艦上來的一名捕鯨手，都成了 “怪物”的俘虜!“怪物”非他，原來是一艘尚不為世人所知的潛水艇，名“鸚鵡蠃”號。潛艇對俘虜倒也優待；衹是，為了保守自己的秘密，潛艇艇長內莫從此。永遠不許他們離開。阿羅納剋斯一行別無選擇，衹能跟着潛水艇周遊各大洋。十個月之後，這三個人終於在極其險惡的情況下逃脫，博物學家纔得以把這件海底秘密公諸於世。《海底兩萬裏》寫的主要是他們在這十個月裏的經歷。 《海底兩萬裏》已經有幾種中譯本，“兩萬裏”也就成了個約定俗成的說法；究其實，這裏的“裏”指的是法國古裏，而古法裏又有海陸之分，一古海裏約合 5.556公裏，一古陸裏約合4.445公裏；既然是在海底周遊，這裏的兩萬裏，理應為兩萬古海裏。如此說來，他們在海底行駛的路程，就應該在十一萬公裏以上了。這是要說明的。 十一萬公裏的行程，是個大場面，一路所見，可以說無奇不有。誰見過海底森林?誰見過海底煤礦?誰見過“養”在貝殼裏、價值連城的大珍珠?當了俘虜的阿羅納剋斯和他的朋友們都見到了，而且曾經徜徉其間。他們在印度洋的珠場和鯊魚展開過搏鬥，捕鯨手蘭德手刃了一條兇惡的巨鯊；他們在紅海裏追捕過一條瀕於絶種的儒艮，儒艮肉當晚就被端上了餐桌；他們在大西洋裏和章魚進行過血戰，一名船員慘死；這些場面，都十分驚心動魄。此外，書中還描寫了抹香鯨如何殘殺長須鯨， “鸚鵡蠃”號潛艇又是如何殺死成群的抹香鯨的，那情景也十分罕見。 阿羅納剋斯是個博物學家，博古通今，乘潛艇在水下航行，使他飽覽了海洋裏的各種動植物；他和他那位對分類學入了迷的僕人孔塞伊，將這些海洋生物嚮我們做了詳實的介紹，界、門、綱、目、科、屬、種，說得井井有條，使讀者認識了許多海洋生物；阿羅納剋斯還把在海洋中見到的種種奇觀，一一娓娓道來，令讀者大開眼界，知道了什麽是太平洋黑流，什麽是墨西哥暖流，颶風是怎樣形成的，馬尾藻海又是什麽樣……我們知道珊瑚礁是怎樣形成的嗎?知道海洋究竟有多深嗎?知道海水傳播聲音的速度有多快嗎?這一類知識，書中比比皆是。 “鸚鵡蠃”號也曾遇險，在珊瑚礁上擱過淺，受到過巴布亞土著的襲擊，最可怕的是，在南極被厚厚的冰層睏住，艇內缺氧，艇上的人幾乎不能生還。但是，憑着潛艇的精良構造和艇長的超人智慧，種種險境，均被化解，終於完成了十一萬公裏的海底行程。 凡爾納時代，潛水艇剛剛面世，還是一種神秘的東西；“鸚鵡蠃”號艇長內莫又是個身世不明之人，他逃避人類，蟄居海底，而又隱隱約約和陸地上的某些人有一種特殊聯繫。凡此種種，都給小說增加了一層神秘色彩。既是小說，人物當然是虛構的，作傢給“鸚鵡蠃”號艇長取的拉丁文名字，更明白無誤地指出了這一點—— “內莫”，在拉丁文裏是子虛烏有的意思。但這並沒有妨礙作者把他描寫成一個有血有肉、讓讀者覺得可信的人物。 本書作者儒勒·凡爾納(1828—1905)是法國科幻小說傢，現代科幻小說的重要奠基人。他出生在一個律師家庭，很小的時候就産生了強烈的探索欲望和豐富的想像力。他博覽群書，厚積薄發，第一部科幻小說《氣球上的五星期》，一炮打響，引起轟動，使他成了個傢喻戶曉的人物。他後來一發而不可收，又寫了一係列科學幻想冒險小說，捲帙浩繁，不下六七十種，被收入一套名為《奇異的旅行》的叢書。《海底兩萬裏》是凡爾納著名三部麯的第二部，前有《格蘭特船長的兒女》，後有《神秘島》。作者想像力豐富，文筆細膩，構思奇巧，其作品既引人人勝，又很有教育意義，適合各種年齡的讀者。而且，凡爾納的幻想不是異想天開，都以科學為依據；他所預見到的很多器械，後來都變成了現實生活中的實有之物。
海底兩萬裏-作者介紹
儒勒·凡爾納（Jules Verne，1828.2.8.??1905）生於法國西部海港南特，他在構成市區一部分的勞阿爾河上的菲伊德島生活學習到中學畢業。父親是位頗為成功的律師，一心希望子承父業。但是凡爾納自幼熱愛海洋，嚮往遠航探險。11歲時，他曾志願上船當見習生，遠航印度，結果被傢人發現接回了傢。為此凡爾納挨了一頓狠揍，並躺在床上流着淚保證：“以後保證衹躺在床上在幻想中旅行。”也許正是由於這一童年的經歷，客觀上促使凡爾納一生馳騁於幻想之中，創作出如此衆多的著名科幻作品。
海底兩萬裏海底兩萬裏
18歲時，他遵父囑，去巴黎攻讀法律，可是他對法律毫無興趣，卻愛上了文學和戲劇。一次，凡爾納自一場晚會早退，下樓時他忽然童心大發，沿樓梯扶手悠然滑下，不想正撞在一位胖紳士身上。凡爾納非常尷尬，道歉之後隨口詢問對方吃飯沒有，對方回答說剛吃過南特炒雞蛋。凡爾納聽罷搖頭，聲稱巴黎根本沒有正宗的南特炒雞蛋，因為他即南特人而且拿手此菜。胖紳士聞言大喜，誠邀凡爾納登門獻藝。二人友誼從此開始，並一度合寫戲劇，為凡爾納走上創作之路創造了有利條件。這位胖紳士的名字是大仲馬。畢業後，他更是一門心思投入詩歌和戲劇的創作，為此不僅受到父親的嚴厲訓斥，並失去了父親的經濟資助。他不得不在貧睏中奮鬥，以讀書為樂。他十分欣賞雨果、巴爾紮剋、大仲馬和英國的莎士比亞。在巴黎，他創作了20個劇本（未出版）和一些充滿浪漫激情的詩歌。
後來，凡爾納與大仲馬合作創作了劇本《折斷的麥稈》並得以上演，這標志着凡爾納在文學界取得了初步的成功。在繼續創作的過程中，凡爾納感到文學創作似乎缺乏出路，而且他發現當時文壇上的人都在找出路，都在試圖把其他領域的知識融進戲劇。比如大仲馬是將歷史學融進文學，而巴爾紮剋則把社會倫理學融進文學……這時凡爾納發現，衹剩下地理學還沒有被開發。
於是凡爾納利用一年的時間進行試驗，創作出《冰川上面過鼕》等作品，但未發表。
1856年凡爾納乘火車來到北部城市亞眠，遇到一名帶着兩個孩子的漂亮寡婦，一見終情並求婚，繼而結婚。接着凡爾納搬傢過去，從此開始認真創作。其時29歲。
凡爾納創作出《氣球上的五星期》後，16傢出版社無人理睬，憤然投入火中，被妻子搶救出來，送入第17傢出版社後被出版。賞識此書的編輯叫赫茨爾，從此凡爾納遇到了知音，與之結下終身友誼。黑格爾與凡爾納簽訂合同，一年為其出版兩本科幻小說。
《氣球上的五星期》出版之後，凡爾納的創作進入了一個多方面的探索時期，他試驗多種寫法，朝多種方向進行探索，一發不可收拾。每年出版兩本，總標題為《奇異的旅行》，包括《地心遊記》《從地球到月球》《環繞月球》《海底兩萬裏》《神秘島》等等，囊括了陸地、海洋和天空……此後探索停止，開始成熟，進入平穩的發展時期，創作出《80天環繞地球》《太陽係歷險記》（中譯《大木筏》）《兩年假期》等優秀作品。隨着聲望的增高，凡爾納的財富也在迅速增長。
