赫伯特·乔治·威尔斯陆续发表了《莫洛博士岛》（The Island of Dr. Moreau）、《隐身人》（The Invisible Man）、《世界大战》（The War of the Worlds）、《神的食物》等科幻小说，还写了大量的论文和长篇小说。
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.
《时间机器》是英国作家黑.格.威尔士最著名的两篇著作之一（另一篇是大家都再熟悉不过的《世界大战》），这两篇作品在当时曾令我沉溺了好久。而其中最使我感兴趣的是时间旅行的奇妙之处：这在当时还引发了一场关于时间旅行的社会问题及伦理的大争论。故事情节同样的引人入胜，充满了惊险刺激和悬疑。
《时间机器》运用了某种近乎恐怖的手法和错综复杂的情节，展示了一个震撼人心的感人故事。时间旅行家是对科学有所藐视的韦尔斯式的英雄（凡尔纳式的英雄比较推崇科学技术），具有极强的能力，却无法改变现实。整个作品给人以某种荒凉的感觉。
数十年来，时间旅行一直处于主流科学的边缘。然而,近几年内,该话题在一些理论物理学家中间已成了个人的研究爱好。这一变化部分是出于娱乐消遣——想象时间旅行可是件趣事。但此项研究也有其严肃的一面。理解因果关系是尝试建立一个统一的物理学理论的关键部分。如果无限制的时间旅行是可能的，那么在原则上，这样一个统一理论的性质可能会受到极为严重的影响。
我们对时间最完善的理解来自Einstein的相对论。在这些理论诞生之前，时间被广泛地认为是绝对的和普遍的，不管人们的物理状态如何，时间对于每个人都一样。在 Einstein狭义相对论中，他提出测量两个事件的时间间隔取决于观察者如何运动。至关重要的是，运动状态不同的两名观察者对于同样的两个事件将会体验到不同的持续时间。
经常用“双生子佯谬”描述的那个效应：假定Sally和Sam是双胞胎，Sally搭乘一艘飞船以高速驶向附近的一颗恒星去旅行，然后折返飞回地球，而Sam只呆在家里。对于Sally而言，旅行大约持续了一年，但当她返回到地球并跨出宇宙飞船时，她发现地球上已经过去了10年，现在她的兄弟比她大九岁。尽管他们在同一天出生，可是Sally和Sam是不再具有相同的年龄。这个例子说明了一类有限的时间旅行。实际上，Sally已经跳跃到了九年后的地球的未来。
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.
《时间机器》运用了某种近乎恐怖的手法和错综复杂的情节，展示了一个震撼人心的感人故事。时间旅行家是对科学有所藐视的韦尔斯式的英雄（凡尔纳式的英雄比较推崇科学技术），具有极强的能力，却无法改变现实。整个作品给人以某种荒凉的感觉。
数十年来，时间旅行一直处于主流科学的边缘。然而,近几年内,该话题在一些理论物理学家中间已成了个人的研究爱好。这一变化部分是出于娱乐消遣——想象时间旅行可是件趣事。但此项研究也有其严肃的一面。理解因果关系是尝试建立一个统一的物理学理论的关键部分。如果无限制的时间旅行是可能的，那么在原则上，这样一个统一理论的性质可能会受到极为严重的影响。
我们对时间最完善的理解来自Einstein的相对论。在这些理论诞生之前，时间被广泛地认为是绝对的和普遍的，不管人们的物理状态如何，时间对于每个人都一样。在 Einstein狭义相对论中，他提出测量两个事件的时间间隔取决于观察者如何运动。至关重要的是，运动状态不同的两名观察者对于同样的两个事件将会体验到不同的持续时间。
经常用“双生子佯谬”描述的那个效应：假定Sally和Sam是双胞胎，Sally搭乘一艘飞船以高速驶向附近的一颗恒星去旅行，然后折返飞回地球，而Sam只呆在家里。对于Sally而言，旅行大约持续了一年，但当她返回到地球并跨出宇宙飞船时，她发现地球上已经过去了10年，现在她的兄弟比她大九岁。尽管他们在同一天出生，可是Sally和Sam是不再具有相同的年龄。这个例子说明了一类有限的时间旅行。实际上，Sally已经跳跃到了九年后的地球的未来。
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.
本书是英国科幻小说大师威尔斯的名著之一。书中描写一个青年物理学家格里芬发明了一种隐身术，把自己变成了来去无踪的隐身人。天才的发明并没有给这个极端的个人主义者带来任何欢乐，反使他屡糟灾难，以致一步步走向犯罪的深渊，直至变成一个可怕的杀人狂，而不可避免地走向自我毁灭。
独特奇异的幻想艺术，丝丝入扣、引人入胜的故事情节，以及蕴含深刻的社会内涵，都足以证明《隐身人》不愧是一部世界科幻小说的经典之作。
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.
独特奇异的幻想艺术，丝丝入扣、引人入胜的故事情节，以及蕴含深刻的社会内涵，都足以证明《隐身人》不愧是一部世界科幻小说的经典之作。
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.
赫胥黎是英国二十世纪三位最有影响的讽刺文学作家之一.其代表作,小说《奇妙的新世界》出版于1932年.小说貌似科学幻想,实质上有较深的政治和道德含义.这本薄薄的十多万字的小说发表后,很快就被译成几十种国家文字.赫胥黎的《奇妙的新世界》、乔治·奥韦尔的《一九八四》和苏联作家叶·扎亚京的《我们》被某些评论家称为该世纪的"反乌托邦三部曲".目前,《奇妙的新世界》被列为西方一百本必读书之一.
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，总部位于芝加哥的美国 USR公司开发出超能机器人产品--NS-5。随着NS-5被大量倾销，机器人开始充当起社会各个领域的重要角色。警探史普纳(威尔·史密斯饰)始终留恋以往简单的生活，爱听老歌，喜欢老式的打扮。专门从事机器人心理研究的科学家苏珊(布里吉特·莫伊纳罕饰)向来崇尚逻辑与科学，她坚信总有一天机器人会胜过人类。生活观念南辕北辙的史普纳和苏珊却在调查一桩疑似NS-5谋杀人类的案件中不期而遇。随着调查的深入，人们发觉机器人似乎已经学会了自我思考，并且解开了控制他们的密码，成为了完全独立的“机器类”。
《机械公敌》-剧情简介
公元2035年，总部位于芝加哥的美国USR公司开发出超能机器人产品--NS-5，其外形酷似人类，拥有强化耐久的钛金属外壳，可执行各种任务。从保母、厨师、快递、遛狗到管理家庭收支，简直是无所不能。一时间，机器人的数量成3倍趋势增长，平均每5人便拥有1个机器人。随着NS-5被大量倾销，机器人开始充当起社会各个领域的重要角色。而发明它的USR公司也成为地球上有史以来最强大的集团。
警探史普纳(威尔•史密斯WillSmith饰)始终留恋以往简单的生活，爱听老歌，喜欢老式的打扮。他厌恶科技和机器人，却又不得不生活在由这两者组成的世界里。专门从事机器人心理研究的科学家苏珊(布里吉特•莫伊纳罕BridgetMoynahan饰)向来崇尚逻辑与科学，她坚信总有一天机器人会胜过人类，并回过头来帮助人类进步。
生活观念南辕北辙的史普纳和苏珊却在调查一桩疑似NS-5谋杀人类的案件中不期而遇……人类制造机器人时，通常会遵循所谓“机器人三大安全法则”来设计并控制它们。但是，随着调查的深入，人们发觉机器人似乎已经学会了自我思考，并且解开了控制他们的密码，成为了完全独立的“机器类”。
人类必须开始重新思考如何面对机器人，但是，机器人或者人类自身都值得信赖吗？
《机械公敌》-幕后制作
澳大利亚导演艾里克斯•布罗雅斯是一个制造幻想的天才，他的《移魂都市》（DarkCity）一直是广受好评的CULT电影经典之作，后来的众多电影，甚至包括《楚门的世界》（TrumanShow）和《骇客帝国》都曾深受其影响。对于本片的制作，他认为电影的重要作用是让单纯的幻想更富真实性。为了达到这个目的，艾里克斯集合了一个计算机特效的全明星组合，实现机器人模型、场景设计和数字虚拟形象的完美结合，拍摄了近1000个特效镜头。全新机器人造型，是本片吸引观众的一个重要元素。
影片的创作过程
电影最初的剧本叫《硬线》（HARDWIRED），是一个经典样式的悬疑谋杀故事，其主旨非常贴近阿西莫夫的“机器人三大定律”，可以说，故事的发展脉络就是根据定律的逻辑推演来设计情节的。
迪斯尼导演布莱恩•辛格（BryanSinger）对这份最初的《硬线》手稿进行了修改，当手稿最终被送到20世纪福克斯公司以后，导演亚历克斯•普罗亚斯（AlexProyas）和作家杰夫•温塔（JeffVintar）共同努力，将它修改为一个适合大制作的更加宏大开放的电影剧本。趁着福克斯公司在争取阿西莫夫（IsaacAsimov）小说版权的时候，温塔花了大约两年左右的时间，将电影剧本编写为类似阿西莫夫机器人小说系列中的一个故事。故事包含了女主角机器人心理学家苏珊•卡尔文博士和机器人三大定律，这两个元素是阿西莫夫《我，机器人》系列科幻小说里面一直存在贯穿始终的。后来，希拉里•塞兹（HillarySeitz）又为剧本动了手术。最后，在威尔•史密斯加盟影片后，阿基瓦•高斯曼（AkivaGoldsman）又为了他的角色再次对剧本进行了剪裁，形成了现在影片最终所呈现的面貌。尽管花了这么长的时间和如此多人的辛劳，但确实是最初的《硬线》作者高夫•赞恩里（GeoffZanell）为本片的故事提供了主题。
阿西莫夫及作品
艾萨克•阿西莫夫，美籍俄裔犹太人，本世纪最伟大的科幻小说家。同样也是文学硕士、化学博士和非常优秀的科普小说家。渊博的学识和不懈的努力使阿西莫夫作品的数量非常巨大，并使他获得了一系列的荣誉和褒奖。在逝世前不久，他曾自述出版过467部著作，但研究他的作品的专家称，他至少出版过480部著作。而且体裁广泛，有严肃的历史和科学论著，也有轻松的戏剧、幽默小说。
《我，机器人》是阿西莫夫诸多科幻著作中最有名的系列之一。另外一个著名的是《基地》系列。这两个脍炙人口的系列和《其他机器人》等等故事，都各自独立成篇，但当贯串起来，却又是一部俯仰两万年的长篇史诗。阿西莫夫的科幻世界广阔巨大，通过描绘银河帝国的兴亡史，来讨论人性与政治、经济、军事等文明要素产生的互动影响。这种宏观视野使他的作品充满对人类未来的关怀和思考，可以说影响和改变了很多读者对世界的看法。
本片片名《我，机器人》，对于科幻小说读者可以说是如雷贯耳。系列小说由十几个独立成篇的故事分别组成，而在《引言》的开篇第一句话，阿西莫夫就提出了有名的“机器人三大定律”：
第一定律——机器人不得伤害人类，也不得见人类受到伤害而袖手旁观。
第二定律一-机器人应服从人类的一切命令，但不得违反第一定律。
第三定律——机器人应保护自身的安全，但不得违反第一、第二定律。
由于本片的故事悬念来自根据机器人三大定律的逻辑推演，因此扮演警探的科幻电影专业户威尔•史密斯说：“本片告诉我们：机器人并没有问题，技术也不是问题，人类逻辑的局限才是最大的问题。因此，到头来我们才发现，人类最大的敌人不是别人，正是人类自己。”
影片特技
对这部科幻题材来说，电脑特技理应是本片的主角。导演认为电影的重要作用是让单纯的幻想更富真实性。为了达到这个目的，他集合了一个计算机特效的全明星组合，由制作电影《指环王》而荣获奥斯卡最佳视觉效果奖、享誉全球的新西兰维塔公司团队执行制作，实现了机器人模型、场景设计和数字虚拟形象的完美结合，为此一共拍摄了近1000个特效镜头。其中亮点显然是流线型、周身透明泛光的ＮＳ-5型机器人。桑尼除了眼睛是蓝色的以外，和其他该型号的机器人没区别，不过它的形体和声音是由专门的演员加上绿幕技术结合电脑特效来做的。其余的NS-5机器人是采用最新型的改进绿幕技术完成。NS-5高180厘米，具有456个活动零件，经由12位博士组装完成，熔点六千华氏度，可负重800磅，能承受数千磅撞击,电子智慧脑可复制人类自由意志，具有1ＴＢ（1000GB）内存，每秒能执行6M笔以上运算，拥有80种语言能力。能记住所有你记不住的任何内容,采用体贴细心的泰丽莎2.1.2版操作系统；安装在头骨内的是有耐久钛金属外壳保护的智慧脑以及万能记忆网路（UniversalRetentionNetwork）……等着在影片中看看，2035年，我们每四个人将拥有的一个的机器人特效处理是否能如它的文字说明般真实可信吧！
《机械公敌》-幕后花絮
片子开头，当史普纳打开大门，一个头上写着42的机器人站在他门前的台阶上。很多科幻电影都有42这个号码，是因为受到了道格拉斯.亚当斯的《银河系漫游指南》的影响。片子受到的《银河系漫游指南》影响的另一个例子，史普纳的唯一好日子是“星期四”。在《指南》中，这是作家登特一整周当中 “从不能理解……”的一天。在古董机器人橱窗里，陈列的是索尼公司的机器狗爱波AIBO。
片子里威尔•史密斯开的车是一款叫做AudiRSQ的概念车，是奥迪特别为本片设计的，导演亚历克斯•普罗亚斯还为车的特别外形设计提供了建议。对于嫌疑犯机器人桑尼，剧组采用了在《指环王：双塔奇兵》里创造哥伦（Gollum）的同样处理方法：由艾伦•图代克AlanTudyk为桑尼提供身体动作和声音。威尔•史密斯在本片里骑的摩托是一款2004年的MVAgustaF4-SPR，全球总共只生产了300辆。技术参数：750cc，内置4缸引擎，147马力，能推进到时速超过175英里。
影片中大多数的车型是以2004年前的奥迪车，比如A2、A6和TT为模型改造的，甚至有些都没有改，直接就用了。兰宁博士的猫咪叫“阿西莫夫”。在戏剧性的追逐场面中，戴尔•史普纳警探对约翰•伯金少尉说：“我要开始怀念过去的好日子了。”伯金回答：“什么过去好日子？”史普纳就说：“"那时候人还是被其他人杀死的。”在片子里，最先提出这个“美好旧时光”的人并非是史普纳，正是伯金。
影片最后，史普纳的奶奶祈祷的句子是来自《圣经•诗篇》16：8“我将耶和华常摆在我面前．因他在我右边、我便不至摇动”。桑尼的眼睛是蓝色的，其他所有的NS-5型机器人的眼睛都是金色的。约翰•伯金少尉的台词：“不，老实说，人创造怪物，怪物杀人。每个人杀怪物、狼人。”这段台词和《侏罗纪公园》里的很相似：马尔科
姆博士说“神创造恐龙，神毁灭恐龙。神创造人类，人毁灭神，人类创造恐龙……”
《机械公敌》-影片看点
机器人、威尔•史密斯的电脑大作战
“我认为，我们的动作电影已经做好了达到新的技术水平的时候。”好莱坞男星威尔•史密斯（《独立日》、《绝地战警》）此次身兼影片执行制作人，他饶有兴趣地说，“你的故事必须让人感兴趣。所有的特效和爆炸都必须来的超酷才行。”于是为本片全力投入电脑效果制作的是四届奥斯卡特效得奖队伍，他们为片中无所不能的机器老兄们制作了超过900个电脑独立特效，以使得效果更加逼真。有人说片中白色透明的机器人外形颇有类似苹果公司（Apple）产品风格，事实上，制作人帕特里克就是在苹果产品iMac中找到了灵感：“当你穿过外壳看到（机器人）构造时，它们显得就不那么可怕了”，帕特里克笑道。
“领衔主演”机器人角色索尼的实际上是真人演员艾伦•图代克（《闪避球的奇迹》）。我们屏幕上将看到的机器人表演，采用了和《指环王三》里怪物咕噜的同样真人和电脑结合的技术——绿屏、传感器、动作捕捉和完美的电脑合成。“这是我最棒的角色，尽管屏幕上没人看得到我本人，不过角色在电影中的经历对我来说非常刺激。”机器人索尼的银幕表现也将成为本片令人关注的焦点。
就本片的特效水片而言，仅仅提及以上是远远不够的。三位金牌特效制作人加上数十位特效制作师，以及新西兰知名的WETA（《指环王》系列）的鼎力协助，《机械公敌》全力描绘出一个2035年的芝加哥——机器人遍布，流光玻璃街道和未来建筑繁屹的未来都市。但我们也不用担心这仅是一部充满花哨特效的电影，导演亚历克斯•普罗亚斯（《移魂都市》）表示，“我们把故事和情感放到第一位，如此电脑动画将提高电影效果而不是分散观众的注意力。”
事实上，本片在叙事方法上多少有点《少数派报告》的影子，但结合阿西莫夫的机器人三大定律、好莱坞最炙手可热的黑人影星威尔•史密斯还有“性感苹果造型”的机器人这三大最吸引的噱头，《机械公敌》必将成为七月票房大热。问题只有一个：这部影片能否最终成为像《终结者》一样的科幻经典？
《机械公敌》-演员介绍
《机械公敌》威尔•史密斯
威尔•史密斯
美国演员，高中毕业后痴心于歌唱事业，遂决定放弃上大学，做全职的艺人。1989年首次获得葛莱美奖“最佳饶舌歌演唱奖”。进而成为NBC电视影集《活力王子》(TheFreshPrinceofBelAir)的男主角。在乐坛获得巨大成功之后，威尔•史密斯向几个演艺公司的主管表示了他对演戏的兴趣，这其中包括华纳总裁班尼•梅迪纳。梅迪纳是在洛杉矶出生穷苦但却在洛杉矶的的富人区贝浮力山庄的一个富人家庭度过了他的青少年时期。他当时正好在计划根据他的亲身经历拍一部电视剧。梅迪纳觉得威尔•史密斯是正好的人选。据好莱坞内部人士透露，当年威尔•史密斯在试镜时念剧本念得如此精彩，美国国家广播电台当场拍板决定上戏。1990年，《贝莱尔的新鲜王子》开始播放，深受广大观众喜爱，一播就是六年。
尽管威尔•史密斯看起来象一个大大咧咧的小混混，其实他出身中等家庭，父亲是工程师，母亲是教育界人士。威尔•史密斯的书读得更是出色，当年麻省理工学院给他全奖让他去读书，但是他因为要全身心投入演艺界，不得不拒绝。《贝莱尔的新鲜王子》的成功使威尔•史密斯与许多好莱坞的出色演员建立起了亲密关系，这其中包括大量黑人演员，如琼斯，比尔•考兹比，胡比•歌德宝，以及丹泽尔•华盛顿。
1993年以主角身份跃登大银幕，在一部讽刺纽约知识分子的文艺片《六度分离》之中，扮演一个自称是黑人巨星薜尼鲍迪儿子的老千。1995年主演警匪动作片《绝地战警》便一举成名，《独立日》、《黑超特警组》全球票房奏捷后，身价飙到巅峰。近几年接拍了许多卖座的动作片。
《机械公敌》布里吉特•莫伊纳罕
布里吉特•莫伊纳罕
布丽姬•穆娜是好莱坞目前除了杰米•李•柯蒂斯和薛歌妮•韦弗之外为数不多可以胜任高智商的强硬角色而外形又不失优雅妩媚的女演员之一。1970年生于纽约的Binghamton，和两个哥哥一起在Longmeadow长大，结果她也如同假小子一般多动，爱好各种体育项目，高中是篮球队队长，选择去上橄榄球课而不是戏剧班。布丽姬先是登上时尚T台并逐渐小有名气，出现在Glamour、Vogue等众多著名杂志之上，之后又进入了纽约 CaymichaelPattenStudio学习表演。1999年，布丽姬作为嘉宾出演热门剧《欲望都市》中的Natasha一角，次年影片《女狼俱乐部》中吞云吐雾的酒吧女招待一角给观众留下了深刻印象，接下来又出现在了一系列备受观注的热门影片中，包括《谍海计中计》、《战争之王》、《我，机器人》以及《玩命记忆》等等，戏路也愈来愈广阔。
布丽姬的科学家父亲后来成了麻省阿默斯特大学(UMass)的一名管理人员，母亲的职业是教师并且还在2005年和布丽姬一起出演过一则 Bostonarea的电视广告。此外布丽姬•穆娜2004年开始和新英格兰爱国者队的明星四分位TomBrady约会，但在2006年的感恩节分手，07年布丽姬迎来了自己第一个孩子的降生。
《机械公敌》-穿帮镜头
连贯性错误：
兰宁博士的猫出现的绝大多数场景，她的眼睛都是蓝色的。但是在史普纳跳过喷泉那场戏，猫的眼睛变成黄色了。史普纳和少尉在酒吧喝酒，少尉酒瓶上面的商标，每次切换镜头角度一次，就变化一次。在隧道追逐戏后，史普纳去检查他的脚踝，开始他的腿是分开的，下一个镜头，他的左腿就叠放在了右脚上。当加尔文博士走进她的实验室去问桑尼时，她得走下几级台阶。摄像机从她背后推进的时候，可以看见她走了四步下台阶，但是，那儿一共就只有三级台阶。
暴露错误：
史普纳和加尔文博士试图关闭VIKI，机器人袭击他们的那场戏，一个长镜头拍摄了史普纳对着他身边四面射击并跑动。这个明显是CGI做的，因为有些瞬间可以看出画面里他的头跟脖子或者身体分开没挨着。
《机械公敌》-影片点评
未来，发达的高科技社会中发生的足以改变人类历史的危机--《机械公敌》的故事蓝本，最早来源于编剧杰夫•温塔JeffVintar十多年以前创作的剧本《Hardwired》，它讲述了一桩神秘的谋杀案，而机器人可能才是幕后元凶。制片人劳伦斯•马克LaurenceMark对这个故事相当感兴趣，与此同时，二十世纪福斯电影公司一直想拍一部有关机器人的大型电影，遂将之列入筹拍日程，并初步拟订由亚历克斯•普罗亚斯AlexProyas执导。2000年初，杰夫•温塔飞赴澳洲开始同导演普罗亚斯就《机械公敌》拍片计划进行沟通，整个合作案足足花了两年多。
开始时，该片被定位于未来背景下的谋杀惊悚片，接下来他们尝试将格局放大以便有更多可发挥的空间。因为导演普罗亚斯对视觉风格独到且优异的品味，主创人员最终达成共识，要将《机械公敌》拍成宏大背景下的史诗浩劫，他们的野心促使该片必须要在视觉特效上力争有所突破。
在当时，制片人约翰•戴维斯JohnDavis名下的制片公司拿到了《机械公敌》的电影版权，而导演普罗亚斯在科幻大师艾萨克•阿西莫夫IsaacAsimov的小说里找到了剧本以外的视觉元素，阿西莫夫作品中的思想和人物很自然地融入编剧杰夫•温塔的未来谋杀案剧本。
《机械公敌》-一句话评论
What will you do with yours?
机械公敌机械公敌
Laws are made to be broken
One man saw it coming.
情节过于简单而令人失望，追逐和动作场面充斥着科幻电影常规滥用的CGI技术处理。
——芝加哥太阳报
非常熟练，但也明显让人失望，闹独立的机器人和流氓警察在一些片段里显得闹哄哄的。
——伦敦时报
这部高科技电影，拍的好看但是显得智商并不高。
——观察家
作为对人工智能技术的伦理探索，这部电影比《A.I.》要更谦逊、更迷人。
——BBC电影评论
动作场面十分引人入胜。虽然不能算是历史性突破，但通过我们这个时代的数字技术，观看机器人对打的场面着实令人兴奋。
——视觉周刊
《机械公敌》-完全班底
威尔·史密斯：官方首选
据几位制片人口径一致的“官方”说法，威尔·史密斯是制作方的首选。同时，他还答应在该片中担任监制(此前，他曾为由罗伯特·德尼罗和埃迪·墨菲主演的影片《作秀时刻》(Showtime)。担任监制)，正是由于威尔的推荐，《美丽心灵》的金奖编剧阿齐瓦·高斯曼Akiva Goldsman也得已加入幕后阵容。
机械公敌机械公敌
“《机械公敌》最吸引我的是，它的中心概念是机器人没有问题，科技并不是问题本身，人类逻辑的极限才真的是问题，而最终，我们成为自己最大的敌人。”这是威尔·史密斯出演该片的最大体会。
布里吉特·莫伊纳罕：热忱至上
依旧引用官方的说法：“她能够非常贴切地传达我们对这个角色的设计，也就是在机器人般冰冷的外表下，却有着很人性的热忱。”
相貌秀丽的布里吉特·莫伊纳罕从影片《妹力四射》(Coyote Ugly)中迅速崛起。在热门剧集《欲望都市》中她也曾有上佳表现。影片《新手》(The Recruit)中她与阿尔·帕西诺和科林·法瑞尔有过愉快的合作。
导演：亚历克斯·普罗亚斯
这位来自澳洲且科班出身的导演，素来以擅长营造充满神秘和未来感的影片而闻名。1994年，他凭一部改编自同名漫画的《乌鸦》(The Crow)令世人所知。四年后，更是以那部《移魂都市》(Dark City)征服了观众。此前，他还自编自导了其第一部描写现实世界的青春片《车库时光》(Garage Days)。
亚历克斯自小便是阿西莫夫的忠实读者，他一直梦想着能拍一部如《机械公敌》的影片，这次他梦想成真了。
NS-5基本资料
高度180公分，耐久钛金属外壳，具456个活动零件，需经由12位博士组装完成，熔点华氏六千度，可负重800磅，能承受数千磅撞击。电子智慧脑可复制人类自由意志，具有1TB内存，每秒能执行6兆笔以上运算，拥有80种语言能力。
科幻大师阿西莫夫--划时代的机器人三大安全法则：
1. 机器人不能伤害人类，或坐视人类受到伤害而袖手旁观。
2. 除非违背第一法则，机器人必须服从人类的命令。
3. 在不违背第一和第二法则前提下，机器人必须保护自己。
《我，机器人》（I, Robot），是美国作家艾萨克·阿西莫夫出版于1950年的科幻
机械公敌机械公敌
小说短篇集，收录9篇短篇小说。大多原载于1940年到1950年间的美国《超级科学故事》（Super Science Stories）杂志和《惊奇科幻小说》杂志（Astounding Science Fiction）。书中的短篇故事各自独立，却拥有共同的主题，探讨人类与机器人之间的道德问题。这些故事结合之后，开创出阿西莫夫的机器人浩翰虚构历史。
串连起这几个故事的灵魂人物，是美国机器人与机械人股份有限公司(常简称为「美国机器人公司」)（U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc.）的机器人心理学家苏珊·凯文（Dr. Susan Calvin）博士。在出版短篇集时，阿西莫夫藉由晚年凯文接受专访，回忆过往如何运用「机器人心理学」（Robopsychology）跟行为失常机器人的接触。著名的「机器人三定律」就是在这部短篇集里初次登场。
想像一下未来，如果机器人有了主体意识，他们可以思考，可以决策，甚至可以瞧不起人类（你们这些手无缚鸡之力、由蛋白质组成、每天要昏睡八个钟头的家伙……），世界将会变得如何？
早在1950年，艾西莫夫就已经设想到了这些情景，并且以超越时代的思维，创建出宏观的未来机器人世界。于是，伟大的「机器人学三大法则」就此诞生，成为科幻界无可撼动的铁律：
一、机器人不得伤害人类，或袖手旁观坐视人类受到伤害。
二、除非违背第一法则，机器人必须服从人类的命令。
三、在不违背第一法则及第二法则的情况下，机器人必须保护自己。
因此，巨大的水星采矿机器人SPD13，因为三大法则的冲突而在原地打转；小巧可爱的太空站主控机器人QT1，不仅完全取代人的工作，甚至还开始思考关于造物主的哲学问题；据说可以透视心灵的机器人RB34，居然懂得用人类的心理，揣摩说出他们想听的话；而想要在一大群Nester10号机器人中，找出一个隐藏其中逃脱者，竟成为人与机器人大玩心理游戏的战场……
艾西莫夫笔下的「机器人心理学家」苏珊˙凯文，亲身体验这些事件的演进，也记下了20世纪末到21世纪中的机器人发展史──从简单的褓姆型机器人，一直到全世界只有四台的超级电脑。随着机器人越来越聪明，功能越来越强大，她不得不叹道：「一开始机器人还不会说话，但最后他们却挺立于人类与毁灭之间……」
本书曾于2004年被改编为电影《机械公敌》。电影只从书中引用了机器人学三大法则和一些人名，主体内容并无直接相关；但是从《我，机器人》小说中，读者可以找到电影的原始创意精神，并了解三大法则的真正涵义。
艾西莫夫的科幻小说相当简单易读，故事结构都很清楚，可说是非常大众化的科幻作品。在20世纪科幻小说的写作发展史里，艾西莫夫与克拉克、海莱因齐名，被誉为最伟大的「三巨头」。艾西莫夫完成了【机器人】、【帝国】、【基地】三大科幻小说系列，评价都非常高，而本书便是【机器人】系列里第一本，同时也是最精采的一本。如果你想认识艾西莫夫和他的科幻小说，《我，机器人》绝对是你的首选！
《机械公敌》-影片观后感
在机械公敌前面的时候，机器人桑尼说起它做了一个梦，在梦中，有一个人站在沙堆上，那人是领导机器人解放的领导者！所以人开始的时候都以为是威尔· 史密斯所扮演的戴尔。史普纳！但在影片就要结束的最后那一个镜头里，站在沙堆上的那“人”却是机器人桑尼！
大家都知道，桑尼已经学会了人类的思想！没有人知道它站在沙堆上观看着下面这无数机器人时有什么想法！
但如果它当时拥有一个在人类中名为“征服”的念头后，会不会发生一些所有人都意想不到的结局呢？
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.