凡爾納的晚年不是十分幸福，創作減少並進入衰弱期，其《卡爾巴阡的古堡》有一定的自傳性，表現了生活中隱秘的側面。
1905年3月17日凡爾納出現偏癱，24日失去知覺，25日晨8:00去世。
1905年3月28日大出殯，全世界紛紛電唁，悼念這位偉大的科幻作傢。
凡爾納的故事生動幽默，妙語橫生，又能激發人們尤其是青少年熱愛科學、嚮往探險的熱情，所以一百多年來，一直受到世界各地讀者的歡迎。據聯合國教科文組織的資料表明，凡爾納是世界上被翻譯的作品最多的十大名傢之一。
凡爾納是一個非常優秀的通俗小說作傢，有一種能夠把自己的幻覺變得能夠觸摸的本領，其感覺是全方位的，從平淡的文學中傳達出某種人類的熱情。但凡爾納的小說中人物除了少數幾個外都是一模一樣的，他似乎塑造不出更重要的人物，人物都是臉譜化的簡單的好人壞人，沒有什麽心理活動；從其作品人物性別單一化上還可看出他對女人的偏見，隱隱流露出深受其苦的心態。此外凡爾納的作品中充滿了明顯的社會傾嚮，是一個愛國者（法國人最好）、民族解放主義者（支持被壓迫民族鬥爭），在某種程度上是一個無政府主義者（從某些作品中表現出無秩序者），最後還是一個銀河帝國主義者（有締造宇宙帝國的欲望）。
凡爾納的作品裏充滿了知識，但他本人卻是一名宇宙神秘主義者，對世界有一種神秘的崇拜。在他的小說中，有時候思考問題不夠深刻，主題也常常重複。
但總的來說，凡爾納的嘗試仍然是偉大的。他寫的雖然都是平凡小事，但讀後仍使我們激動不已。正如1884年教皇在接見凡爾納時曾說：“我並不是不知道您的作品的科學價值，但我最珍重的卻是它們的純潔、道德價值和精神力量。”
海底兩萬裏-作品特點
《海底兩萬裏》是一部科幻小說，於一八七0年問世，暨今已逾百年，而仍能以多種文字的各種版本風行世界，
海底兩萬裏海底兩萬裏
有讀者，僅此一端，即可見其生命力之強，吸引力之大。主張書不及百歲不看的讀者，是大可放心一閱的。書中人物寥寥，有名有姓的衹有四個半——“亞伯拉罕·林肯”號驅逐艦艦長法拉格特，衹在小說開頭部分曇花一現，姑且算半個；內景衹是一艘潛水艇。但就是這麽四個半人，這麽一艘潛水艇，一個神秘的船長,一個學富五車的科學家,在各種探險歷程中,在將近一年的時間中，縱橫海底兩萬裏，為我們演繹出一個個故事，展現出一幅幅畫面,海底墓地,珊瑚𠔌,巨型章魚……故事麯折驚險，引人入勝，畫面多姿多彩，氣象萬千。這樣一部小說，讀來既使人賞心悅目，也令人動魄驚心。令人永生難忘，不愧為一部世界名著。百看不厭。
《海底兩萬裏》寫的主要是他們在這十個月裏的經歷。《海底兩萬裏》已經有幾種中譯本，“兩萬裏”也就成了個約定俗成的說法；究其實，這裏的“裏”指的是法國古裏，而古法裏又有海陸之分，一古海裏約合5.556公裏，一古陸裏約合4.445公裏；既然是在海底周遊，這裏的兩萬裏，理應為兩萬古海裏。
如此說來，他們在海底行駛的路程，就應該在十一萬公裏以上了。這是要說明的。十一萬公裏的行程，是個大場面，一路所見，可以說無奇不有。誰見過海底森林?誰見過海底煤礦?誰見過“養”在貝殼裏、價值連城的大珍珠?當了俘虜的阿竜納斯和他的朋友們都見到了，而且曾經徜徉其間。他們在印度洋的珠場和鯊魚展開過搏鬥，捕鯨手內德·蘭手刃了一條兇惡的巨鯊；他們在紅海裏追捕過一條瀕於絶種的儒艮，儒艮肉當晚就被端上了餐桌；他們在大西洋裏和章魚進行過血戰，一名船員慘死；這些場面，都十分驚心動魄。此外，書中還描寫了抹香鯨如何殘殺長須鯨，“鸚鵡蠃”號潛艇又是如何殺死成群的抹香鯨的，那情景也十分罕見。
阿羅納剋斯是個生物學家，博古通今，乘潛艇在水下航行，使他飽覽了海洋裏的各種動植物；他和他那位對分類學入了迷的僕人康塞爾，將這些海洋生物嚮我們做了詳實的介紹，界、門、綱、目、科、屬、種，說得井井有條，使讀者認識了許多海洋生物；阿羅納剋斯還把在海洋中見到的種種奇觀，一一娓娓道來，令讀者大開眼界，知道了什麽是太平洋黑流，什麽是墨西哥暖流，颶風是怎樣形成的，馬尾藻海又是什麽樣……我們知道珊瑚礁是怎樣形成的嗎?知道海洋究竟有多深嗎? 知道海水傳播聲音的速度有多快嗎?這一類知識，書中比比皆是。
“鸚鵡蠃”號也曾遇險，在珊瑚礁上擱過淺，受到過巴布亞土著的襲擊，最可怕的是，在南極被厚厚的冰層睏住，艇內缺氧，艇上的人幾乎不能生還。但是，憑着潛艇的精良構造和艇長的超人智慧，種種險境，均被化解，終於完成了十一萬公裏的海底行程。凡爾納時代，潛水艇剛剛面世，還是一種神秘的東西；“鸚鵡蠃”號艇長尼摩又是個身世不明之人，他逃避人類，蟄居海底，而又隱隱約約和陸地上的某些人有一種特殊聯繫。凡此種種，都給小說增加了一層神秘色彩。
既是小說，人物當然是虛構的，作傢給“鸚鵡蠃”號艇長取的拉丁文名字，更明白無誤地指出了這一點——“尼摩”（Nemo），在拉丁文裏是子虛烏有的意思。但這並沒有妨礙作者把他描寫成一個有血有肉、讓讀者覺得可信的人物。
Title
The title refers to the distance traveled under the sea and not to a depth, as 20,000 leagues is over 2.5 times the circumference of the earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is four leagues. A literal translation of the French title would end in the plural "seas", thus implying the "seven seas" through which the characters of the novel travel. However, the early English translations of the title used "sea", meaning the ocean in general, as in "going to sea".