《机械公敌》-剧情简介
公元2035年，总部位于芝加哥的美国USR公司开发出超能机器人产品--NS-5，其外形酷似人类，拥有强化耐久的钛金属外壳，可执行各种任务。从保母、厨师、快递、遛狗到管理家庭收支，简直是无所不能。一时间，机器人的数量成3倍趋势增长，平均每5人便拥有1个机器人。随着NS-5被大量倾销，机器人开始充当起社会各个领域的重要角色。而发明它的USR公司也成为地球上有史以来最强大的集团。
警探史普纳(威尔•史密斯WillSmith饰)始终留恋以往简单的生活，爱听老歌，喜欢老式的打扮。他厌恶科技和机器人，却又不得不生活在由这两者组成的世界里。专门从事机器人心理研究的科学家苏珊(布里吉特•莫伊纳罕BridgetMoynahan饰)向来崇尚逻辑与科学，她坚信总有一天机器人会胜过人类，并回过头来帮助人类进步。
生活观念南辕北辙的史普纳和苏珊却在调查一桩疑似NS-5谋杀人类的案件中不期而遇……人类制造机器人时，通常会遵循所谓“机器人三大安全法则”来设计并控制它们。但是，随着调查的深入，人们发觉机器人似乎已经学会了自我思考，并且解开了控制他们的密码，成为了完全独立的“机器类”。
人类必须开始重新思考如何面对机器人，但是，机器人或者人类自身都值得信赖吗？
《机械公敌》-幕后制作
澳大利亚导演艾里克斯•布罗雅斯是一个制造幻想的天才，他的《移魂都市》（DarkCity）一直是广受好评的CULT电影经典之作，后来的众多电影，甚至包括《楚门的世界》（TrumanShow）和《骇客帝国》都曾深受其影响。对于本片的制作，他认为电影的重要作用是让单纯的幻想更富真实性。为了达到这个目的，艾里克斯集合了一个计算机特效的全明星组合，实现机器人模型、场景设计和数字虚拟形象的完美结合，拍摄了近1000个特效镜头。全新机器人造型，是本片吸引观众的一个重要元素。
影片的创作过程
电影最初的剧本叫《硬线》（HARDWIRED），是一个经典样式的悬疑谋杀故事，其主旨非常贴近阿西莫夫的“机器人三大定律”，可以说，故事的发展脉络就是根据定律的逻辑推演来设计情节的。
迪斯尼导演布莱恩•辛格（BryanSinger）对这份最初的《硬线》手稿进行了修改，当手稿最终被送到20世纪福克斯公司以后，导演亚历克斯•普罗亚斯（AlexProyas）和作家杰夫•温塔（JeffVintar）共同努力，将它修改为一个适合大制作的更加宏大开放的电影剧本。趁着福克斯公司在争取阿西莫夫（IsaacAsimov）小说版权的时候，温塔花了大约两年左右的时间，将电影剧本编写为类似阿西莫夫机器人小说系列中的一个故事。故事包含了女主角机器人心理学家苏珊•卡尔文博士和机器人三大定律，这两个元素是阿西莫夫《我，机器人》系列科幻小说里面一直存在贯穿始终的。后来，希拉里•塞兹（HillarySeitz）又为剧本动了手术。最后，在威尔•史密斯加盟影片后，阿基瓦•高斯曼（AkivaGoldsman）又为了他的角色再次对剧本进行了剪裁，形成了现在影片最终所呈现的面貌。尽管花了这么长的时间和如此多人的辛劳，但确实是最初的《硬线》作者高夫•赞恩里（GeoffZanell）为本片的故事提供了主题。
阿西莫夫及作品
艾萨克•阿西莫夫，美籍俄裔犹太人，本世纪最伟大的科幻小说家。同样也是文学硕士、化学博士和非常优秀的科普小说家。渊博的学识和不懈的努力使阿西莫夫作品的数量非常巨大，并使他获得了一系列的荣誉和褒奖。在逝世前不久，他曾自述出版过467部著作，但研究他的作品的专家称，他至少出版过480部著作。而且体裁广泛，有严肃的历史和科学论著，也有轻松的戏剧、幽默小说。
《我，机器人》是阿西莫夫诸多科幻著作中最有名的系列之一。另外一个著名的是《基地》系列。这两个脍炙人口的系列和《其他机器人》等等故事，都各自独立成篇，但当贯串起来，却又是一部俯仰两万年的长篇史诗。阿西莫夫的科幻世界广阔巨大，通过描绘银河帝国的兴亡史，来讨论人性与政治、经济、军事等文明要素产生的互动影响。这种宏观视野使他的作品充满对人类未来的关怀和思考，可以说影响和改变了很多读者对世界的看法。
本片片名《我，机器人》，对于科幻小说读者可以说是如雷贯耳。系列小说由十几个独立成篇的故事分别组成，而在《引言》的开篇第一句话，阿西莫夫就提出了有名的“机器人三大定律”：
第一定律——机器人不得伤害人类，也不得见人类受到伤害而袖手旁观。
第二定律一-机器人应服从人类的一切命令，但不得违反第一定律。
第三定律——机器人应保护自身的安全，但不得违反第一、第二定律。
由于本片的故事悬念来自根据机器人三大定律的逻辑推演，因此扮演警探的科幻电影专业户威尔•史密斯说：“本片告诉我们：机器人并没有问题，技术也不是问题，人类逻辑的局限才是最大的问题。因此，到头来我们才发现，人类最大的敌人不是别人，正是人类自己。”
影片特技
对这部科幻题材来说，电脑特技理应是本片的主角。导演认为电影的重要作用是让单纯的幻想更富真实性。为了达到这个目的，他集合了一个计算机特效的全明星组合，由制作电影《指环王》而荣获奥斯卡最佳视觉效果奖、享誉全球的新西兰维塔公司团队执行制作，实现了机器人模型、场景设计和数字虚拟形象的完美结合，为此一共拍摄了近1000个特效镜头。其中亮点显然是流线型、周身透明泛光的ＮＳ-5型机器人。桑尼除了眼睛是蓝色的以外，和其他该型号的机器人没区别，不过它的形体和声音是由专门的演员加上绿幕技术结合电脑特效来做的。其余的NS-5机器人是采用最新型的改进绿幕技术完成。NS-5高180厘米，具有456个活动零件，经由12位博士组装完成，熔点六千华氏度，可负重800磅，能承受数千磅撞击,电子智慧脑可复制人类自由意志，具有1ＴＢ（1000GB）内存，每秒能执行6M笔以上运算，拥有80种语言能力。能记住所有你记不住的任何内容,采用体贴细心的泰丽莎2.1.2版操作系统；安装在头骨内的是有耐久钛金属外壳保护的智慧脑以及万能记忆网路（UniversalRetentionNetwork）……等着在影片中看看，2035年，我们每四个人将拥有的一个的机器人特效处理是否能如它的文字说明般真实可信吧！
《机械公敌》-幕后花絮
片子开头，当史普纳打开大门，一个头上写着42的机器人站在他门前的台阶上。很多科幻电影都有42这个号码，是因为受到了道格拉斯.亚当斯的《银河系漫游指南》的影响。片子受到的《银河系漫游指南》影响的另一个例子，史普纳的唯一好日子是“星期四”。在《指南》中，这是作家登特一整周当中 “从不能理解……”的一天。在古董机器人橱窗里，陈列的是索尼公司的机器狗爱波AIBO。
片子里威尔•史密斯开的车是一款叫做AudiRSQ的概念车，是奥迪特别为本片设计的，导演亚历克斯•普罗亚斯还为车的特别外形设计提供了建议。对于嫌疑犯机器人桑尼，剧组采用了在《指环王：双塔奇兵》里创造哥伦（Gollum）的同样处理方法：由艾伦•图代克AlanTudyk为桑尼提供身体动作和声音。威尔•史密斯在本片里骑的摩托是一款2004年的MVAgustaF4-SPR，全球总共只生产了300辆。技术参数：750cc，内置4缸引擎，147马力，能推进到时速超过175英里。
影片中大多数的车型是以2004年前的奥迪车，比如A2、A6和TT为模型改造的，甚至有些都没有改，直接就用了。兰宁博士的猫咪叫“阿西莫夫”。在戏剧性的追逐场面中，戴尔•史普纳警探对约翰•伯金少尉说：“我要开始怀念过去的好日子了。”伯金回答：“什么过去好日子？”史普纳就说：“"那时候人还是被其他人杀死的。”在片子里，最先提出这个“美好旧时光”的人并非是史普纳，正是伯金。
影片最后，史普纳的奶奶祈祷的句子是来自《圣经•诗篇》16：8“我将耶和华常摆在我面前．因他在我右边、我便不至摇动”。桑尼的眼睛是蓝色的，其他所有的NS-5型机器人的眼睛都是金色的。约翰•伯金少尉的台词：“不，老实说，人创造怪物，怪物杀人。每个人杀怪物、狼人。”这段台词和《侏罗纪公园》里的很相似：马尔科
姆博士说“神创造恐龙，神毁灭恐龙。神创造人类，人毁灭神，人类创造恐龙……”
《机械公敌》-影片看点
机器人、威尔•史密斯的电脑大作战
“我认为，我们的动作电影已经做好了达到新的技术水平的时候。”好莱坞男星威尔•史密斯（《独立日》、《绝地战警》）此次身兼影片执行制作人，他饶有兴趣地说，“你的故事必须让人感兴趣。所有的特效和爆炸都必须来的超酷才行。”于是为本片全力投入电脑效果制作的是四届奥斯卡特效得奖队伍，他们为片中无所不能的机器老兄们制作了超过900个电脑独立特效，以使得效果更加逼真。有人说片中白色透明的机器人外形颇有类似苹果公司（Apple）产品风格，事实上，制作人帕特里克就是在苹果产品iMac中找到了灵感：“当你穿过外壳看到（机器人）构造时，它们显得就不那么可怕了”，帕特里克笑道。
“领衔主演”机器人角色索尼的实际上是真人演员艾伦•图代克（《闪避球的奇迹》）。我们屏幕上将看到的机器人表演，采用了和《指环王三》里怪物咕噜的同样真人和电脑结合的技术——绿屏、传感器、动作捕捉和完美的电脑合成。“这是我最棒的角色，尽管屏幕上没人看得到我本人，不过角色在电影中的经历对我来说非常刺激。”机器人索尼的银幕表现也将成为本片令人关注的焦点。
就本片的特效水片而言，仅仅提及以上是远远不够的。三位金牌特效制作人加上数十位特效制作师，以及新西兰知名的WETA（《指环王》系列）的鼎力协助，《机械公敌》全力描绘出一个2035年的芝加哥——机器人遍布，流光玻璃街道和未来建筑繁屹的未来都市。但我们也不用担心这仅是一部充满花哨特效的电影，导演亚历克斯•普罗亚斯（《移魂都市》）表示，“我们把故事和情感放到第一位，如此电脑动画将提高电影效果而不是分散观众的注意力。”
事实上，本片在叙事方法上多少有点《少数派报告》的影子，但结合阿西莫夫的机器人三大定律、好莱坞最炙手可热的黑人影星威尔•史密斯还有“性感苹果造型”的机器人这三大最吸引的噱头，《机械公敌》必将成为七月票房大热。问题只有一个：这部影片能否最终成为像《终结者》一样的科幻经典？
《机械公敌》-演员介绍
《机械公敌》威尔•史密斯
威尔•史密斯
美国演员，高中毕业后痴心于歌唱事业，遂决定放弃上大学，做全职的艺人。1989年首次获得葛莱美奖“最佳饶舌歌演唱奖”。进而成为NBC电视影集《活力王子》(TheFreshPrinceofBelAir)的男主角。在乐坛获得巨大成功之后，威尔•史密斯向几个演艺公司的主管表示了他对演戏的兴趣，这其中包括华纳总裁班尼•梅迪纳。梅迪纳是在洛杉矶出生穷苦但却在洛杉矶的的富人区贝浮力山庄的一个富人家庭度过了他的青少年时期。他当时正好在计划根据他的亲身经历拍一部电视剧。梅迪纳觉得威尔•史密斯是正好的人选。据好莱坞内部人士透露，当年威尔•史密斯在试镜时念剧本念得如此精彩，美国国家广播电台当场拍板决定上戏。1990年，《贝莱尔的新鲜王子》开始播放，深受广大观众喜爱，一播就是六年。
尽管威尔•史密斯看起来象一个大大咧咧的小混混，其实他出身中等家庭，父亲是工程师，母亲是教育界人士。威尔•史密斯的书读得更是出色，当年麻省理工学院给他全奖让他去读书，但是他因为要全身心投入演艺界，不得不拒绝。《贝莱尔的新鲜王子》的成功使威尔•史密斯与许多好莱坞的出色演员建立起了亲密关系，这其中包括大量黑人演员，如琼斯，比尔•考兹比，胡比•歌德宝，以及丹泽尔•华盛顿。
1993年以主角身份跃登大银幕，在一部讽刺纽约知识分子的文艺片《六度分离》之中，扮演一个自称是黑人巨星薜尼鲍迪儿子的老千。1995年主演警匪动作片《绝地战警》便一举成名，《独立日》、《黑超特警组》全球票房奏捷后，身价飙到巅峰。近几年接拍了许多卖座的动作片。
《机械公敌》布里吉特•莫伊纳罕
布里吉特•莫伊纳罕
布丽姬•穆娜是好莱坞目前除了杰米•李•柯蒂斯和薛歌妮•韦弗之外为数不多可以胜任高智商的强硬角色而外形又不失优雅妩媚的女演员之一。1970年生于纽约的Binghamton，和两个哥哥一起在Longmeadow长大，结果她也如同假小子一般多动，爱好各种体育项目，高中是篮球队队长，选择去上橄榄球课而不是戏剧班。布丽姬先是登上时尚T台并逐渐小有名气，出现在Glamour、Vogue等众多著名杂志之上，之后又进入了纽约 CaymichaelPattenStudio学习表演。1999年，布丽姬作为嘉宾出演热门剧《欲望都市》中的Natasha一角，次年影片《女狼俱乐部》中吞云吐雾的酒吧女招待一角给观众留下了深刻印象，接下来又出现在了一系列备受观注的热门影片中，包括《谍海计中计》、《战争之王》、《我，机器人》以及《玩命记忆》等等，戏路也愈来愈广阔。
布丽姬的科学家父亲后来成了麻省阿默斯特大学(UMass)的一名管理人员，母亲的职业是教师并且还在2005年和布丽姬一起出演过一则 Bostonarea的电视广告。此外布丽姬•穆娜2004年开始和新英格兰爱国者队的明星四分位TomBrady约会，但在2006年的感恩节分手，07年布丽姬迎来了自己第一个孩子的降生。
《机械公敌》-穿帮镜头
连贯性错误：
兰宁博士的猫出现的绝大多数场景，她的眼睛都是蓝色的。但是在史普纳跳过喷泉那场戏，猫的眼睛变成黄色了。史普纳和少尉在酒吧喝酒，少尉酒瓶上面的商标，每次切换镜头角度一次，就变化一次。在隧道追逐戏后，史普纳去检查他的脚踝，开始他的腿是分开的，下一个镜头，他的左腿就叠放在了右脚上。当加尔文博士走进她的实验室去问桑尼时，她得走下几级台阶。摄像机从她背后推进的时候，可以看见她走了四步下台阶，但是，那儿一共就只有三级台阶。
暴露错误：
史普纳和加尔文博士试图关闭VIKI，机器人袭击他们的那场戏，一个长镜头拍摄了史普纳对着他身边四面射击并跑动。这个明显是CGI做的，因为有些瞬间可以看出画面里他的头跟脖子或者身体分开没挨着。
《机械公敌》-影片点评
未来，发达的高科技社会中发生的足以改变人类历史的危机--《机械公敌》的故事蓝本，最早来源于编剧杰夫•温塔JeffVintar十多年以前创作的剧本《Hardwired》，它讲述了一桩神秘的谋杀案，而机器人可能才是幕后元凶。制片人劳伦斯•马克LaurenceMark对这个故事相当感兴趣，与此同时，二十世纪福斯电影公司一直想拍一部有关机器人的大型电影，遂将之列入筹拍日程，并初步拟订由亚历克斯•普罗亚斯AlexProyas执导。2000年初，杰夫•温塔飞赴澳洲开始同导演普罗亚斯就《机械公敌》拍片计划进行沟通，整个合作案足足花了两年多。
开始时，该片被定位于未来背景下的谋杀惊悚片，接下来他们尝试将格局放大以便有更多可发挥的空间。因为导演普罗亚斯对视觉风格独到且优异的品味，主创人员最终达成共识，要将《机械公敌》拍成宏大背景下的史诗浩劫，他们的野心促使该片必须要在视觉特效上力争有所突破。
在当时，制片人约翰•戴维斯JohnDavis名下的制片公司拿到了《机械公敌》的电影版权，而导演普罗亚斯在科幻大师艾萨克•阿西莫夫IsaacAsimov的小说里找到了剧本以外的视觉元素，阿西莫夫作品中的思想和人物很自然地融入编剧杰夫•温塔的未来谋杀案剧本。
《机械公敌》-一句话评论
What will you do with yours?
机械公敌机械公敌
Laws are made to be broken
One man saw it coming.