Plot summary
The story opens in the year 1866. Everyone in Europe and America is talking about a mysterious creature that has been sinking ships. Finally, the United States government decides to intervene and commissions the Abraham Lincoln to capture and identify the creature. On board the ship are Pierre Aronnax, a renowned scientist along with his manservant, Conseil, and Ned Land the king of harpooners. The Abraham Lincoln is attacked by the creature. Aronnax, Conseil and Land go overboard. The three men find themselves on top of the mysterious creature, which is actually a submarine vessel. They are taken on board and placed in a cell. The men meet Captain Nemo, the commander of the vessel, known as the Nautilus. He tells them they can stay on board the ship and enjoy freedom as long as they return to the cell if asked. They are never to leave the vessel again. Ned Land says he will not promise that he will not try to escape. Captain Nemo treats the men, especially Aronnax, very well. They are clothed and fed and may wander around the vessel at their leisure. Aronnax is thrilled by Nemo’s vast library. The men spend their time observing sea life through observation windows. Aronnax studies and writes about everything he sees.
During their time on the Nautilus, the men experience exciting adventures. They hunt in underwater forests, visit an island with angry natives, visit the lost city of Atlantis, and fish for giant pearls. However, there are also many distressing events coupled with the erratic behavior of Captain Nemo. One night the men are asked to return to their cell. They are given sleeping pills and awake the next morning very confused. Nemo asks Aronnax to look at a crewman who has been severely injured. The man later dies and they bury him in an underground cemetery, where many other crewmen have been laid to rest. On a voyage to the South Pole, the Nautilus becomes stuck in the ice. Everyone must take turns trying to break a hole in the ice so the vessel can get through. The ship almost runs out of its oxygen supply and the men grow tired and light headed. However, they escape just in time. Another time, the vessel sails through an area heavily populated by giant squid, when a giant squid gets stuck in the propeller of the submarine. The men and the crew must fight off the squid with axes because they cannot be killed with bullets. While fighting, a crewmember is killed by a squid. Nemo is moved to tears. The rising action of the story begins with Nemo’s attack on a warship. Aronnax does not know to which nation the warship belongs, but he is horrified when Captain Nemo sinks it. The men decide they must escape at all costs. One night, while off the coast of Norway, Aronnax, Conseil and Land plan a rash escape. To their dismay they realize they are heading toward a giant whirlpool—one that no ship has ever survived. Amazingly, in only a small dinghy they emerge safely. They awake in the hut of a fisherman. At the conclusion of the story, Aronnax is awaiting his return to France and rewriting his memoirs of his journey under the sea.
Title page (1871)
Themes and subtext
Captain Nemo's name is a subtle allusion to Homer's Odyssey, a Greek epic poem. In The Odyssey, Odysseus meets the monstrous cyclops Polyphemus during the course of his wanderings. Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name, and Odysseus replies that his name is "Utis" (ουτις), which translates as "No-man" or "No-body". In the Latin translation of the Odyssey, this pseudonym is rendered as "Nemo", which in Latin also translates as "No-man" or "No-body". Similarly to Nemo, Odysseus is forced to wander the seas in exile (though only for 10 years) and is tormented by the deaths of his ship's crew.
The preface of a new English edition[citation needed] of the book has a theory that Nemo's name was in part inspired by Jules Verne visiting Scotland and there coming across Scotland's national motto Nemo me impune lacessit, correctly meaning "No one attacks me with impunity", but reinterpreted by Verne as "Nemo attacks me with impunity".
Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, "Captain Maury" in Verne's book, a real-life oceanographer who explored the winds, seas, currents, and collected samples of the bottom of the seas and charted all of these things, is mentioned a few times in this work by Jules Verne. Jules Verne certainly would have known of Matthew Maury's international fame and perhaps Maury's French ancestry.
References are made to three other Frenchmen. Those are Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, a famous explorer who was lost while circumnavigating the globe; Dumont D'Urville, the explorer who found the remains of the ill-fated ship of the Count; and Ferdinand Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal and the nephew of the man who was the sole survivor of De Galaup's expedition. Verne was an investor in Lesseps to build the French sea level crossing in Panama. The Nautilus seems to follow the footsteps of these men: She visits the waters where De Galaup was lost; she sails to Antarctic waters and becomes stranded there, just like D'Urville's ship, the Astrolabe; and she passes through an underwater tunnel from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean.
The crew of the Nautilus observes an underwater funeral.
The most famous part of the novel, the battle against the school of giant squid, begins when a crewman opens the hatch of the boat and gets caught by one of the monsters. As he is being pulled away by the tentacle that has grabbed him, he yells "Help!" in French. At the beginning of the next chapter, concerning the battle, Aronnax states that: "To convey such sights, one would take the pen of our most famous poet, Victor Hugo, author of The Toilers of the Sea". The Toilers of the Sea also contains an episode where a worker fights a giant octopus, wherein the octopus symbolizes the Industrial Revolution. It is probable that Verne borrowed the symbol, but used it to allude to the Revolutions of 1848 as well, in that the first man to stand against the "monster" and the first to be defeated by it is a Frenchman.
In several parts of the book, Captain Nemo is depicted as a champion of the world's underdogs and downtrodden. In one passage Captain Nemo is mentioned as providing some help to Greeks rebelling against Ottoman rule during the Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869, proving to Arronax that after all he had not completely severed all relations with mankind outside the Nautilus. In another passage, Nemo takes pity on a poor Indian pearl diver who must do his diving without the sophisticated diving suit available to the submarine's crew, and who is doomed to die young due to the cumulative effect of diving on his lungs; Nemo approaches him underwater and gives him a whole pouch full of pearls, more than he could have gotten in years of his dangerous work.
Some of Verne's ideas about the not-yet-existing submarines which were laid out in this book turned out to be prophetic, such as the high speed and secret conduct of today's nuclear attack submarines, and (with diesel submarines) the need to surface frequently for fresh air. However, Verne evidently had no idea of the problems of water pressure, depicting his submarine as capable of diving freely even into the deepest of ocean deeps, where in reality it would have been instantly crushed by the weight of water above it, and with humans in diving suits able to emerge and walk along the deep ocean floor where they would have died quickly because of physiological effects of depth pressure and their breathing sets not working because of the pressure (see Diving hazards and precautions).
Model of the 1863 French Navy submarine Plongeur at the Musée de la Marine, Paris.
The Nautilus as imagined by Jules Verne.
Verne took the name "Nautilus" from one of the earliest successful submarines, built in 1800 by Robert Fulton, who later invented the first commercially successful steamboat. Fulton's submarine was named after the paper nautilus because it had a sail. Three years before writing his novel, Jules Verne also studied a model of the newly developed French Navy submarine Plongeur at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, which inspired him for his definition of the Nautilus. The world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine, the United States Navy's USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was named for Verne's fictional vessel.
Verne can also be credited with glimpsing the military possibilities of submarines, and specifically the danger which they possessed for the naval superiority of the British Navy, composed of surface warships. The fictional sinking of a ship by Nemo's Nautilus was to be enacted again and again in reality, in the same waters where Verne predicted it, by German U-boats in both World Wars.
The breathing apparatus used by Nautilus divers is depicted as an untethered version of underwater breathing apparatus designed by Benoit Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouze in 1865. They designed a diving set with a backpack spherical air tank that supplied air through the first known demand regulator. The diver still walked on the seabed and did not swim. This set was called an aérophore (Greek for "air-carrier"). Air pressure tanks made with the technology of the time could only hold 30 atmospheres, and the diver had to be surface supplied; the tank was for bailout. The durations of 6 to 8 hours on a tankful without external supply recorded for the Rouquayrol set in the book are greatly exaggerated.
No less significant, though more rarely commented on, is the very bold political vision (indeed, revolutionary for its time) represented by the character of Captain Nemo. As revealed in the later Verne book The Mysterious Island, Captain Nemo is a descendant of Tipu Sultan (a Muslim ruler of Mysore who resisted the British Raj), who took to the underwater life after the suppression of the 1857 Indian Mutiny, in which his close family members were killed by the British.
This change was made on request of Verne's publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel (who is known to be responsible for many serious changes in Verne's books), since in the original text the mysterious captain was a Polish nobleman, avenging his family who were killed by Russians. They had been murdered in retaliation for the captain's taking part in the Polish January Uprising (1863). As France was allied with Tsarist Russia, to avoid trouble the target for Nemo's wrath was changed to France's old enemy, the British Empire. It is no wonder that Professor Pierre Aronnax does not suspect Nemo's origins, as these were explained only later, in Verne's next book. What remained in the book from the initial concept is a portrait of Tadeusz Kościuszko (a Polish national hero, leader of the uprising against Russia in 1794) with inscription in Latin: "Finis Poloniae!".
The national origin of Captain Nemo was changed during most movie realizations; in nearly all picture-based works following the book he was made into a European. Nemo was represented as an Indian by Omar Sharif in the 1973 European miniseries The Mysterious Island. Nemo is also depicted as Indian in a silent film version of the story released in 1916 and later in both the graphic novel and the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Recurring themes in later books
Jules Verne wrote a sequel to this book: L'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874), which concludes the stories begun by Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and In Search of the Castaways. It should be noted that, while The Mysterious Island seems to give more information about Nemo (or Prince Dakkar), it is muddied by the presence of several irreconcilable chronological contradictions between the two books and even within The Mysterious Island.
Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much later Facing the Flag. That book's main villain, Ker Karraje, is a completely unscrupulous pirate, acting purely and simply for gain, completely devoid of all the saving graces which gave Nemo — for all that he, too, was capable of ruthless killings — some nobility of character.
Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests — but unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers, Karraje's career of outlawry is decisively ended by the combination of an international task force and the rebellion of his French captives. Though also widely published and translated, it never attained the lasting popularity of Twenty Thousand Leagues.
More similar to the original Nemo, though with a less finely worked-out character, is Robur in Robur the Conqueror - a dark and flamboyant outlaw rebel using an aircraft instead of a submarine — later used as a basis for the movie Master of the World.
Translations
The novel was first translated into English in 1873 by Reverend Lewis Page Mercier (aka "Mercier Lewis"). Mercier, under orders from British censors and performed or dictated by his editors at Sampson Low, cut nearly a quarter of Verne's original text and made hundreds of translation errors, sometimes dramatically changing the meaning of Verne's original intent. Some of these bowdlerizations may have been done for political reasons, such as Nemo's identity and the nationality of the two warships he sinks, or the portraits of freedom fighters on the wall of his cabin which originally included Daniel O'Connell. Nonetheless it became the "standard" English translation for more than a hundred years, while other translations continued to draw from it — and its mistakes, especially the mistranslation of the title; the French title actually means Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas.
A modern translation was produced in 1966 by Walter James Miller and published by Washington Square Press. Many of Mercier's changes were addressed in the translator's preface, and most of Verne's text was restored.