情节过于简单而令人失望，追逐和动作场面充斥着科幻电影常规滥用的CGI技术处理。
——芝加哥太阳报
非常熟练，但也明显让人失望，闹独立的机器人和流氓警察在一些片段里显得闹哄哄的。
——伦敦时报
这部高科技电影，拍的好看但是显得智商并不高。
——观察家
作为对人工智能技术的伦理探索，这部电影比《A.I.》要更谦逊、更迷人。
——BBC电影评论
动作场面十分引人入胜。虽然不能算是历史性突破，但通过我们这个时代的数字技术，观看机器人对打的场面着实令人兴奋。
——视觉周刊
《机械公敌》-完全班底
威尔·史密斯：官方首选
据几位制片人口径一致的“官方”说法，威尔·史密斯是制作方的首选。同时，他还答应在该片中担任监制(此前，他曾为由罗伯特·德尼罗和埃迪·墨菲主演的影片《作秀时刻》(Showtime)。担任监制)，正是由于威尔的推荐，《美丽心灵》的金奖编剧阿齐瓦·高斯曼Akiva Goldsman也得已加入幕后阵容。
机械公敌机械公敌
“《机械公敌》最吸引我的是，它的中心概念是机器人没有问题，科技并不是问题本身，人类逻辑的极限才真的是问题，而最终，我们成为自己最大的敌人。”这是威尔·史密斯出演该片的最大体会。
布里吉特·莫伊纳罕：热忱至上
依旧引用官方的说法：“她能够非常贴切地传达我们对这个角色的设计，也就是在机器人般冰冷的外表下，却有着很人性的热忱。”
相貌秀丽的布里吉特·莫伊纳罕从影片《妹力四射》(Coyote Ugly)中迅速崛起。在热门剧集《欲望都市》中她也曾有上佳表现。影片《新手》(The Recruit)中她与阿尔·帕西诺和科林·法瑞尔有过愉快的合作。
导演：亚历克斯·普罗亚斯
这位来自澳洲且科班出身的导演，素来以擅长营造充满神秘和未来感的影片而闻名。1994年，他凭一部改编自同名漫画的《乌鸦》(The Crow)令世人所知。四年后，更是以那部《移魂都市》(Dark City)征服了观众。此前，他还自编自导了其第一部描写现实世界的青春片《车库时光》(Garage Days)。
亚历克斯自小便是阿西莫夫的忠实读者，他一直梦想着能拍一部如《机械公敌》的影片，这次他梦想成真了。
NS-5基本资料
高度180公分，耐久钛金属外壳，具456个活动零件，需经由12位博士组装完成，熔点华氏六千度，可负重800磅，能承受数千磅撞击。电子智慧脑可复制人类自由意志，具有1TB内存，每秒能执行6兆笔以上运算，拥有80种语言能力。
科幻大师阿西莫夫--划时代的机器人三大安全法则：
1. 机器人不能伤害人类，或坐视人类受到伤害而袖手旁观。
2. 除非违背第一法则，机器人必须服从人类的命令。
3. 在不违背第一和第二法则前提下，机器人必须保护自己。
《我，机器人》（I, Robot），是美国作家艾萨克·阿西莫夫出版于1950年的科幻
机械公敌机械公敌
小说短篇集，收录9篇短篇小说。大多原载于1940年到1950年间的美国《超级科学故事》（Super Science Stories）杂志和《惊奇科幻小说》杂志（Astounding Science Fiction）。书中的短篇故事各自独立，却拥有共同的主题，探讨人类与机器人之间的道德问题。这些故事结合之后，开创出阿西莫夫的机器人浩翰虚构历史。
串连起这几个故事的灵魂人物，是美国机器人与机械人股份有限公司(常简称为「美国机器人公司」)（U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc.）的机器人心理学家苏珊·凯文（Dr. Susan Calvin）博士。在出版短篇集时，阿西莫夫藉由晚年凯文接受专访，回忆过往如何运用「机器人心理学」（Robopsychology）跟行为失常机器人的接触。著名的「机器人三定律」就是在这部短篇集里初次登场。
想像一下未来，如果机器人有了主体意识，他们可以思考，可以决策，甚至可以瞧不起人类（你们这些手无缚鸡之力、由蛋白质组成、每天要昏睡八个钟头的家伙……），世界将会变得如何？
早在1950年，艾西莫夫就已经设想到了这些情景，并且以超越时代的思维，创建出宏观的未来机器人世界。于是，伟大的「机器人学三大法则」就此诞生，成为科幻界无可撼动的铁律：
一、机器人不得伤害人类，或袖手旁观坐视人类受到伤害。
二、除非违背第一法则，机器人必须服从人类的命令。
三、在不违背第一法则及第二法则的情况下，机器人必须保护自己。
因此，巨大的水星采矿机器人SPD13，因为三大法则的冲突而在原地打转；小巧可爱的太空站主控机器人QT1，不仅完全取代人的工作，甚至还开始思考关于造物主的哲学问题；据说可以透视心灵的机器人RB34，居然懂得用人类的心理，揣摩说出他们想听的话；而想要在一大群Nester10号机器人中，找出一个隐藏其中逃脱者，竟成为人与机器人大玩心理游戏的战场……
艾西莫夫笔下的「机器人心理学家」苏珊˙凯文，亲身体验这些事件的演进，也记下了20世纪末到21世纪中的机器人发展史──从简单的褓姆型机器人，一直到全世界只有四台的超级电脑。随着机器人越来越聪明，功能越来越强大，她不得不叹道：「一开始机器人还不会说话，但最后他们却挺立于人类与毁灭之间……」
本书曾于2004年被改编为电影《机械公敌》。电影只从书中引用了机器人学三大法则和一些人名，主体内容并无直接相关；但是从《我，机器人》小说中，读者可以找到电影的原始创意精神，并了解三大法则的真正涵义。
艾西莫夫的科幻小说相当简单易读，故事结构都很清楚，可说是非常大众化的科幻作品。在20世纪科幻小说的写作发展史里，艾西莫夫与克拉克、海莱因齐名，被誉为最伟大的「三巨头」。艾西莫夫完成了【机器人】、【帝国】、【基地】三大科幻小说系列，评价都非常高，而本书便是【机器人】系列里第一本，同时也是最精采的一本。如果你想认识艾西莫夫和他的科幻小说，《我，机器人》绝对是你的首选！
《机械公敌》-影片观后感
在机械公敌前面的时候，机器人桑尼说起它做了一个梦，在梦中，有一个人站在沙堆上，那人是领导机器人解放的领导者！所以人开始的时候都以为是威尔· 史密斯所扮演的戴尔。史普纳！但在影片就要结束的最后那一个镜头里，站在沙堆上的那“人”却是机器人桑尼！
大家都知道，桑尼已经学会了人类的思想！没有人知道它站在沙堆上观看着下面这无数机器人时有什么想法！
但如果它当时拥有一个在人类中名为“征服”的念头后，会不会发生一些所有人都意想不到的结局呢？
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《我从外星来》（又名《喂，有人在吗？》）（Hello? Is Anybody There?）
一艘太空船穿越广袤的银河，向着一颗蓝蓝绿绿的星球一地球前进。来自艾尔乔星的男孩米加打开舱门，对着夜空大喊：“喂，有人在吗？”《喂，有人在吗？》是乔斯坦.贾德继《苏菲的世界》、〈纸牌的秘密〉之后推出的最新力作。故事场景从西方哲学的原乡欧洲大陆延展至无垠的外达空，叙述小男孩乔金和外星人米加的第三类接触奇遇。〈苏菲的世界〉提出了“你是谁？”、“世界从哪里来？”等问题：〈喂，有人在吗？〉问的是“我们是谁？”、“我们从哪里来”？ 可以说是一本“小苏菲”。作者透过深入浅出的童话形式，让奇遇之谜和哲学主题不断地碰撞，穿透梦境和现实，极具梦幻写实趣味，也展现出一个至为恢宏的地球观和宇宙观。
一艘太空船穿越广袤的银河，向着一颗蓝蓝绿绿的星球一地球前进。来自艾尔乔星的男孩米加打开舱门，对着夜空大喊：“喂，有人在吗？”《喂，有人在吗？》是乔斯坦.贾德继《苏菲的世界》、〈纸牌的秘密〉之后推出的最新力作。故事场景从西方哲学的原乡欧洲大陆延展至无垠的外达空，叙述小男孩乔金和外星人米加的第三类接触奇遇。〈苏菲的世界〉提出了“你是谁？”、“世界从哪里来？”等问题：〈喂，有人在吗？〉问的是“我们是谁？”、“我们从哪里来”？ 可以说是一本“小苏菲”。作者透过深入浅出的童话形式，让奇遇之谜和哲学主题不断地碰撞，穿透梦境和现实，极具梦幻写实趣味，也展现出一个至为恢宏的地球观和宇宙观。
儒勒·凡尔纳（Jules Verne，1828年2月8日－1905年3月24日），法国小说家、博物学家，现代科幻小说的重要开创者之一。他一生写了六十多部大大小小的科幻小说，总题为《在已知和未知的世界漫游》。他以其大量著作和突出贡献，被誉为“科幻小说之父”。由于凡尔纳知识非常丰富，他小说作品的著述、描写多有科学根据，所以当时他小说的幻想，如今成为了有趣的预言。
儒勒·凡尔纳是根据Jules Verne法语发音的中文译名，Jules Gabriel Verne的名字也曾被译为“萧鲁士”、“威男”、“焦土威奴”和“查理士·培伦”。
凡尔纳-生平
儒勒·加布里埃尔·凡尔纳（Jules Gabriel Verne）于1828年2月8日，生于法国南特。他的家族有航海传统，这一点深深地影响了他日后的写作。童年时期，他曾私自出走到一艘商船上，企图随船出海，但被发现送还父母，从此更被严看管；他为此向父母保证以后只“躺在床上在幻想中旅行”。
1847年，他被送到巴黎学习法律。但繁华的巴黎却激发了他对戏剧的狂热。1850年末，他的第一部剧作发表了。凡尔纳的父亲得知儿子无意继续攻读法律后大发雷霆，决定断绝经济援助。从此，年轻的凡尔纳不得不靠写作来赚钱，维持生计。
在巴黎图书馆花费了相当时间钻研地理、工程和航天等科学后，凡尔纳完成了他的第一部小说《气球上的五星期》（Cinq semaines en ballon，1863）。但他试图出版这本书的过程并不顺利——连续16家出版社拒绝了凡尔纳，屡战屡败的凡尔纳一气之下把书稿投入火中，但他的妻子把书稿抢救出来；幸运的是，第17家出版社终于同意出版本书。随后，他又很快开始写作后来成为早期科幻小说经典的作品：《地心游记》（Voyage au centre de la terre，1864）、《从地球到月球》（De la terre à la lune，1866）和《海底两万里》（20,000 lieues sous les mers，1873）
小说大获成功，成了畅销书，在欧洲大受欢迎。凡尔纳也成了一位富翁。1876年，他购置了一艘大游艇，开始环游欧洲。他的最后一部小说是1905年出版的《大海的入侵》（L'invasion de la mer）。
教皇利奥十三世1884年接见他时曾对他说“我并不是不知道您的作品的科学价值，但我最珍重的却是它们的纯洁、道德价值和精神力量。”
儒勒·凡尔纳于1905 年3月24日失去知觉，25日清晨8时去世。
凡尔纳-创作之路
1828 年2月8日，凡尔纳生于南特，1848年赴巴黎学习法律，写过短篇小说和剧本。
1863年起，他开始发表科学幻想冒险小说，以总名称为《在已知和未知的世界中奇异的漫游》一举成名。代表作为三部曲 《格兰特船长的儿女》《海底两万里》 《神秘岛》 。
凡尔纳总共创作了六十六部长篇小说或短篇小说集，还有几个剧本，一册《法国地理》和一部六卷本的《伟大的旅行家和伟大的旅行史》。主要作品还有《气球上的五星期》.《地心游记》.《机器岛》.《漂逝的半岛》.《八十天环游地球》等20多部长篇科幻历险小说。
凡尔纳-作品特点
主要作品出版于19世纪末，其科幻小说中的许多设想和描述在20世纪成为了现实，所以他的一些作品现在让人读起来感觉并不“天马行空”。其中最著名的莫过于在《海底两万里》中尼莫（Nemo，这个名字在拉丁文中有“无人”的意思）船长的巨型潜水艇“鹦鹉螺号”（Nautilus，过去有的中文版中曾按其发音译为“诺第留斯号”）。美国建造的世界第一艘核动力潜艇鹦鹉螺号（USS Nautilus SSN-571，1954年下水）虽然名承自一艘1803年时的美国海军多桅纵帆船（Schooner）与之后袭名的两艘传统动力潜艇，但由于核动力潜艇拥有如小说中虚构的鹦鹉螺号般超长的蓄航力，因此使用此命名多少带有影射小说中之鹦鹉螺号的双关意味。法国的无人驾驶机器人潜水艇也以此命名。此外，《从地球到月球》当中，哥伦比亚号飞船（或说是炮弹）的发射地点在美国佛罗里达州的坦帕，竟然与卡纳维拉尔角（肯尼迪航天中心所在地）几乎位于同一纬度线上，两地之间直线距离仅120英里，前者座落在佛罗里达半岛的西海岸，后者在东海岸。
凡尔纳-主要作品
凡尔纳的作品《八十日环游世界》 凡尔纳的作品《八十日环游世界》
三部曲
《格兰特船长的儿女》（1956年，中国青年出版社）。
《海底两万里》
《神秘岛》（1958年，中国青年出版社）。
探月两部曲
《从地球到月球》，又名《月界旅行》。
《环绕月球》
探险
《八十日环游世界》
《气球上的五星期》
《征服者罗比尔》
《太阳系历险记》
《地心游记》，又名《地底旅行》。
《两年假期(十五少年漂流记)》
民族独立和革命
《桑道夫伯爵》
《烽火岛》
《多瑙河领航员》
其他
《漂逝的半岛》
《十五岁的船长》
《机器岛》
《隐身新娘》
《昂梯菲尔奇遇记》
《印度贵妇的五亿法郎》
自20世纪以来，凡尔纳的多部作品曾不止一次地被搬上过大屏幕，比如《格兰特船长的儿女》（1936年，由前苏联拍摄），《海底两万里》（1954年电影，1997年电视重拍），《地心游记》（1959年），《环游世界八十天》（2004年）。改编自凡尔纳的《地心游记》已于2008年重新以立体电脑特技搬上屏幕，该片名为《地心冒险》，由《神鬼传奇》男角布兰登·费雪主演，于8月14日上映 。
凡尔纳-遗作
凡尔纳死后，其遗著经整理出版的计有：
1905年：《世界尽头的灯塔》（教育社）
1908年：《金火山》（教育社，此书前十四章系儒勒·凡尔纳所写，后四章系其子米歇尔补写。）
1907年：《汤姆生公司分行》（据P．贡多罗·德拉·李娃考证，此书大纲情节系儒勒·凡尔纳拟就，由其子写成。）
1908年：《流星追逐记》（此书前十七章为儒勒·凡尔纳所写，后四章系其子米歇尔续成。）《多瑙河的领航员》
1909年：《柔纳当的海上遇难者》
1910年：《威廉·斯托里茨的秘密》（小说结局曾加润色）《永恒的亚当》《昨天和明天》（中短篇小说集，其中包括《拉东一家人《升半咪音先生和降半音咪小姐》、《让·摩荣娜的命运》、《洪堡》、《在二十世纪》、《2889年一个美国新闻记者的一天》、《永恒的亚当》。）
1914年：《巴沙克长老会的惊人奇遇》
凡尔纳-鲁迅的中文译本
鲁迅先生曾在辛亥革命之前就根据当时在日本已被译成日语的译作（其先由法语译成英语再译日语），翻译了Jules Gabriel Verne的两部著名作品：
《月界旅行》（1903年10月，进化社）
《地底旅行》（1906年3月，启新书局）