Many of the "sins" of Mercier were again corrected in a from-the-ground-up re-examination of the sources and an entirely new translation by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter between 1989 and 1991, published in 1993 by Naval Institute Press in a "completely restored and annotated edition." But, it has a new error: in it the French word scaphandrier, which in this book means one of Captain Nemo's divers in kit similar to an old-type heavy standard diving suit but with an independent air supply, is everywhere wrongly translated "frogman". F. P. Walter's own translation was published in 2009 with the title Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas (ISBN 978-1-904808-28-2)
海底兩萬裏-介紹
書中人物寥寥，有名有姓的衹有四個半——“亞伯拉罕·林肯”號驅逐艦艦長法拉格特，衹在小說開頭部分曇花一現，姑且算半個；內景衹是一艘潛水艇。但就是這麽四個半人，這麽一艘潛水艇，在將近一年的時間中，縱橫海底兩萬裏，為我們演繹出一個個故事，展現出一幅幅畫面；故事麯折驚險，引人入勝，畫面多姿多彩，氣象萬千。這樣一部小說，讀來既使人賞心悅目，也令人動魄驚心。 故事並不復雜：法國人阿羅納剋斯，一位博物學家，應邀赴美參加一項科學考察活動。其時，海上出了個怪物，在全世界鬧得沸沸揚揚。科考活動結束之後，博物學家正準備束裝就道，返回法國，卻接到美國海軍部的邀請，於是改弦更張，登上了一艘驅逐艦，參與“把那個怪物從海洋中清除出去 ”的活動。經過千辛萬苦，“怪物”未被清除，驅逐艦反被“怪物”重創，博物學家和他的僕人以及為清除“怪物”被特意請到驅逐艦上來的一名捕鯨手，都成了 “怪物”的俘虜!“怪物”非他，原來是一艘尚不為世人所知的潛水艇，名“鸚鵡蠃”號。潛艇對俘虜倒也優待；衹是，為了保守自己的秘密，潛艇艇長內莫從此。永遠不許他們離開。阿羅納剋斯一行別無選擇，衹能跟着潛水艇周遊各大洋。十個月之後，這三個人終於在極其險惡的情況下逃脫，博物學家纔得以把這件海底秘密公諸於世。《海底兩萬裏》寫的主要是他們在這十個月裏的經歷。 《海底兩萬裏》已經有幾種中譯本，“兩萬裏”也就成了個約定俗成的說法；究其實，這裏的“裏”指的是法國古裏，而古法裏又有海陸之分，一古海裏約合 5.556公裏，一古陸裏約合4.445公裏；既然是在海底周遊，這裏的兩萬裏，理應為兩萬古海裏。如此說來，他們在海底行駛的路程，就應該在十一萬公裏以上了。這是要說明的。 十一萬公裏的行程，是個大場面，一路所見，可以說無奇不有。誰見過海底森林?誰見過海底煤礦?誰見過“養”在貝殼裏、價值連城的大珍珠?當了俘虜的阿羅納剋斯和他的朋友們都見到了，而且曾經徜徉其間。他們在印度洋的珠場和鯊魚展開過搏鬥，捕鯨手蘭德手刃了一條兇惡的巨鯊；他們在紅海裏追捕過一條瀕於絶種的儒艮，儒艮肉當晚就被端上了餐桌；他們在大西洋裏和章魚進行過血戰，一名船員慘死；這些場面，都十分驚心動魄。此外，書中還描寫了抹香鯨如何殘殺長須鯨， “鸚鵡蠃”號潛艇又是如何殺死成群的抹香鯨的，那情景也十分罕見。 阿羅納剋斯是個博物學家，博古通今，乘潛艇在水下航行，使他飽覽了海洋裏的各種動植物；他和他那位對分類學入了迷的僕人孔塞伊，將這些海洋生物嚮我們做了詳實的介紹，界、門、綱、目、科、屬、種，說得井井有條，使讀者認識了許多海洋生物；阿羅納剋斯還把在海洋中見到的種種奇觀，一一娓娓道來，令讀者大開眼界，知道了什麽是太平洋黑流，什麽是墨西哥暖流，颶風是怎樣形成的，馬尾藻海又是什麽樣……我們知道珊瑚礁是怎樣形成的嗎?知道海洋究竟有多深嗎?知道海水傳播聲音的速度有多快嗎?這一類知識，書中比比皆是。 “鸚鵡蠃”號也曾遇險，在珊瑚礁上擱過淺，受到過巴布亞土著的襲擊，最可怕的是，在南極被厚厚的冰層睏住，艇內缺氧，艇上的人幾乎不能生還。但是，憑着潛艇的精良構造和艇長的超人智慧，種種險境，均被化解，終於完成了十一萬公裏的海底行程。 凡爾納時代，潛水艇剛剛面世，還是一種神秘的東西；“鸚鵡蠃”號艇長內莫又是個身世不明之人，他逃避人類，蟄居海底，而又隱隱約約和陸地上的某些人有一種特殊聯繫。凡此種種，都給小說增加了一層神秘色彩。既是小說，人物當然是虛構的，作傢給“鸚鵡蠃”號艇長取的拉丁文名字，更明白無誤地指出了這一點—— “內莫”，在拉丁文裏是子虛烏有的意思。但這並沒有妨礙作者把他描寫成一個有血有肉、讓讀者覺得可信的人物。 本書作者儒勒·凡爾納(1828—1905)是法國科幻小說傢，現代科幻小說的重要奠基人。他出生在一個律師家庭，很小的時候就産生了強烈的探索欲望和豐富的想像力。他博覽群書，厚積薄發，第一部科幻小說《氣球上的五星期》，一炮打響，引起轟動，使他成了個傢喻戶曉的人物。他後來一發而不可收，又寫了一係列科學幻想冒險小說，捲帙浩繁，不下六七十種，被收入一套名為《奇異的旅行》的叢書。《海底兩萬裏》是凡爾納著名三部麯的第二部，前有《格蘭特船長的兒女》，後有《神秘島》。作者想像力豐富，文筆細膩，構思奇巧，其作品既引人人勝，又很有教育意義，適合各種年齡的讀者。而且，凡爾納的幻想不是異想天開，都以科學為依據；他所預見到的很多器械，後來都變成了現實生活中的實有之物。
海底兩萬裏-作者介紹
儒勒·凡爾納（Jules Verne，1828.2.8.??1905）生於法國西部海港南特，他在構成市區一部分的勞阿爾河上的菲伊德島生活學習到中學畢業。父親是位頗為成功的律師，一心希望子承父業。但是凡爾納自幼熱愛海洋，嚮往遠航探險。11歲時，他曾志願上船當見習生，遠航印度，結果被傢人發現接回了傢。為此凡爾納挨了一頓狠揍，並躺在床上流着淚保證：“以後保證衹躺在床上在幻想中旅行。”也許正是由於這一童年的經歷，客觀上促使凡爾納一生馳騁於幻想之中，創作出如此衆多的著名科幻作品。
海底兩萬裏海底兩萬裏
18歲時，他遵父囑，去巴黎攻讀法律，可是他對法律毫無興趣，卻愛上了文學和戲劇。一次，凡爾納自一場晚會早退，下樓時他忽然童心大發，沿樓梯扶手悠然滑下，不想正撞在一位胖紳士身上。凡爾納非常尷尬，道歉之後隨口詢問對方吃飯沒有，對方回答說剛吃過南特炒雞蛋。凡爾納聽罷搖頭，聲稱巴黎根本沒有正宗的南特炒雞蛋，因為他即南特人而且拿手此菜。胖紳士聞言大喜，誠邀凡爾納登門獻藝。二人友誼從此開始，並一度合寫戲劇，為凡爾納走上創作之路創造了有利條件。這位胖紳士的名字是大仲馬。畢業後，他更是一門心思投入詩歌和戲劇的創作，為此不僅受到父親的嚴厲訓斥，並失去了父親的經濟資助。他不得不在貧睏中奮鬥，以讀書為樂。他十分欣賞雨果、巴爾紮剋、大仲馬和英國的莎士比亞。在巴黎，他創作了20個劇本（未出版）和一些充滿浪漫激情的詩歌。
後來，凡爾納與大仲馬合作創作了劇本《折斷的麥稈》並得以上演，這標志着凡爾納在文學界取得了初步的成功。在繼續創作的過程中，凡爾納感到文學創作似乎缺乏出路，而且他發現當時文壇上的人都在找出路，都在試圖把其他領域的知識融進戲劇。比如大仲馬是將歷史學融進文學，而巴爾紮剋則把社會倫理學融進文學……這時凡爾納發現，衹剩下地理學還沒有被開發。
於是凡爾納利用一年的時間進行試驗，創作出《冰川上面過鼕》等作品，但未發表。
1856年凡爾納乘火車來到北部城市亞眠，遇到一名帶着兩個孩子的漂亮寡婦，一見終情並求婚，繼而結婚。接着凡爾納搬傢過去，從此開始認真創作。其時29歲。
凡爾納創作出《氣球上的五星期》後，16傢出版社無人理睬，憤然投入火中，被妻子搶救出來，送入第17傢出版社後被出版。賞識此書的編輯叫赫茨爾，從此凡爾納遇到了知音，與之結下終身友誼。黑格爾與凡爾納簽訂合同，一年為其出版兩本科幻小說。
《氣球上的五星期》出版之後，凡爾納的創作進入了一個多方面的探索時期，他試驗多種寫法，朝多種方向進行探索，一發不可收拾。每年出版兩本，總標題為《奇異的旅行》，包括《地心遊記》《從地球到月球》《環繞月球》《海底兩萬裏》《神秘島》等等，囊括了陸地、海洋和天空……此後探索停止，開始成熟，進入平穩的發展時期，創作出《80天環繞地球》《太陽係歷險記》（中譯《大木筏》）《兩年假期》等優秀作品。隨着聲望的增高，凡爾納的財富也在迅速增長。
凡爾納的晚年不是十分幸福，創作減少並進入衰弱期，其《卡爾巴阡的古堡》有一定的自傳性，表現了生活中隱秘的側面。
1905年3月17日凡爾納出現偏癱，24日失去知覺，25日晨8:00去世。
1905年3月28日大出殯，全世界紛紛電唁，悼念這位偉大的科幻作傢。
凡爾納的故事生動幽默，妙語橫生，又能激發人們尤其是青少年熱愛科學、嚮往探險的熱情，所以一百多年來，一直受到世界各地讀者的歡迎。據聯合國教科文組織的資料表明，凡爾納是世界上被翻譯的作品最多的十大名傢之一。
凡爾納是一個非常優秀的通俗小說作傢，有一種能夠把自己的幻覺變得能夠觸摸的本領，其感覺是全方位的，從平淡的文學中傳達出某種人類的熱情。但凡爾納的小說中人物除了少數幾個外都是一模一樣的，他似乎塑造不出更重要的人物，人物都是臉譜化的簡單的好人壞人，沒有什麽心理活動；從其作品人物性別單一化上還可看出他對女人的偏見，隱隱流露出深受其苦的心態。此外凡爾納的作品中充滿了明顯的社會傾嚮，是一個愛國者（法國人最好）、民族解放主義者（支持被壓迫民族鬥爭），在某種程度上是一個無政府主義者（從某些作品中表現出無秩序者），最後還是一個銀河帝國主義者（有締造宇宙帝國的欲望）。
凡爾納的作品裏充滿了知識，但他本人卻是一名宇宙神秘主義者，對世界有一種神秘的崇拜。在他的小說中，有時候思考問題不夠深刻，主題也常常重複。
但總的來說，凡爾納的嘗試仍然是偉大的。他寫的雖然都是平凡小事，但讀後仍使我們激動不已。正如1884年教皇在接見凡爾納時曾說：“我並不是不知道您的作品的科學價值，但我最珍重的卻是它們的純潔、道德價值和精神力量。”
海底兩萬裏-作品特點
《海底兩萬裏》是一部科幻小說，於一八七0年問世，暨今已逾百年，而仍能以多種文字的各種版本風行世界，
海底兩萬裏海底兩萬裏
有讀者，僅此一端，即可見其生命力之強，吸引力之大。主張書不及百歲不看的讀者，是大可放心一閱的。書中人物寥寥，有名有姓的衹有四個半——“亞伯拉罕·林肯”號驅逐艦艦長法拉格特，衹在小說開頭部分曇花一現，姑且算半個；內景衹是一艘潛水艇。但就是這麽四個半人，這麽一艘潛水艇，一個神秘的船長,一個學富五車的科學家,在各種探險歷程中,在將近一年的時間中，縱橫海底兩萬裏，為我們演繹出一個個故事，展現出一幅幅畫面,海底墓地,珊瑚𠔌,巨型章魚……故事麯折驚險，引人入勝，畫面多姿多彩，氣象萬千。這樣一部小說，讀來既使人賞心悅目，也令人動魄驚心。令人永生難忘，不愧為一部世界名著。百看不厭。