儒勒·凡尔纳是根据Jules Verne法语发音的中文译名，Jules Gabriel Verne的名字也曾被译为“萧鲁士”、“威男”、“焦土威奴”和“查理士·培伦”。
凡尔纳-生平
儒勒·加布里埃尔·凡尔纳（Jules Gabriel Verne）于1828年2月8日，生于法国南特。他的家族有航海传统，这一点深深地影响了他日后的写作。童年时期，他曾私自出走到一艘商船上，企图随船出海，但被发现送还父母，从此更被严看管；他为此向父母保证以后只“躺在床上在幻想中旅行”。
1847年，他被送到巴黎学习法律。但繁华的巴黎却激发了他对戏剧的狂热。1850年末，他的第一部剧作发表了。凡尔纳的父亲得知儿子无意继续攻读法律后大发雷霆，决定断绝经济援助。从此，年轻的凡尔纳不得不靠写作来赚钱，维持生计。
在巴黎图书馆花费了相当时间钻研地理、工程和航天等科学后，凡尔纳完成了他的第一部小说《气球上的五星期》（Cinq semaines en ballon，1863）。但他试图出版这本书的过程并不顺利——连续16家出版社拒绝了凡尔纳，屡战屡败的凡尔纳一气之下把书稿投入火中，但他的妻子把书稿抢救出来；幸运的是，第17家出版社终于同意出版本书。随后，他又很快开始写作后来成为早期科幻小说经典的作品：《地心游记》（Voyage au centre de la terre，1864）、《从地球到月球》（De la terre à la lune，1866）和《海底两万里》（20,000 lieues sous les mers，1873）
小说大获成功，成了畅销书，在欧洲大受欢迎。凡尔纳也成了一位富翁。1876年，他购置了一艘大游艇，开始环游欧洲。他的最后一部小说是1905年出版的《大海的入侵》（L'invasion de la mer）。
教皇利奥十三世1884年接见他时曾对他说“我并不是不知道您的作品的科学价值，但我最珍重的却是它们的纯洁、道德价值和精神力量。”
儒勒·凡尔纳于1905 年3月24日失去知觉，25日清晨8时去世。
凡尔纳-创作之路
1828 年2月8日，凡尔纳生于南特，1848年赴巴黎学习法律，写过短篇小说和剧本。
1863年起，他开始发表科学幻想冒险小说，以总名称为《在已知和未知的世界中奇异的漫游》一举成名。代表作为三部曲 《格兰特船长的儿女》《海底两万里》 《神秘岛》 。
凡尔纳总共创作了六十六部长篇小说或短篇小说集，还有几个剧本，一册《法国地理》和一部六卷本的《伟大的旅行家和伟大的旅行史》。主要作品还有《气球上的五星期》.《地心游记》.《机器岛》.《漂逝的半岛》.《八十天环游地球》等20多部长篇科幻历险小说。
凡尔纳-作品特点
主要作品出版于19世纪末，其科幻小说中的许多设想和描述在20世纪成为了现实，所以他的一些作品现在让人读起来感觉并不“天马行空”。其中最著名的莫过于在《海底两万里》中尼莫（Nemo，这个名字在拉丁文中有“无人”的意思）船长的巨型潜水艇“鹦鹉螺号”（Nautilus，过去有的中文版中曾按其发音译为“诺第留斯号”）。美国建造的世界第一艘核动力潜艇鹦鹉螺号（USS Nautilus SSN-571，1954年下水）虽然名承自一艘1803年时的美国海军多桅纵帆船（Schooner）与之后袭名的两艘传统动力潜艇，但由于核动力潜艇拥有如小说中虚构的鹦鹉螺号般超长的蓄航力，因此使用此命名多少带有影射小说中之鹦鹉螺号的双关意味。法国的无人驾驶机器人潜水艇也以此命名。此外，《从地球到月球》当中，哥伦比亚号飞船（或说是炮弹）的发射地点在美国佛罗里达州的坦帕，竟然与卡纳维拉尔角（肯尼迪航天中心所在地）几乎位于同一纬度线上，两地之间直线距离仅120英里，前者座落在佛罗里达半岛的西海岸，后者在东海岸。
凡尔纳-主要作品
凡尔纳的作品《八十日环游世界》 凡尔纳的作品《八十日环游世界》
三部曲
《格兰特船长的儿女》（1956年，中国青年出版社）。
《海底两万里》
《神秘岛》（1958年，中国青年出版社）。
探月两部曲
《从地球到月球》，又名《月界旅行》。
《环绕月球》
探险
《八十日环游世界》
《气球上的五星期》
《征服者罗比尔》
《太阳系历险记》
《地心游记》，又名《地底旅行》。
《两年假期(十五少年漂流记)》
民族独立和革命
《桑道夫伯爵》
《烽火岛》
《多瑙河领航员》
其他
《漂逝的半岛》
《十五岁的船长》
《机器岛》
《隐身新娘》
《昂梯菲尔奇遇记》
《印度贵妇的五亿法郎》
自20世纪以来，凡尔纳的多部作品曾不止一次地被搬上过大屏幕，比如《格兰特船长的儿女》（1936年，由前苏联拍摄），《海底两万里》（1954年电影，1997年电视重拍），《地心游记》（1959年），《环游世界八十天》（2004年）。改编自凡尔纳的《地心游记》已于2008年重新以立体电脑特技搬上屏幕，该片名为《地心冒险》，由《神鬼传奇》男角布兰登·费雪主演，于8月14日上映 。
凡尔纳-遗作
凡尔纳死后，其遗著经整理出版的计有：
1905年：《世界尽头的灯塔》（教育社）
1908年：《金火山》（教育社，此书前十四章系儒勒·凡尔纳所写，后四章系其子米歇尔补写。）
1907年：《汤姆生公司分行》（据P．贡多罗·德拉·李娃考证，此书大纲情节系儒勒·凡尔纳拟就，由其子写成。）
1908年：《流星追逐记》（此书前十七章为儒勒·凡尔纳所写，后四章系其子米歇尔续成。）《多瑙河的领航员》
1909年：《柔纳当的海上遇难者》
1910年：《威廉·斯托里茨的秘密》（小说结局曾加润色）《永恒的亚当》《昨天和明天》（中短篇小说集，其中包括《拉东一家人《升半咪音先生和降半音咪小姐》、《让·摩荣娜的命运》、《洪堡》、《在二十世纪》、《2889年一个美国新闻记者的一天》、《永恒的亚当》。）
1914年：《巴沙克长老会的惊人奇遇》
凡尔纳-鲁迅的中文译本
鲁迅先生曾在辛亥革命之前就根据当时在日本已被译成日语的译作（其先由法语译成英语再译日语），翻译了Jules Gabriel Verne的两部著名作品：
《月界旅行》（1903年10月，进化社）
《地底旅行》（1906年3月，启新书局）
5 月 18 日清晨，古老的敦考克教堂的神甫 5 点钟就起床了，像往常一样，为几个虔诚的教徒举行小弥撒。
他身穿教袍，就要走向圣坛的时刻，一个人兴冲冲而又略带不安地来到圣器保存室。这是个 60 岁左右的老水手，但仍然身强力壮、精力充沛，脸上的表情憨厚而开朗。
他身穿教袍，就要走向圣坛的时刻，一个人兴冲冲而又略带不安地来到圣器保存室。这是个 60 岁左右的老水手，但仍然身强力壮、精力充沛，脸上的表情憨厚而开朗。
如果我在这个故事中说到我自己，那是因为这个故事令人震惊的事件本身与我本人息息相关，这些事件在二十世纪所发生的事件中毫无疑问也是非同寻常，甚至可以说无与伦比的。有时候，我甚至自问这些事是否真正发生过，倘若这些栩栩如生的事不仅仅只是我的想像而确实是深藏在我记忆中的真实事件，作为华盛顿联邦署的督察长官，我常常怀有去调查一切，而且把那些不可思议的事非弄个水落石出不可的愿望。因此，我自然对这些奇异怪事极有兴致。从我年青时候起，我就受雇于政府，处理过各式各样重要的事务，也接受过一些秘密使命，因此，我的上司将这桩奇事交给我负责也是情理中的事，正因为如此，我发现我自己不得不为这些难以理解的怪事而绞尽脑汁。
在阅读这些前所未闻的记叙时，至关重要的是，读者诸君务必相信我的话。因为，其中的若干事实，都是我亲眼所见的。倘若你不愿相信我的话，也未尝不可，因为连我本人也未必相信其真实性。
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.
在阅读这些前所未闻的记叙时，至关重要的是，读者诸君务必相信我的话。因为，其中的若干事实，都是我亲眼所见的。倘若你不愿相信我的话，也未尝不可，因为连我本人也未必相信其真实性。
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.
《从地球到月球》的故事情节比较简单。美国南北战争结束后，巴尔的摩城大炮俱乐部（这是大炮发明家的俱乐部）主席巴比康提议向月球发射一颗炮弹，建立地球与月球之间的联系。法国冒险家米歇尔·阿尔当获悉这一消息后建议造一颗空心炮弹，他准备乘这颗炮弹到月球去探险。巴比康、米歇尔·阿尔当和尼却尔船长克服了种种困难，终于在18**年12月1日乘这颗炮弹出发了。但是他们没有到达目的地，炮弹并没有在月球上着陆，却在离月球2800英里的地方绕月运行。然而，其中的科幻构思至今令人称道。
此书不靠文学色彩，没有打斗情节，完全凭借“幻想装置”打动我们。例如，那著名的“炮弹车厢” ——弹壳飞船。
从地球到月球-炮弹
这个炮弹的外部是直径九英尺，高十二英尺。为了不超过规定的重量，他们把弹壁做得稍微薄一些，同时却把炮弹底做得特别厚，因为它要承受低氮硝化纤维素燃烧时产生的气体的全部压力，其实，炸弹和锥形圆柱体的馏弹也是这样，底部比较厚。
这个金属塔的出人口是在圆惟形部分上开的一个小洞，跟蒸气锅炉上的那些洞口一样大小。洞门是铝板做的，关上洞门，再拧紧结实的翼形螺钉，小洞就严丝合缝地给堵起来了。这样，旅客们一到达黑夜的天体，就可以自由地走出他们的活动监狱。
但是，单单到那儿去是不够的，路上也应该看看呀。没有比这更容易的了。原来在皮垫子下面有四个舷窗，舷窗上装着非常厚的凸透镜，两个在炮弹周围，第三个在弹底，第四个在尖顶，所以旅客们一路上可以同时观察已经离开了的地球、越来越近的月亮和挂满了繁星的天空。不过舷窗外面嵌着结实的金属护窗板，免得受到出发时的撞击，只消拧下里面的螺丝帽就很容易地把金属板扔抑了。这样炮弹里的空气就不会漏出去，而旅客们也可以进行观察了。
现在飞船上的返回舱，和凡尔纳在19世纪所设想的十分相似！应用至少经过充分研究的科学背景，是凡尔纳有别于早期作家的基本要素。凡尔纳的特殊贡献，就在于他喜欢作准确的科学叙述，而这样的叙述在玛丽·雪莱或爱伦·坡和纳撒尼尔·霍桑的作品中是缺少的。凡尔纳的小说情节不一定十分有趣，但他的科学想象却总是引人入胜的。不讲究文学色彩、完全靠科学叙述取胜的科幻小说家，在凡尔纳之后，有一位是俄国的科学家齐奥尔科夫斯基，他在预言人类征服太空方面大胆构思，以燃料为动力的火箭成为宇航的工具，比凡尔纳的用哥伦比亚大炮发射弹壳飞船有了进一步的可行性。
其次，凡尔纳向19世纪的读者展示了一个“科学奇迹”成为现实的理想世界，而20世纪，他的一些科学幻想真的成了现实。例如，阿波罗登月。《科幻世界》对此进行了比较
凡尔纳月球炮弹与阿波罗登月对照表
项目 凡尔纳 阿波罗登月
宇航员人数 3 3
航速 36000英尺/秒 35533英尺/秒
航时 97小时13分20秒 103小时30分
降落地点 两者仅相差十几公里
发射点 同为佛罗里达卡纳维拉尔角
——引自《科幻世界》1998年第10期
凡尔纳说过：“在我的传奇故事中，我必定要把我的所谓发明建立在现实基础上，而且在应用它们时，必定让它们的结构安排和使用的材料不完全脱离同时代的工程技术和知识领域。”因此，他的小说虽然是虚构的，但是对科学细节的描写却让人相信。读者喜爱的正是他笔下亦真亦幻的发明创造所带来的奇迹，启发真正科学研究正是他笔下亦真亦幻的发明创造所带来的奇迹。
还有，其科幻构思中不仅包含科技奇迹而且包含经济奇迹和社会奇迹，他通过形象思维向我们讲述了“科学是生产力”，这已经在无形中涉及了社会科学领域。
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.
此书不靠文学色彩，没有打斗情节，完全凭借“幻想装置”打动我们。例如，那著名的“炮弹车厢” ——弹壳飞船。
从地球到月球-炮弹
这个炮弹的外部是直径九英尺，高十二英尺。为了不超过规定的重量，他们把弹壁做得稍微薄一些，同时却把炮弹底做得特别厚，因为它要承受低氮硝化纤维素燃烧时产生的气体的全部压力，其实，炸弹和锥形圆柱体的馏弹也是这样，底部比较厚。
这个金属塔的出人口是在圆惟形部分上开的一个小洞，跟蒸气锅炉上的那些洞口一样大小。洞门是铝板做的，关上洞门，再拧紧结实的翼形螺钉，小洞就严丝合缝地给堵起来了。这样，旅客们一到达黑夜的天体，就可以自由地走出他们的活动监狱。
但是，单单到那儿去是不够的，路上也应该看看呀。没有比这更容易的了。原来在皮垫子下面有四个舷窗，舷窗上装着非常厚的凸透镜，两个在炮弹周围，第三个在弹底，第四个在尖顶，所以旅客们一路上可以同时观察已经离开了的地球、越来越近的月亮和挂满了繁星的天空。不过舷窗外面嵌着结实的金属护窗板，免得受到出发时的撞击，只消拧下里面的螺丝帽就很容易地把金属板扔抑了。这样炮弹里的空气就不会漏出去，而旅客们也可以进行观察了。
现在飞船上的返回舱，和凡尔纳在19世纪所设想的十分相似！应用至少经过充分研究的科学背景，是凡尔纳有别于早期作家的基本要素。凡尔纳的特殊贡献，就在于他喜欢作准确的科学叙述，而这样的叙述在玛丽·雪莱或爱伦·坡和纳撒尼尔·霍桑的作品中是缺少的。凡尔纳的小说情节不一定十分有趣，但他的科学想象却总是引人入胜的。不讲究文学色彩、完全靠科学叙述取胜的科幻小说家，在凡尔纳之后，有一位是俄国的科学家齐奥尔科夫斯基，他在预言人类征服太空方面大胆构思，以燃料为动力的火箭成为宇航的工具，比凡尔纳的用哥伦比亚大炮发射弹壳飞船有了进一步的可行性。
其次，凡尔纳向19世纪的读者展示了一个“科学奇迹”成为现实的理想世界，而20世纪，他的一些科学幻想真的成了现实。例如，阿波罗登月。《科幻世界》对此进行了比较
凡尔纳月球炮弹与阿波罗登月对照表
项目 凡尔纳 阿波罗登月
宇航员人数 3 3
航速 36000英尺/秒 35533英尺/秒
航时 97小时13分20秒 103小时30分
降落地点 两者仅相差十几公里
发射点 同为佛罗里达卡纳维拉尔角
——引自《科幻世界》1998年第10期
凡尔纳说过：“在我的传奇故事中，我必定要把我的所谓发明建立在现实基础上，而且在应用它们时，必定让它们的结构安排和使用的材料不完全脱离同时代的工程技术和知识领域。”因此，他的小说虽然是虚构的，但是对科学细节的描写却让人相信。读者喜爱的正是他笔下亦真亦幻的发明创造所带来的奇迹，启发真正科学研究正是他笔下亦真亦幻的发明创造所带来的奇迹。
还有，其科幻构思中不仅包含科技奇迹而且包含经济奇迹和社会奇迹，他通过形象思维向我们讲述了“科学是生产力”，这已经在无形中涉及了社会科学领域。
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.
日内瓦城位于同名的日内瓦湖西畔，城中有罗讷河流过，将它分隔成两部分；而该河又在中央被一座小岛一分为二。
这小岛宛若一艘荷兰大游轮停泊在河中央。在现代建筑还没出现之前，这里是一片奇形怪状的屋群，层层叠叠，你这我挡，很煞风景。小岛太小了，事实上，一些房屋被挤到水滨，任凭风吹浪打。房子的横梁，因为成年累月地遭到河水的侵蚀，已经发黑，看上去活像巨蟹的爪子。窄窄的河道，如蜘蛛网般在这片古老的土地上延伸，河水在黑暗中颤动着，仿佛原始橡树林中簌簌抖动的叶子。罗讷河则隐藏在这一片屋群组成的森林之后，吐着白沫，无限痛苦地着。
这小岛宛若一艘荷兰大游轮停泊在河中央。在现代建筑还没出现之前，这里是一片奇形怪状的屋群，层层叠叠，你这我挡，很煞风景。小岛太小了，事实上，一些房屋被挤到水滨，任凭风吹浪打。房子的横梁，因为成年累月地遭到河水的侵蚀，已经发黑，看上去活像巨蟹的爪子。窄窄的河道，如蜘蛛网般在这片古老的土地上延伸，河水在黑暗中颤动着，仿佛原始橡树林中簌簌抖动的叶子。罗讷河则隐藏在这一片屋群组成的森林之后，吐着白沫，无限痛苦地着。
这部故事题为“冰岛怪兽”，估计没有一个人会相信它。这无关紧要，我仍认为将它公诸于世确有必要。相信也好，不相信也好，悉听尊便吧！
这个饶有兴味而又惊心动魄的冒险故事，始于德索拉西翁①群岛。恐怕再也设想不出比这更合适的地点了。这个岛名是一七七九年库克②船长给它起的。我在那里小住过几个星期，根据我的所见所闻，我可以肯定地说，著名英国航海家给它起的这个凄惨的名字，是完全名副其实的，“荒凉群岛”，这个岛名就足以说明一切了。
这个饶有兴味而又惊心动魄的冒险故事，始于德索拉西翁①群岛。恐怕再也设想不出比这更合适的地点了。这个岛名是一七七九年库克②船长给它起的。我在那里小住过几个星期，根据我的所见所闻，我可以肯定地说，著名英国航海家给它起的这个凄惨的名字，是完全名副其实的，“荒凉群岛”，这个岛名就足以说明一切了。
我们是卡尔费马特镇上的小学的一群孩子，总共 30 来人，20 来个 6 岁至12 岁的男孩子，10 来个 4 岁至 9 岁的小姑娘。如果你想知道这个小镇的正确位置，根据我的地图册第 47 页，这是在瑞士信奉天主教的一个州里，离康斯坦茨湖①不远，在阿邦泽尔②的群山脚下。
这个故事富于浪漫的传奇色彩，但绝非无聊的杜撰。但是否因它描述的并非真情实物，就可能得出结论，说这个故事不是真的呢？如果那样想就大错而特错了。我们生活的时代什么都可能发生，甚至有理由认为一切都已发生在这个时代。如果这个故事在今天看来太过玄妙，但明天它必成为真实。科学的发展保证了现在和未来的繁荣昌盛，没人会简单地把本故事与一般的传说等同起来。况且处在这个重实际、讲实效的19世纪末，神怪传说早已不吃香了。布列塔尼不再是凶恶的矮妖横行的土地，苏格兰也不盛传善良的小精灵和地精，挪威也无谓阿则、厄尔弗、西贝弗、瓦尔甚男诸神的故土，甚至特兰西瓦尼亚的神秘幽深的喀尔巴阡山脉中也不再是鬼影憧憧了。但还得注意的是，特兰西瓦尼亚地区的人还是对远古时代的各种迷信传说深信不疑。
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.
此篇为凡尔纳的代表作之一，《地心游记》讲述李登布罗克教授在一本古老的书籍里偶然得到了一张羊皮纸，发现前人曾到地心旅行，李登布罗克教授决心也作同样的旅行。他和侄子从汉堡出发，到冰岛请一位向导，他们按照前人的指引，由冰岛的一个火山口下降，经过三个月的旅行，历尽艰险和种种奇观，最后回到了地面。
同名电影
中文名:地心游记
英文名:Journey to the Center of the Earth
其他中文片名：地心探险记
其他影片别名：Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth / Trip to the Center of the Earth
《地心游记》《地心游记》
类型：冒险 / 科幻 / 幻想
发行年代：1959
导演： Henry Levin
编剧： Charles Brackett / Robert Burns /
上映日期：法国：2005-03-23 / 法国：1999-12-08 /
宣传语：A fabulous world below the world
演员表： 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)
国家/地区：美国
对白语言：英语
级别：Australia:PG / Finland:K-12 / Iceland:Unrated / UK:U / USA:G
剧情梗概：
根据十九世纪法国科幻作家凡尔纳大作《地心游记》改编的作品。讲述李登布罗克教授在一本古老的书籍里偶然得到了一张羊皮纸，发现前人曾到地心旅行，李登布罗克教授决心也作同样的旅行。他和侄子从汉堡出发，到冰岛请一位向导，他们按照前人的指引，由冰岛的一个火山口下降，经过三个月的旅行，历尽艰险和种种奇观，最后回到了地面。
《地心游记》-本片相关影评
被拍坏掉的冒险电影
——看《地心游记》
事实上，如果不是看到布兰登的大名，我想自己也不会观看《地心游记》。一直以来，对大多数科幻不甚感冒。
影片开始，当肖恩（乔什•哈彻森饰）跟着教授（布兰登•弗雷泽饰）出现在汉娜（安妮塔•布里姆饰）的家中时，电影的结局便变得毫无悬念——无论怎样曲折、惊险，坚决捍卫皆大欢喜的大团圆式结局的好莱坞，绝不敢冒天下之大不韪拿一个孩子与男、女主角的生命安全当做儿戏。
电影刚开始，当三人不断地从一个高度跌落到另外一个高度时，虽然在铁轨飞车片段看到《夺宝奇兵》里似曾相识的画面，在坠洞的情节也隐隐看得到《魔窟》和《暗夜袭击》的影子，着实吊足胃口，但当浑身荧光闪烁的小鸟飞出来时，一切对冒险片的期盼便顷刻间化为乌有。
整部片子的所谓特技，效果极为一般。总感觉要么太过，要么太假，背景与人物、道具什么的，缺乏一种真实的融合感——尤其在地心里的海洋波涛汹涌与巨大的史前巨兽吞吃牙齿怪异的鱼类时，那些特技场景粗糙得甚至有些令人倒胃口。不知道是不是由于没有配合3D眼镜，总之，平面视角没能感受到来自画面的冲击。
英雄救美、逢凶化吉、义救亲侄的剧情老套不说，且天马行空编撰的地球内部构造（倒退一百年也许还能蒙得过）完全与真实的地质构造大相庭径——地心里还有恐龙，乖乖，两千多度，怕是铁龙也早化成蒸龙了吧？就算翻拍，也无法谅解编剧的死脑筋，如今的观众也许人人都念过几天书，谁都对地球的构造有一个定势的科学认知，你这样生搬硬套翻过期旧挂历，能打动观众的眼球？
而布兰登扮演的教授角色，在本片前半部分和后半部分的急剧转型，恐怕是最不能容忍的。原本布兰登在《泰山》和《盗墓迷城》系列中，留给大家都是一种有点玩世不恭但胆识过人的大男孩印象——就算在《盗墓迷城3》中布兰登的孩子都恋爱了，但在心目中这种印象依旧——而在本剧中，前半部分似乎导演想把布兰登刻意塑造成一个笨手笨脚、学识渊博，甚至不拘小节的迂腐学者形象。孰料进入地心深处后，这个刚还连倒挂金钩自救都不会的呆笨更年期科学家旋即改头换面——那个玩世不恭、威风凛凛的大男孩回来啦，身手敏捷地拯救自己的侄子和美人于数千公里深的地心中。
一句话，整部影片被拍坏掉了。
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.
同名电影
中文名:地心游记
英文名:Journey to the Center of the Earth
其他中文片名：地心探险记
其他影片别名：Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth / Trip to the Center of the Earth
《地心游记》《地心游记》
类型：冒险 / 科幻 / 幻想
发行年代：1959
导演： Henry Levin
编剧： Charles Brackett / Robert Burns /
上映日期：法国：2005-03-23 / 法国：1999-12-08 /
宣传语：A fabulous world below the world
演员表： 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)
国家/地区：美国
对白语言：英语
级别：Australia:PG / Finland:K-12 / Iceland:Unrated / UK:U / USA:G
剧情梗概：
根据十九世纪法国科幻作家凡尔纳大作《地心游记》改编的作品。讲述李登布罗克教授在一本古老的书籍里偶然得到了一张羊皮纸，发现前人曾到地心旅行，李登布罗克教授决心也作同样的旅行。他和侄子从汉堡出发，到冰岛请一位向导，他们按照前人的指引，由冰岛的一个火山口下降，经过三个月的旅行，历尽艰险和种种奇观，最后回到了地面。
《地心游记》-本片相关影评
被拍坏掉的冒险电影
——看《地心游记》
事实上，如果不是看到布兰登的大名，我想自己也不会观看《地心游记》。一直以来，对大多数科幻不甚感冒。
影片开始，当肖恩（乔什•哈彻森饰）跟着教授（布兰登•弗雷泽饰）出现在汉娜（安妮塔•布里姆饰）的家中时，电影的结局便变得毫无悬念——无论怎样曲折、惊险，坚决捍卫皆大欢喜的大团圆式结局的好莱坞，绝不敢冒天下之大不韪拿一个孩子与男、女主角的生命安全当做儿戏。
电影刚开始，当三人不断地从一个高度跌落到另外一个高度时，虽然在铁轨飞车片段看到《夺宝奇兵》里似曾相识的画面，在坠洞的情节也隐隐看得到《魔窟》和《暗夜袭击》的影子，着实吊足胃口，但当浑身荧光闪烁的小鸟飞出来时，一切对冒险片的期盼便顷刻间化为乌有。
整部片子的所谓特技，效果极为一般。总感觉要么太过，要么太假，背景与人物、道具什么的，缺乏一种真实的融合感——尤其在地心里的海洋波涛汹涌与巨大的史前巨兽吞吃牙齿怪异的鱼类时，那些特技场景粗糙得甚至有些令人倒胃口。不知道是不是由于没有配合3D眼镜，总之，平面视角没能感受到来自画面的冲击。
英雄救美、逢凶化吉、义救亲侄的剧情老套不说，且天马行空编撰的地球内部构造（倒退一百年也许还能蒙得过）完全与真实的地质构造大相庭径——地心里还有恐龙，乖乖，两千多度，怕是铁龙也早化成蒸龙了吧？就算翻拍，也无法谅解编剧的死脑筋，如今的观众也许人人都念过几天书，谁都对地球的构造有一个定势的科学认知，你这样生搬硬套翻过期旧挂历，能打动观众的眼球？
而布兰登扮演的教授角色，在本片前半部分和后半部分的急剧转型，恐怕是最不能容忍的。原本布兰登在《泰山》和《盗墓迷城》系列中，留给大家都是一种有点玩世不恭但胆识过人的大男孩印象——就算在《盗墓迷城3》中布兰登的孩子都恋爱了，但在心目中这种印象依旧——而在本剧中，前半部分似乎导演想把布兰登刻意塑造成一个笨手笨脚、学识渊博，甚至不拘小节的迂腐学者形象。孰料进入地心深处后，这个刚还连倒挂金钩自救都不会的呆笨更年期科学家旋即改头换面——那个玩世不恭、威风凛凛的大男孩回来啦，身手敏捷地拯救自己的侄子和美人于数千公里深的地心中。
一句话，整部影片被拍坏掉了。
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.
随着大地的一声巨大震动，空中出现了比北极光还要明亮的不同寻常的光辉，刹那间使得所有星星全都黯然失色。地中海顷刻之间变得空空如也，随后海水又回到海里形成汹涌澎湃的波涛。大地上出现震耳欲聋的轰鸣，除了有一种来自地球内部的爆裂声外，还有巨大的波涛互相撞击的声响和飓风的呼啸声。在天空、海上和地面突然出现如此巨大的变化后，故事的主人公们突然发现他们在一个完全陌生的星球上，开始了他们无法拒绝的太阳系历险。
“砰！……砰！……”
两位对手几乎同时开枪。50米开外，一头从那里经过的母牛脊梁上白白地挨了一枪。它与事情毫不相干。
两位对手都没有击中对方。
这两位决斗的绅士是谁？不知道。要是知道的话，说不定他们的名字从此就会留传后世呢。唯一知道的是，他们中年纪较大的那位是英国人，年纪较轻的那位是美国人。不过，如果需要把那头无辜的反刍动物刚才吃最后一簇青草的地点标出来，这倒是容易，就在尼亚加拉瀑布的右岸，离美国和加拿大之间的那座悬索桥不远，在瀑布下游3英里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.
两位对手几乎同时开枪。50米开外，一头从那里经过的母牛脊梁上白白地挨了一枪。它与事情毫不相干。
两位对手都没有击中对方。
这两位决斗的绅士是谁？不知道。要是知道的话，说不定他们的名字从此就会留传后世呢。唯一知道的是，他们中年纪较大的那位是英国人，年纪较轻的那位是美国人。不过，如果需要把那头无辜的反刍动物刚才吃最后一簇青草的地点标出来，这倒是容易，就在尼亚加拉瀑布的右岸，离美国和加拿大之间的那座悬索桥不远，在瀑布下游3英里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.