《海底兩萬裏》寫的主要是他們在這十個月裏的經歷。《海底兩萬裏》已經有幾種中譯本，“兩萬裏”也就成了個約定俗成的說法；究其實，這裏的“裏”指的是法國古裏，而古法裏又有海陸之分，一古海裏約合5.556公裏，一古陸裏約合4.445公裏；既然是在海底周遊，這裏的兩萬裏，理應為兩萬古海裏。
如此說來，他們在海底行駛的路程，就應該在十一萬公裏以上了。這是要說明的。十一萬公裏的行程，是個大場面，一路所見，可以說無奇不有。誰見過海底森林?誰見過海底煤礦?誰見過“養”在貝殼裏、價值連城的大珍珠?當了俘虜的阿竜納斯和他的朋友們都見到了，而且曾經徜徉其間。他們在印度洋的珠場和鯊魚展開過搏鬥，捕鯨手內德·蘭手刃了一條兇惡的巨鯊；他們在紅海裏追捕過一條瀕於絶種的儒艮，儒艮肉當晚就被端上了餐桌；他們在大西洋裏和章魚進行過血戰，一名船員慘死；這些場面，都十分驚心動魄。此外，書中還描寫了抹香鯨如何殘殺長須鯨，“鸚鵡蠃”號潛艇又是如何殺死成群的抹香鯨的，那情景也十分罕見。
阿羅納剋斯是個生物學家，博古通今，乘潛艇在水下航行，使他飽覽了海洋裏的各種動植物；他和他那位對分類學入了迷的僕人康塞爾，將這些海洋生物嚮我們做了詳實的介紹，界、門、綱、目、科、屬、種，說得井井有條，使讀者認識了許多海洋生物；阿羅納剋斯還把在海洋中見到的種種奇觀，一一娓娓道來，令讀者大開眼界，知道了什麽是太平洋黑流，什麽是墨西哥暖流，颶風是怎樣形成的，馬尾藻海又是什麽樣……我們知道珊瑚礁是怎樣形成的嗎?知道海洋究竟有多深嗎? 知道海水傳播聲音的速度有多快嗎?這一類知識，書中比比皆是。
“鸚鵡蠃”號也曾遇險，在珊瑚礁上擱過淺，受到過巴布亞土著的襲擊，最可怕的是，在南極被厚厚的冰層睏住，艇內缺氧，艇上的人幾乎不能生還。但是，憑着潛艇的精良構造和艇長的超人智慧，種種險境，均被化解，終於完成了十一萬公裏的海底行程。凡爾納時代，潛水艇剛剛面世，還是一種神秘的東西；“鸚鵡蠃”號艇長尼摩又是個身世不明之人，他逃避人類，蟄居海底，而又隱隱約約和陸地上的某些人有一種特殊聯繫。凡此種種，都給小說增加了一層神秘色彩。
既是小說，人物當然是虛構的，作傢給“鸚鵡蠃”號艇長取的拉丁文名字，更明白無誤地指出了這一點——“尼摩”（Nemo），在拉丁文裏是子虛烏有的意思。但這並沒有妨礙作者把他描寫成一個有血有肉、讓讀者覺得可信的人物。
Title
The title refers to the distance traveled under the sea and not to a depth, as 20,000 leagues is over 2.5 times the circumference of the earth. The greatest depth mentioned in the book is four leagues. A literal translation of the French title would end in the plural "seas", thus implying the "seven seas" through which the characters of the novel travel. However, the early English translations of the title used "sea", meaning the ocean in general, as in "going to sea".
Plot summary
The story opens in the year 1866. Everyone in Europe and America is talking about a mysterious creature that has been sinking ships. Finally, the United States government decides to intervene and commissions the Abraham Lincoln to capture and identify the creature. On board the ship are Pierre Aronnax, a renowned scientist along with his manservant, Conseil, and Ned Land the king of harpooners. The Abraham Lincoln is attacked by the creature. Aronnax, Conseil and Land go overboard. The three men find themselves on top of the mysterious creature, which is actually a submarine vessel. They are taken on board and placed in a cell. The men meet Captain Nemo, the commander of the vessel, known as the Nautilus. He tells them they can stay on board the ship and enjoy freedom as long as they return to the cell if asked. They are never to leave the vessel again. Ned Land says he will not promise that he will not try to escape. Captain Nemo treats the men, especially Aronnax, very well. They are clothed and fed and may wander around the vessel at their leisure. Aronnax is thrilled by Nemo’s vast library. The men spend their time observing sea life through observation windows. Aronnax studies and writes about everything he sees.
During their time on the Nautilus, the men experience exciting adventures. They hunt in underwater forests, visit an island with angry natives, visit the lost city of Atlantis, and fish for giant pearls. However, there are also many distressing events coupled with the erratic behavior of Captain Nemo. One night the men are asked to return to their cell. They are given sleeping pills and awake the next morning very confused. Nemo asks Aronnax to look at a crewman who has been severely injured. The man later dies and they bury him in an underground cemetery, where many other crewmen have been laid to rest. On a voyage to the South Pole, the Nautilus becomes stuck in the ice. Everyone must take turns trying to break a hole in the ice so the vessel can get through. The ship almost runs out of its oxygen supply and the men grow tired and light headed. However, they escape just in time. Another time, the vessel sails through an area heavily populated by giant squid, when a giant squid gets stuck in the propeller of the submarine. The men and the crew must fight off the squid with axes because they cannot be killed with bullets. While fighting, a crewmember is killed by a squid. Nemo is moved to tears. The rising action of the story begins with Nemo’s attack on a warship. Aronnax does not know to which nation the warship belongs, but he is horrified when Captain Nemo sinks it. The men decide they must escape at all costs. One night, while off the coast of Norway, Aronnax, Conseil and Land plan a rash escape. To their dismay they realize they are heading toward a giant whirlpool—one that no ship has ever survived. Amazingly, in only a small dinghy they emerge safely. They awake in the hut of a fisherman. At the conclusion of the story, Aronnax is awaiting his return to France and rewriting his memoirs of his journey under the sea.