“马思通先生，您竟敢说妇女们不可能对数理科学和实验科学作出自己的贡献？”
“十分遗憾，思柯碧夫人，我并不想这样说。”马思通答道，“女数学家嘛，有名的从古到今也有过那么几位，尤其是的，这我当然承认。不过，根据女子大脑的结构来看，她们决不可能成为阿基米德或牛顿式的人物。”
“噢！马思通先生，我要代表女性向您提出……”
“思柯碧夫人，女性生来妩媚漂亮，所以不善于进行超验的推理。”
“照您这么说，一个女人就是看到苹果从树上落下，也不能像十七世纪末那位著名的英国学者一样，从中发现万有引力定律啦？”
“十分遗憾，思柯碧夫人，我并不想这样说。”马思通答道，“女数学家嘛，有名的从古到今也有过那么几位，尤其是的，这我当然承认。不过，根据女子大脑的结构来看，她们决不可能成为阿基米德或牛顿式的人物。”
“噢！马思通先生，我要代表女性向您提出……”
“思柯碧夫人，女性生来妩媚漂亮，所以不善于进行超验的推理。”
“照您这么说，一个女人就是看到苹果从树上落下，也不能像十七世纪末那位著名的英国学者一样，从中发现万有引力定律啦？”
《海底两万里》写于1870年，是儒勒·凡尔纳著名的三部曲的第二部，第一部是《格兰特船长的儿女》 、第三部是《神秘岛》 。这部作品叙述法国生物学者阿龙纳斯在海洋深处旅行的故事。这事发生在一八六六年，当时海上发现了一只被断定为独角鲸的大怪物，他接受邀请参加追捕，在追捕过程中不幸落水，泅到怪物的脊背上。其实这怪物并非什么独角鲸，而是一艘构造奇妙的潜水船。潜水船是船长尼摩在大洋中的一座荒岛上秘密建造的，船身坚固，利用海洋发电。尼摩船长邀请阿龙纳斯作海底旅行。他们从太平洋出发，经过珊瑚岛、印度洋、红海、地中海，进入大西洋，看到许多罕见的海生动植物和水中的奇异景象，又经历了搁浅、土人围攻、同鲨鱼搏斗、冰山封路、章鱼袭击等许多险情。最后，当潜水船到达挪威海岸时，阿龙纳斯不辞而别，把他所知道的海底秘密公布于世。
海底两万里-介绍
书中人物寥寥，有名有姓的只有四个半——“亚伯拉罕·林肯”号驱逐舰舰长法拉格特，只在小说开头部分昙花一现，姑且算半个；内景只是一艘潜水艇。但就是这么四个半人，这么一艘潜水艇，在将近一年的时间中，纵横海底两万里，为我们演绎出一个个故事，展现出一幅幅画面；故事曲折惊险，引人入胜，画面多姿多彩，气象万千。这样一部小说，读来既使人赏心悦目，也令人动魄惊心。 故事并不复杂：法国人阿罗纳克斯，一位博物学家，应邀赴美参加一项科学考察活动。其时，海上出了个怪物，在全世界闹得沸沸扬扬。科考活动结束之后，博物学家正准备束装就道，返回法国，却接到美国海军部的邀请，于是改弦更张，登上了一艘驱逐舰，参与“把那个怪物从海洋中清除出去 ”的活动。经过千辛万苦，“怪物”未被清除，驱逐舰反被“怪物”重创，博物学家和他的仆人以及为清除“怪物”被特意请到驱逐舰上来的一名捕鲸手，都成了 “怪物”的俘虏!“怪物”非他，原来是一艘尚不为世人所知的潜水艇，名“鹦鹉螺”号。潜艇对俘虏倒也优待；只是，为了保守自己的秘密，潜艇艇长内莫从此。永远不许他们离开。阿罗纳克斯一行别无选择，只能跟着潜水艇周游各大洋。十个月之后，这三个人终于在极其险恶的情况下逃脱，博物学家才得以把这件海底秘密公诸于世。《海底两万里》写的主要是他们在这十个月里的经历。 《海底两万里》已经有几种中译本，“两万里”也就成了个约定俗成的说法；究其实，这里的“里”指的是法国古里，而古法里又有海陆之分，一古海里约合 5.556公里，一古陆里约合4.445公里；既然是在海底周游，这里的两万里，理应为两万古海里。如此说来，他们在海底行驶的路程，就应该在十一万公里以上了。这是要说明的。 十一万公里的行程，是个大场面，一路所见，可以说无奇不有。谁见过海底森林?谁见过海底煤矿?谁见过“养”在贝壳里、价值连城的大珍珠?当了俘虏的阿罗纳克斯和他的朋友们都见到了，而且曾经徜徉其间。他们在印度洋的珠场和鲨鱼展开过搏斗，捕鲸手兰德手刃了一条凶恶的巨鲨；他们在红海里追捕过一条濒于绝种的儒艮，儒艮肉当晚就被端上了餐桌；他们在大西洋里和章鱼进行过血战，一名船员惨死；这些场面，都十分惊心动魄。此外，书中还描写了抹香鲸如何残杀长须鲸， “鹦鹉螺”号潜艇又是如何杀死成群的抹香鲸的，那情景也十分罕见。 阿罗纳克斯是个博物学家，博古通今，乘潜艇在水下航行，使他饱览了海洋里的各种动植物；他和他那位对分类学入了迷的仆人孔塞伊，将这些海洋生物向我们做了详实的介绍，界、门、纲、目、科、属、种，说得井井有条，使读者认识了许多海洋生物；阿罗纳克斯还把在海洋中见到的种种奇观，一一娓娓道来，令读者大开眼界，知道了什么是太平洋黑流，什么是墨西哥暖流，飓风是怎样形成的，马尾藻海又是什么样……我们知道珊瑚礁是怎样形成的吗?知道海洋究竟有多深吗?知道海水传播声音的速度有多快吗?这一类知识，书中比比皆是。 “鹦鹉螺”号也曾遇险，在珊瑚礁上搁过浅，受到过巴布亚土著的袭击，最可怕的是，在南极被厚厚的冰层困住，艇内缺氧，艇上的人几乎不能生还。但是，凭着潜艇的精良构造和艇长的超人智慧，种种险境，均被化解，终于完成了十一万公里的海底行程。 凡尔纳时代，潜水艇刚刚面世，还是一种神秘的东西；“鹦鹉螺”号艇长内莫又是个身世不明之人，他逃避人类，蛰居海底，而又隐隐约约和陆地上的某些人有一种特殊联系。凡此种种，都给小说增加了一层神秘色彩。既是小说，人物当然是虚构的，作家给“鹦鹉螺”号艇长取的拉丁文名字，更明白无误地指出了这一点—— “内莫”，在拉丁文里是子虚乌有的意思。但这并没有妨碍作者把他描写成一个有血有肉、让读者觉得可信的人物。 本书作者儒勒·凡尔纳(1828—1905)是法国科幻小说家，现代科幻小说的重要奠基人。他出生在一个律师家庭，很小的时候就产生了强烈的探索欲望和丰富的想像力。他博览群书，厚积薄发，第一部科幻小说《气球上的五星期》，一炮打响，引起轰动，使他成了个家喻户晓的人物。他后来一发而不可收，又写了一系列科学幻想冒险小说，卷帙浩繁，不下六七十种，被收入一套名为《奇异的旅行》的丛书。《海底两万里》是凡尔纳著名三部曲的第二部，前有《格兰特船长的儿女》，后有《神秘岛》。作者想像力丰富，文笔细腻，构思奇巧，其作品既引人人胜，又很有教育意义，适合各种年龄的读者。而且，凡尔纳的幻想不是异想天开，都以科学为依据；他所预见到的很多器械，后来都变成了现实生活中的实有之物。
海底两万里-作者介绍
儒勒·凡尔纳（Jules Verne，1828.2.8.??1905）生于法国西部海港南特，他在构成市区一部分的劳阿尔河上的菲伊德岛生活学习到中学毕业。父亲是位颇为成功的律师，一心希望子承父业。但是凡尔纳自幼热爱海洋，向往远航探险。11岁时，他曾志愿上船当见习生，远航印度，结果被家人发现接回了家。为此凡尔纳挨了一顿狠揍，并躺在床上流着泪保证：“以后保证只躺在床上在幻想中旅行。”也许正是由于这一童年的经历，客观上促使凡尔纳一生驰骋于幻想之中，创作出如此众多的著名科幻作品。
海底两万里海底两万里
18岁时，他遵父嘱，去巴黎攻读法律，可是他对法律毫无兴趣，却爱上了文学和戏剧。一次，凡尔纳自一场晚会早退，下楼时他忽然童心大发，沿楼梯扶手悠然滑下，不想正撞在一位胖绅士身上。凡尔纳非常尴尬，道歉之后随口询问对方吃饭没有，对方回答说刚吃过南特炒鸡蛋。凡尔纳听罢摇头，声称巴黎根本没有正宗的南特炒鸡蛋，因为他即南特人而且拿手此菜。胖绅士闻言大喜，诚邀凡尔纳登门献艺。二人友谊从此开始，并一度合写戏剧，为凡尔纳走上创作之路创造了有利条件。这位胖绅士的名字是大仲马。毕业后，他更是一门心思投入诗歌和戏剧的创作，为此不仅受到父亲的严厉训斥，并失去了父亲的经济资助。他不得不在贫困中奋斗，以读书为乐。他十分欣赏雨果、巴尔扎克、大仲马和英国的莎士比亚。在巴黎，他创作了20个剧本（未出版）和一些充满浪漫激情的诗歌。
后来，凡尔纳与大仲马合作创作了剧本《折断的麦秆》并得以上演，这标志着凡尔纳在文学界取得了初步的成功。在继续创作的过程中，凡尔纳感到文学创作似乎缺乏出路，而且他发现当时文坛上的人都在找出路，都在试图把其他领域的知识融进戏剧。比如大仲马是将历史学融进文学，而巴尔扎克则把社会伦理学融进文学……这时凡尔纳发现，只剩下地理学还没有被开发。
于是凡尔纳利用一年的时间进行试验，创作出《冰川上面过冬》等作品，但未发表。
1856年凡尔纳乘火车来到北部城市亚眠，遇到一名带着两个孩子的漂亮寡妇，一见终情并求婚，继而结婚。接着凡尔纳搬家过去，从此开始认真创作。其时29岁。
凡尔纳创作出《气球上的五星期》后，16家出版社无人理睬，愤然投入火中，被妻子抢救出来，送入第17家出版社后被出版。赏识此书的编辑叫赫茨尔，从此凡尔纳遇到了知音，与之结下终身友谊。黑格尔与凡尔纳签订合同，一年为其出版两本科幻小说。
《气球上的五星期》出版之后，凡尔纳的创作进入了一个多方面的探索时期，他试验多种写法，朝多种方向进行探索，一发不可收拾。每年出版两本，总标题为《奇异的旅行》，包括《地心游记》《从地球到月球》《环绕月球》《海底两万里》《神秘岛》等等，囊括了陆地、海洋和天空……此后探索停止，开始成熟，进入平稳的发展时期，创作出《80天环绕地球》《太阳系历险记》（中译《大木筏》）《两年假期》等优秀作品。随着声望的增高，凡尔纳的财富也在迅速增长。
凡尔纳的晚年不是十分幸福，创作减少并进入衰弱期，其《卡尔巴阡的古堡》有一定的自传性，表现了生活中隐秘的侧面。
1905年3月17日凡尔纳出现偏瘫，24日失去知觉，25日晨8:00去世。
1905年3月28日大出殡，全世界纷纷电唁，悼念这位伟大的科幻作家。
凡尔纳的故事生动幽默，妙语横生，又能激发人们尤其是青少年热爱科学、向往探险的热情，所以一百多年来，一直受到世界各地读者的欢迎。据联合国教科文组织的资料表明，凡尔纳是世界上被翻译的作品最多的十大名家之一。
凡尔纳是一个非常优秀的通俗小说作家，有一种能够把自己的幻觉变得能够触摸的本领，其感觉是全方位的，从平淡的文学中传达出某种人类的热情。但凡尔纳的小说中人物除了少数几个外都是一模一样的，他似乎塑造不出更重要的人物，人物都是脸谱化的简单的好人坏人，没有什么心理活动；从其作品人物性别单一化上还可看出他对女人的偏见，隐隐流露出深受其苦的心态。此外凡尔纳的作品中充满了明显的社会倾向，是一个爱国者（法国人最好）、民族解放主义者（支持被压迫民族斗争），在某种程度上是一个无政府主义者（从某些作品中表现出无秩序者），最后还是一个银河帝国主义者（有缔造宇宙帝国的欲望）。
凡尔纳的作品里充满了知识，但他本人却是一名宇宙神秘主义者，对世界有一种神秘的崇拜。在他的小说中，有时候思考问题不够深刻，主题也常常重复。
但总的来说，凡尔纳的尝试仍然是伟大的。他写的虽然都是平凡小事，但读后仍使我们激动不已。正如1884年教皇在接见凡尔纳时曾说：“我并不是不知道您的作品的科学价值，但我最珍重的却是它们的纯洁、道德价值和精神力量。”
海底两万里-作品特点
《海底两万里》是一部科幻小说，于一八七0年问世，暨今已逾百年，而仍能以多种文字的各种版本风行世界，广
海底两万里海底两万里
有读者，仅此一端，即可见其生命力之强，吸引力之大。主张书不及百岁不看的读者，是大可放心一阅的。书中人物寥寥，有名有姓的只有四个半——“亚伯拉罕·林肯”号驱逐舰舰长法拉格特，只在小说开头部分昙花一现，姑且算半个；内景只是一艘潜水艇。但就是这么四个半人，这么一艘潜水艇，一个神秘的船长,一个学富五车的科学家,在各种探险历程中,在将近一年的时间中，纵横海底两万里，为我们演绎出一个个故事，展现出一幅幅画面,海底墓地,珊瑚谷,巨型章鱼……故事曲折惊险，引人入胜，画面多姿多彩，气象万千。这样一部小说，读来既使人赏心悦目，也令人动魄惊心。令人永生难忘，不愧为一部世界名著。百看不厌。
《海底两万里》写的主要是他们在这十个月里的经历。《海底两万里》已经有几种中译本，“两万里”也就成了个约定俗成的说法；究其实，这里的“里”指的是法国古里，而古法里又有海陆之分，一古海里约合5.556公里，一古陆里约合4.445公里；既然是在海底周游，这里的两万里，理应为两万古海里。
如此说来，他们在海底行驶的路程，就应该在十一万公里以上了。这是要说明的。十一万公里的行程，是个大场面，一路所见，可以说无奇不有。谁见过海底森林?谁见过海底煤矿?谁见过“养”在贝壳里、价值连城的大珍珠?当了俘虏的阿龙纳斯和他的朋友们都见到了，而且曾经徜徉其间。他们在印度洋的珠场和鲨鱼展开过搏斗，捕鲸手内德·兰手刃了一条凶恶的巨鲨；他们在红海里追捕过一条濒于绝种的儒艮，儒艮肉当晚就被端上了餐桌；他们在大西洋里和章鱼进行过血战，一名船员惨死；这些场面，都十分惊心动魄。此外，书中还描写了抹香鲸如何残杀长须鲸，“鹦鹉螺”号潜艇又是如何杀死成群的抹香鲸的，那情景也十分罕见。
阿罗纳克斯是个生物学家，博古通今，乘潜艇在水下航行，使他饱览了海洋里的各种动植物；他和他那位对分类学入了迷的仆人康塞尔，将这些海洋生物向我们做了详实的介绍，界、门、纲、目、科、属、种，说得井井有条，使读者认识了许多海洋生物；阿罗纳克斯还把在海洋中见到的种种奇观，一一娓娓道来，令读者大开眼界，知道了什么是太平洋黑流，什么是墨西哥暖流，飓风是怎样形成的，马尾藻海又是什么样……我们知道珊瑚礁是怎样形成的吗?知道海洋究竟有多深吗? 知道海水传播声音的速度有多快吗?这一类知识，书中比比皆是。
“鹦鹉螺”号也曾遇险，在珊瑚礁上搁过浅，受到过巴布亚土著的袭击，最可怕的是，在南极被厚厚的冰层困住，艇内缺氧，艇上的人几乎不能生还。但是，凭着潜艇的精良构造和艇长的超人智慧，种种险境，均被化解，终于完成了十一万公里的海底行程。凡尔纳时代，潜水艇刚刚面世，还是一种神秘的东西；“鹦鹉螺”号艇长尼摩又是个身世不明之人，他逃避人类，蛰居海底，而又隐隐约约和陆地上的某些人有一种特殊联系。凡此种种，都给小说增加了一层神秘色彩。
既是小说，人物当然是虚构的，作家给“鹦鹉螺”号艇长取的拉丁文名字，更明白无误地指出了这一点——“尼摩”（Nemo），在拉丁文里是子虚乌有的意思。但这并没有妨碍作者把他描写成一个有血有肉、让读者觉得可信的人物。
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)
海底两万里-介绍