Title page (1871)
Themes and subtext
Captain Nemo's name is a subtle allusion to Homer's Odyssey, a Greek epic poem. In The Odyssey, Odysseus meets the monstrous cyclops Polyphemus during the course of his wanderings. Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name, and Odysseus replies that his name is "Utis" (ουτις), which translates as "No-man" or "No-body". In the Latin translation of the Odyssey, this pseudonym is rendered as "Nemo", which in Latin also translates as "No-man" or "No-body". Similarly to Nemo, Odysseus is forced to wander the seas in exile (though only for 10 years) and is tormented by the deaths of his ship's crew.
The preface of a new English edition[citation needed] of the book has a theory that Nemo's name was in part inspired by Jules Verne visiting Scotland and there coming across Scotland's national motto Nemo me impune lacessit, correctly meaning "No one attacks me with impunity", but reinterpreted by Verne as "Nemo attacks me with impunity".
Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury, "Captain Maury" in Verne's book, a real-life oceanographer who explored the winds, seas, currents, and collected samples of the bottom of the seas and charted all of these things, is mentioned a few times in this work by Jules Verne. Jules Verne certainly would have known of Matthew Maury's international fame and perhaps Maury's French ancestry.
References are made to three other Frenchmen. Those are Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, a famous explorer who was lost while circumnavigating the globe; Dumont D'Urville, the explorer who found the remains of the ill-fated ship of the Count; and Ferdinand Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal and the nephew of the man who was the sole survivor of De Galaup's expedition. Verne was an investor in Lesseps to build the French sea level crossing in Panama. The Nautilus seems to follow the footsteps of these men: She visits the waters where De Galaup was lost; she sails to Antarctic waters and becomes stranded there, just like D'Urville's ship, the Astrolabe; and she passes through an underwater tunnel from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean.
The crew of the Nautilus observes an underwater funeral.
The most famous part of the novel, the battle against the school of giant squid, begins when a crewman opens the hatch of the boat and gets caught by one of the monsters. As he is being pulled away by the tentacle that has grabbed him, he yells "Help!" in French. At the beginning of the next chapter, concerning the battle, Aronnax states that: "To convey such sights, one would take the pen of our most famous poet, Victor Hugo, author of The Toilers of the Sea". The Toilers of the Sea also contains an episode where a worker fights a giant octopus, wherein the octopus symbolizes the Industrial Revolution. It is probable that Verne borrowed the symbol, but used it to allude to the Revolutions of 1848 as well, in that the first man to stand against the "monster" and the first to be defeated by it is a Frenchman.
In several parts of the book, Captain Nemo is depicted as a champion of the world's underdogs and downtrodden. In one passage Captain Nemo is mentioned as providing some help to Greeks rebelling against Ottoman rule during the Cretan Revolt of 1866–1869, proving to Arronax that after all he had not completely severed all relations with mankind outside the Nautilus. In another passage, Nemo takes pity on a poor Indian pearl diver who must do his diving without the sophisticated diving suit available to the submarine's crew, and who is doomed to die young due to the cumulative effect of diving on his lungs; Nemo approaches him underwater and gives him a whole pouch full of pearls, more than he could have gotten in years of his dangerous work.
Some of Verne's ideas about the not-yet-existing submarines which were laid out in this book turned out to be prophetic, such as the high speed and secret conduct of today's nuclear attack submarines, and (with diesel submarines) the need to surface frequently for fresh air. However, Verne evidently had no idea of the problems of water pressure, depicting his submarine as capable of diving freely even into the deepest of ocean deeps, where in reality it would have been instantly crushed by the weight of water above it, and with humans in diving suits able to emerge and walk along the deep ocean floor where they would have died quickly because of physiological effects of depth pressure and their breathing sets not working because of the pressure (see Diving hazards and precautions).
Model of the 1863 French Navy submarine Plongeur at the Musée de la Marine, Paris.
The Nautilus as imagined by Jules Verne.
Verne took the name "Nautilus" from one of the earliest successful submarines, built in 1800 by Robert Fulton, who later invented the first commercially successful steamboat. Fulton's submarine was named after the paper nautilus because it had a sail. Three years before writing his novel, Jules Verne also studied a model of the newly developed French Navy submarine Plongeur at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, which inspired him for his definition of the Nautilus. The world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine, the United States Navy's USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was named for Verne's fictional vessel.
Verne can also be credited with glimpsing the military possibilities of submarines, and specifically the danger which they possessed for the naval superiority of the British Navy, composed of surface warships. The fictional sinking of a ship by Nemo's Nautilus was to be enacted again and again in reality, in the same waters where Verne predicted it, by German U-boats in both World Wars.
The breathing apparatus used by Nautilus divers is depicted as an untethered version of underwater breathing apparatus designed by Benoit Rouquayrol and Auguste Denayrouze in 1865. They designed a diving set with a backpack spherical air tank that supplied air through the first known demand regulator. The diver still walked on the seabed and did not swim. This set was called an aérophore (Greek for "air-carrier"). Air pressure tanks made with the technology of the time could only hold 30 atmospheres, and the diver had to be surface supplied; the tank was for bailout. The durations of 6 to 8 hours on a tankful without external supply recorded for the Rouquayrol set in the book are greatly exaggerated.
No less significant, though more rarely commented on, is the very bold political vision (indeed, revolutionary for its time) represented by the character of Captain Nemo. As revealed in the later Verne book The Mysterious Island, Captain Nemo is a descendant of Tipu Sultan (a Muslim ruler of Mysore who resisted the British Raj), who took to the underwater life after the suppression of the 1857 Indian Mutiny, in which his close family members were killed by the British.
This change was made on request of Verne's publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel (who is known to be responsible for many serious changes in Verne's books), since in the original text the mysterious captain was a Polish nobleman, avenging his family who were killed by Russians. They had been murdered in retaliation for the captain's taking part in the Polish January Uprising (1863). As France was allied with Tsarist Russia, to avoid trouble the target for Nemo's wrath was changed to France's old enemy, the British Empire. It is no wonder that Professor Pierre Aronnax does not suspect Nemo's origins, as these were explained only later, in Verne's next book. What remained in the book from the initial concept is a portrait of Tadeusz Kościuszko (a Polish national hero, leader of the uprising against Russia in 1794) with inscription in Latin: "Finis Poloniae!".
The national origin of Captain Nemo was changed during most movie realizations; in nearly all picture-based works following the book he was made into a European. Nemo was represented as an Indian by Omar Sharif in the 1973 European miniseries The Mysterious Island. Nemo is also depicted as Indian in a silent film version of the story released in 1916 and later in both the graphic novel and the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Recurring themes in later books
Jules Verne wrote a sequel to this book: L'Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874), which concludes the stories begun by Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and In Search of the Castaways. It should be noted that, while The Mysterious Island seems to give more information about Nemo (or Prince Dakkar), it is muddied by the presence of several irreconcilable chronological contradictions between the two books and even within The Mysterious Island.
Verne returned to the theme of an outlaw submarine captain in his much later Facing the Flag. That book's main villain, Ker Karraje, is a completely unscrupulous pirate, acting purely and simply for gain, completely devoid of all the saving graces which gave Nemo — for all that he, too, was capable of ruthless killings — some nobility of character.
Like Nemo, Ker Karraje plays "host" to unwilling French guests — but unlike Nemo, who manages to elude all pursuers, Karraje's career of outlawry is decisively ended by the combination of an international task force and the rebellion of his French captives. Though also widely published and translated, it never attained the lasting popularity of Twenty Thousand Leagues.
More similar to the original Nemo, though with a less finely worked-out character, is Robur in Robur the Conqueror - a dark and flamboyant outlaw rebel using an aircraft instead of a submarine — later used as a basis for the movie Master of the World.
Translations
The novel was first translated into English in 1873 by Reverend Lewis Page Mercier (aka "Mercier Lewis"). Mercier, under orders from British censors and performed or dictated by his editors at Sampson Low, cut nearly a quarter of Verne's original text and made hundreds of translation errors, sometimes dramatically changing the meaning of Verne's original intent. Some of these bowdlerizations may have been done for political reasons, such as Nemo's identity and the nationality of the two warships he sinks, or the portraits of freedom fighters on the wall of his cabin which originally included Daniel O'Connell. Nonetheless it became the "standard" English translation for more than a hundred years, while other translations continued to draw from it — and its mistakes, especially the mistranslation of the title; the French title actually means Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas.
A modern translation was produced in 1966 by Walter James Miller and published by Washington Square Press. Many of Mercier's changes were addressed in the translator's preface, and most of Verne's text was restored.
Many of the "sins" of Mercier were again corrected in a from-the-ground-up re-examination of the sources and an entirely new translation by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter between 1989 and 1991, published in 1993 by Naval Institute Press in a "completely restored and annotated edition." But, it has a new error: in it the French word scaphandrier, which in this book means one of Captain Nemo's divers in kit similar to an old-type heavy standard diving suit but with an independent air supply, is everywhere wrongly translated "frogman". F. P. Walter's own translation was published in 2009 with the title Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas (ISBN 978-1-904808-28-2)
上個世紀倒數第三年的3月19日，郵差為蒙特利爾市雅剋—卡蒂埃大街送信，給29號送去一封緻薩米·斯金先生的信。
這封信中說：
斯納賓先生嚮薩米·斯金先生致意，請他立刻到他的辦公室來商量一件與他有關的事情。
這位公證人因為什麽事情要見薩米·斯金先生呢？斯金先生和蒙特利爾的所有的人一樣也認識斯納賓，後者是一位很好的人，一位可靠的、謹慎的顧問。他出生在加拿大，領導着城市最好的事務所。這個事務所60年前歸知各的公證人尼剋所有，此人的真實姓名是尼古拉·薩加莫爾。這位祖先為休倫人①的公證人十分愛國，從而捲入了可怕的莫加茲事件②，這一事件在1837年引起極大的反響。
這封信中說：
斯納賓先生嚮薩米·斯金先生致意，請他立刻到他的辦公室來商量一件與他有關的事情。
這位公證人因為什麽事情要見薩米·斯金先生呢？斯金先生和蒙特利爾的所有的人一樣也認識斯納賓，後者是一位很好的人，一位可靠的、謹慎的顧問。他出生在加拿大，領導着城市最好的事務所。這個事務所60年前歸知各的公證人尼剋所有，此人的真實姓名是尼古拉·薩加莫爾。這位祖先為休倫人①的公證人十分愛國，從而捲入了可怕的莫加茲事件②，這一事件在1837年引起極大的反響。
“請盡快來，親愛的亨利。我急切地盼望你的到來。匈牙利南部地區景色美麗迷人，一定會使一位工程師流連忘返。你會不虛此行的。
衷心祝福你！
瑪剋·維達爾”
是的，我對此次旅行絲毫不感到後悔。但我是否有必要講出來讓大傢分享？還是衹字不提的好？其實，說出來又會有誰相信呢？
衷心祝福你！
瑪剋·維達爾”
是的，我對此次旅行絲毫不感到後悔。但我是否有必要講出來讓大傢分享？還是衹字不提的好？其實，說出來又會有誰相信呢？
倪匡科幻小說選(人頭戀＋10)
張序 自序 標本 刺殺
動腦 審問 吊客 強姦
競爭 遠航 噪音 化身
逃命 人頭戀
武俠小說人物關係
他和他的影子 本夫，淫婦和姦夫 挑戰者和被挑戰者 捕頭和大賊
殺手和聯絡人 莊傢，輸傢和贏傢 幫主和副幫主 大俠和送禮人
艄公和過渡的 擺擂臺和打擂臺 仇人和報仇者 用毒的和中毒者
保鏢和劫鏢者 蟬，螳螂和黃雀
監獄故事
真實供詞 千萬贓款 奔嚮自由 公平交易
探訪時間 人性弱點 報應不爽 繼續努力
一雙眼睛
陰謀殺人故事
真和假 異和同 生和死 新與舊
常見的男人與女人故事
聰明·笨 是·不是 賣·不賣 能·不能
爛醉·醒 誠實·騙
《聊齋志異》全盤現代化
快刀 美人首 孫必振 紅毛氈
鬼妻
舊貨巷故事
黃銅製申縮型單筒望遠鏡 缺嘴斷柄無底款宜興紫砂舊茶壺
瀋紹安款脫胎金漆韋馱像 雲林子折帶皺太湖石墨竹圖
哥窯粉青衝耳壁裂紋六足爐 宋剋柔手製獦絲花鳥册頁
元不忽木草書《點絳唇》全套
想當年故事
人犯 肉搏 釘梢 豪舉
私奔 刑罰 拼酒
其他作品
心變 通神 異軍 騙徒
秘密徵空 金三角 男人女人故事 活埋
石縫中 神仙手高飛傳奇 遊俠列傳傳奇：太虛幻境
呼倫池的微波
張序 自序 標本 刺殺
動腦 審問 吊客 強姦
競爭 遠航 噪音 化身
逃命 人頭戀
武俠小說人物關係
他和他的影子 本夫，淫婦和姦夫 挑戰者和被挑戰者 捕頭和大賊
殺手和聯絡人 莊傢，輸傢和贏傢 幫主和副幫主 大俠和送禮人
艄公和過渡的 擺擂臺和打擂臺 仇人和報仇者 用毒的和中毒者
保鏢和劫鏢者 蟬，螳螂和黃雀
監獄故事
真實供詞 千萬贓款 奔嚮自由 公平交易
探訪時間 人性弱點 報應不爽 繼續努力
一雙眼睛
陰謀殺人故事
真和假 異和同 生和死 新與舊
常見的男人與女人故事
聰明·笨 是·不是 賣·不賣 能·不能
爛醉·醒 誠實·騙
《聊齋志異》全盤現代化
快刀 美人首 孫必振 紅毛氈
鬼妻
舊貨巷故事
黃銅製申縮型單筒望遠鏡 缺嘴斷柄無底款宜興紫砂舊茶壺
瀋紹安款脫胎金漆韋馱像 雲林子折帶皺太湖石墨竹圖
哥窯粉青衝耳壁裂紋六足爐 宋剋柔手製獦絲花鳥册頁
元不忽木草書《點絳唇》全套
想當年故事
人犯 肉搏 釘梢 豪舉
私奔 刑罰 拼酒
其他作品
心變 通神 異軍 騙徒
秘密徵空 金三角 男人女人故事 活埋
石縫中 神仙手高飛傳奇 遊俠列傳傳奇：太虛幻境
呼倫池的微波
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