书中人物寥寥，有名有姓的只有四个半——“亚伯拉罕·林肯”号驱逐舰舰长法拉格特，只在小说开头部分昙花一现，姑且算半个；内景只是一艘潜水艇。但就是这么四个半人，这么一艘潜水艇，在将近一年的时间中，纵横海底两万里，为我们演绎出一个个故事，展现出一幅幅画面；故事曲折惊险，引人入胜，画面多姿多彩，气象万千。这样一部小说，读来既使人赏心悦目，也令人动魄惊心。 故事并不复杂：法国人阿罗纳克斯，一位博物学家，应邀赴美参加一项科学考察活动。其时，海上出了个怪物，在全世界闹得沸沸扬扬。科考活动结束之后，博物学家正准备束装就道，返回法国，却接到美国海军部的邀请，于是改弦更张，登上了一艘驱逐舰，参与“把那个怪物从海洋中清除出去 ”的活动。经过千辛万苦，“怪物”未被清除，驱逐舰反被“怪物”重创，博物学家和他的仆人以及为清除“怪物”被特意请到驱逐舰上来的一名捕鲸手，都成了 “怪物”的俘虏!“怪物”非他，原来是一艘尚不为世人所知的潜水艇，名“鹦鹉螺”号。潜艇对俘虏倒也优待；只是，为了保守自己的秘密，潜艇艇长内莫从此。永远不许他们离开。阿罗纳克斯一行别无选择，只能跟着潜水艇周游各大洋。十个月之后，这三个人终于在极其险恶的情况下逃脱，博物学家才得以把这件海底秘密公诸于世。《海底两万里》写的主要是他们在这十个月里的经历。 《海底两万里》已经有几种中译本，“两万里”也就成了个约定俗成的说法；究其实，这里的“里”指的是法国古里，而古法里又有海陆之分，一古海里约合 5.556公里，一古陆里约合4.445公里；既然是在海底周游，这里的两万里，理应为两万古海里。如此说来，他们在海底行驶的路程，就应该在十一万公里以上了。这是要说明的。 十一万公里的行程，是个大场面，一路所见，可以说无奇不有。谁见过海底森林?谁见过海底煤矿?谁见过“养”在贝壳里、价值连城的大珍珠?当了俘虏的阿罗纳克斯和他的朋友们都见到了，而且曾经徜徉其间。他们在印度洋的珠场和鲨鱼展开过搏斗，捕鲸手兰德手刃了一条凶恶的巨鲨；他们在红海里追捕过一条濒于绝种的儒艮，儒艮肉当晚就被端上了餐桌；他们在大西洋里和章鱼进行过血战，一名船员惨死；这些场面，都十分惊心动魄。此外，书中还描写了抹香鲸如何残杀长须鲸， “鹦鹉螺”号潜艇又是如何杀死成群的抹香鲸的，那情景也十分罕见。 阿罗纳克斯是个博物学家，博古通今，乘潜艇在水下航行，使他饱览了海洋里的各种动植物；他和他那位对分类学入了迷的仆人孔塞伊，将这些海洋生物向我们做了详实的介绍，界、门、纲、目、科、属、种，说得井井有条，使读者认识了许多海洋生物；阿罗纳克斯还把在海洋中见到的种种奇观，一一娓娓道来，令读者大开眼界，知道了什么是太平洋黑流，什么是墨西哥暖流，飓风是怎样形成的，马尾藻海又是什么样……我们知道珊瑚礁是怎样形成的吗?知道海洋究竟有多深吗?知道海水传播声音的速度有多快吗?这一类知识，书中比比皆是。 “鹦鹉螺”号也曾遇险，在珊瑚礁上搁过浅，受到过巴布亚土著的袭击，最可怕的是，在南极被厚厚的冰层困住，艇内缺氧，艇上的人几乎不能生还。但是，凭着潜艇的精良构造和艇长的超人智慧，种种险境，均被化解，终于完成了十一万公里的海底行程。 凡尔纳时代，潜水艇刚刚面世，还是一种神秘的东西；“鹦鹉螺”号艇长内莫又是个身世不明之人，他逃避人类，蛰居海底，而又隐隐约约和陆地上的某些人有一种特殊联系。凡此种种，都给小说增加了一层神秘色彩。既是小说，人物当然是虚构的，作家给“鹦鹉螺”号艇长取的拉丁文名字，更明白无误地指出了这一点—— “内莫”，在拉丁文里是子虚乌有的意思。但这并没有妨碍作者把他描写成一个有血有肉、让读者觉得可信的人物。 本书作者儒勒·凡尔纳(1828—1905)是法国科幻小说家，现代科幻小说的重要奠基人。他出生在一个律师家庭，很小的时候就产生了强烈的探索欲望和丰富的想像力。他博览群书，厚积薄发，第一部科幻小说《气球上的五星期》，一炮打响，引起轰动，使他成了个家喻户晓的人物。他后来一发而不可收，又写了一系列科学幻想冒险小说，卷帙浩繁，不下六七十种，被收入一套名为《奇异的旅行》的丛书。《海底两万里》是凡尔纳著名三部曲的第二部，前有《格兰特船长的儿女》，后有《神秘岛》。作者想像力丰富，文笔细腻，构思奇巧，其作品既引人人胜，又很有教育意义，适合各种年龄的读者。而且，凡尔纳的幻想不是异想天开，都以科学为依据；他所预见到的很多器械，后来都变成了现实生活中的实有之物。
海底两万里-作者介绍
儒勒·凡尔纳（Jules Verne，1828.2.8.??1905）生于法国西部海港南特，他在构成市区一部分的劳阿尔河上的菲伊德岛生活学习到中学毕业。父亲是位颇为成功的律师，一心希望子承父业。但是凡尔纳自幼热爱海洋，向往远航探险。11岁时，他曾志愿上船当见习生，远航印度，结果被家人发现接回了家。为此凡尔纳挨了一顿狠揍，并躺在床上流着泪保证：“以后保证只躺在床上在幻想中旅行。”也许正是由于这一童年的经历，客观上促使凡尔纳一生驰骋于幻想之中，创作出如此众多的著名科幻作品。
海底两万里海底两万里
18岁时，他遵父嘱，去巴黎攻读法律，可是他对法律毫无兴趣，却爱上了文学和戏剧。一次，凡尔纳自一场晚会早退，下楼时他忽然童心大发，沿楼梯扶手悠然滑下，不想正撞在一位胖绅士身上。凡尔纳非常尴尬，道歉之后随口询问对方吃饭没有，对方回答说刚吃过南特炒鸡蛋。凡尔纳听罢摇头，声称巴黎根本没有正宗的南特炒鸡蛋，因为他即南特人而且拿手此菜。胖绅士闻言大喜，诚邀凡尔纳登门献艺。二人友谊从此开始，并一度合写戏剧，为凡尔纳走上创作之路创造了有利条件。这位胖绅士的名字是大仲马。毕业后，他更是一门心思投入诗歌和戏剧的创作，为此不仅受到父亲的严厉训斥，并失去了父亲的经济资助。他不得不在贫困中奋斗，以读书为乐。他十分欣赏雨果、巴尔扎克、大仲马和英国的莎士比亚。在巴黎，他创作了20个剧本（未出版）和一些充满浪漫激情的诗歌。
后来，凡尔纳与大仲马合作创作了剧本《折断的麦秆》并得以上演，这标志着凡尔纳在文学界取得了初步的成功。在继续创作的过程中，凡尔纳感到文学创作似乎缺乏出路，而且他发现当时文坛上的人都在找出路，都在试图把其他领域的知识融进戏剧。比如大仲马是将历史学融进文学，而巴尔扎克则把社会伦理学融进文学……这时凡尔纳发现，只剩下地理学还没有被开发。
于是凡尔纳利用一年的时间进行试验，创作出《冰川上面过冬》等作品，但未发表。
1856年凡尔纳乘火车来到北部城市亚眠，遇到一名带着两个孩子的漂亮寡妇，一见终情并求婚，继而结婚。接着凡尔纳搬家过去，从此开始认真创作。其时29岁。
凡尔纳创作出《气球上的五星期》后，16家出版社无人理睬，愤然投入火中，被妻子抢救出来，送入第17家出版社后被出版。赏识此书的编辑叫赫茨尔，从此凡尔纳遇到了知音，与之结下终身友谊。黑格尔与凡尔纳签订合同，一年为其出版两本科幻小说。
《气球上的五星期》出版之后，凡尔纳的创作进入了一个多方面的探索时期，他试验多种写法，朝多种方向进行探索，一发不可收拾。每年出版两本，总标题为《奇异的旅行》，包括《地心游记》《从地球到月球》《环绕月球》《海底两万里》《神秘岛》等等，囊括了陆地、海洋和天空……此后探索停止，开始成熟，进入平稳的发展时期，创作出《80天环绕地球》《太阳系历险记》（中译《大木筏》）《两年假期》等优秀作品。随着声望的增高，凡尔纳的财富也在迅速增长。
凡尔纳的晚年不是十分幸福，创作减少并进入衰弱期，其《卡尔巴阡的古堡》有一定的自传性，表现了生活中隐秘的侧面。
1905年3月17日凡尔纳出现偏瘫，24日失去知觉，25日晨8:00去世。
1905年3月28日大出殡，全世界纷纷电唁，悼念这位伟大的科幻作家。
凡尔纳的故事生动幽默，妙语横生，又能激发人们尤其是青少年热爱科学、向往探险的热情，所以一百多年来，一直受到世界各地读者的欢迎。据联合国教科文组织的资料表明，凡尔纳是世界上被翻译的作品最多的十大名家之一。
凡尔纳是一个非常优秀的通俗小说作家，有一种能够把自己的幻觉变得能够触摸的本领，其感觉是全方位的，从平淡的文学中传达出某种人类的热情。但凡尔纳的小说中人物除了少数几个外都是一模一样的，他似乎塑造不出更重要的人物，人物都是脸谱化的简单的好人坏人，没有什么心理活动；从其作品人物性别单一化上还可看出他对女人的偏见，隐隐流露出深受其苦的心态。此外凡尔纳的作品中充满了明显的社会倾向，是一个爱国者（法国人最好）、民族解放主义者（支持被压迫民族斗争），在某种程度上是一个无政府主义者（从某些作品中表现出无秩序者），最后还是一个银河帝国主义者（有缔造宇宙帝国的欲望）。
凡尔纳的作品里充满了知识，但他本人却是一名宇宙神秘主义者，对世界有一种神秘的崇拜。在他的小说中，有时候思考问题不够深刻，主题也常常重复。
但总的来说，凡尔纳的尝试仍然是伟大的。他写的虽然都是平凡小事，但读后仍使我们激动不已。正如1884年教皇在接见凡尔纳时曾说：“我并不是不知道您的作品的科学价值，但我最珍重的却是它们的纯洁、道德价值和精神力量。”
海底两万里-作品特点
《海底两万里》是一部科幻小说，于一八七0年问世，暨今已逾百年，而仍能以多种文字的各种版本风行世界，广
海底两万里海底两万里
有读者，仅此一端，即可见其生命力之强，吸引力之大。主张书不及百岁不看的读者，是大可放心一阅的。书中人物寥寥，有名有姓的只有四个半——“亚伯拉罕·林肯”号驱逐舰舰长法拉格特，只在小说开头部分昙花一现，姑且算半个；内景只是一艘潜水艇。但就是这么四个半人，这么一艘潜水艇，一个神秘的船长,一个学富五车的科学家,在各种探险历程中,在将近一年的时间中，纵横海底两万里，为我们演绎出一个个故事，展现出一幅幅画面,海底墓地,珊瑚谷,巨型章鱼……故事曲折惊险，引人入胜，画面多姿多彩，气象万千。这样一部小说，读来既使人赏心悦目，也令人动魄惊心。令人永生难忘，不愧为一部世界名著。百看不厌。
《海底两万里》写的主要是他们在这十个月里的经历。《海底两万里》已经有几种中译本，“两万里”也就成了个约定俗成的说法；究其实，这里的“里”指的是法国古里，而古法里又有海陆之分，一古海里约合5.556公里，一古陆里约合4.445公里；既然是在海底周游，这里的两万里，理应为两万古海里。
如此说来，他们在海底行驶的路程，就应该在十一万公里以上了。这是要说明的。十一万公里的行程，是个大场面，一路所见，可以说无奇不有。谁见过海底森林?谁见过海底煤矿?谁见过“养”在贝壳里、价值连城的大珍珠?当了俘虏的阿龙纳斯和他的朋友们都见到了，而且曾经徜徉其间。他们在印度洋的珠场和鲨鱼展开过搏斗，捕鲸手内德·兰手刃了一条凶恶的巨鲨；他们在红海里追捕过一条濒于绝种的儒艮，儒艮肉当晚就被端上了餐桌；他们在大西洋里和章鱼进行过血战，一名船员惨死；这些场面，都十分惊心动魄。此外，书中还描写了抹香鲸如何残杀长须鲸，“鹦鹉螺”号潜艇又是如何杀死成群的抹香鲸的，那情景也十分罕见。
阿罗纳克斯是个生物学家，博古通今，乘潜艇在水下航行，使他饱览了海洋里的各种动植物；他和他那位对分类学入了迷的仆人康塞尔，将这些海洋生物向我们做了详实的介绍，界、门、纲、目、科、属、种，说得井井有条，使读者认识了许多海洋生物；阿罗纳克斯还把在海洋中见到的种种奇观，一一娓娓道来，令读者大开眼界，知道了什么是太平洋黑流，什么是墨西哥暖流，飓风是怎样形成的，马尾藻海又是什么样……我们知道珊瑚礁是怎样形成的吗?知道海洋究竟有多深吗? 知道海水传播声音的速度有多快吗?这一类知识，书中比比皆是。
“鹦鹉螺”号也曾遇险，在珊瑚礁上搁过浅，受到过巴布亚土著的袭击，最可怕的是，在南极被厚厚的冰层困住，艇内缺氧，艇上的人几乎不能生还。但是，凭着潜艇的精良构造和艇长的超人智慧，种种险境，均被化解，终于完成了十一万公里的海底行程。凡尔纳时代，潜水艇刚刚面世，还是一种神秘的东西；“鹦鹉螺”号艇长尼摩又是个身世不明之人，他逃避人类，蛰居海底，而又隐隐约约和陆地上的某些人有一种特殊联系。凡此种种，都给小说增加了一层神秘色彩。
既是小说，人物当然是虚构的，作家给“鹦鹉螺”号艇长取的拉丁文名字，更明白无误地指出了这一点——“尼摩”（Nemo），在拉丁文里是子虚乌有的意思。但这并没有妨碍作者把他描写成一个有血有肉、让读者觉得可信的人物。
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)
上个世纪倒数第三年的3月19日，邮差为蒙特利尔市雅克—卡蒂埃大街送信，给29号送去一封致萨米·斯金先生的信。
这封信中说：
斯纳宾先生向萨米·斯金先生致意，请他立刻到他的办公室来商量一件与他有关的事情。
这位公证人因为什么事情要见萨米·斯金先生呢？斯金先生和蒙特利尔的所有的人一样也认识斯纳宾，后者是一位很好的人，一位可靠的、谨慎的顾问。他出生在加拿大，领导着城市最好的事务所。这个事务所60年前归知各的公证人尼克所有，此人的真实姓名是尼古拉·萨加莫尔。这位祖先为休伦人①的公证人十分爱国，从而卷入了可怕的莫加兹事件②，这一事件在1837年引起极大的反响。
这封信中说：
斯纳宾先生向萨米·斯金先生致意，请他立刻到他的办公室来商量一件与他有关的事情。
这位公证人因为什么事情要见萨米·斯金先生呢？斯金先生和蒙特利尔的所有的人一样也认识斯纳宾，后者是一位很好的人，一位可靠的、谨慎的顾问。他出生在加拿大，领导着城市最好的事务所。这个事务所60年前归知各的公证人尼克所有，此人的真实姓名是尼古拉·萨加莫尔。这位祖先为休伦人①的公证人十分爱国，从而卷入了可怕的莫加兹事件②，这一事件在1837年引起极大的反响。
“请尽快来，亲爱的亨利。我急切地盼望你的到来。匈牙利南部地区景色美丽迷人，一定会使一位工程师流连忘返。你会不虚此行的。
衷心祝福你！
玛克·维达尔”
是的，我对此次旅行丝毫不感到后悔。但我是否有必要讲出来让大家分享？还是只字不提的好？其实，说出来又会有谁相信呢？
衷心祝福你！
玛克·维达尔”
是的，我对此次旅行丝毫不感到后悔。但我是否有必要讲出来让大家分享？还是只字不提的好？其实，说出来又会有谁相信呢？
倪匡科幻小说选(人头恋＋10)
张序 自序 标本 刺杀
动脑 审问 吊客 强奸
竞争 远航 噪音 化身
逃命 人头恋
武侠小说人物关系
他和他的影子 本夫，淫妇和奸夫 挑战者和被挑战者 捕头和大贼
杀手和联络人 庄家，输家和赢家 帮主和副帮主 大侠和送礼人
艄公和过渡的 摆擂台和打擂台 仇人和报仇者 用毒的和中毒者
保镖和劫镖者 蝉，螳螂和黄雀
监狱故事
真实供词 千万赃款 奔向自由 公平交易
探访时间 人性弱点 报应不爽 继续努力
一双眼睛
阴谋杀人故事
真和假 异和同 生和死 新与旧
常见的男人与女人故事
聪明·笨 是·不是 卖·不卖 能·不能
烂醉·醒 诚实·骗
《聊斋志异》全盘现代化
快刀 美人首 孙必振 红毛毡
鬼妻
旧货巷故事
黄铜制申缩型单筒望远镜 缺嘴断柄无底款宜兴紫砂旧茶壶
沈绍安款脱胎金漆韦驮像 云林子折带皱太湖石墨竹图
哥窑粉青冲耳壁裂纹六足炉 宋克柔手制獦丝花鸟册页
元不忽木草书《点绛唇》全套
想当年故事
人犯 肉搏 钉梢 豪举
私奔 刑罚 拼酒
其他作品
心变 通神 异军 骗徒
秘密征空 金三角 男人女人故事 活埋
石缝中 神仙手高飞传奇 游侠列传传奇：太虚幻境
呼伦池的微波
张序 自序 标本 刺杀
动脑 审问 吊客 强奸
竞争 远航 噪音 化身
逃命 人头恋
武侠小说人物关系
他和他的影子 本夫，淫妇和奸夫 挑战者和被挑战者 捕头和大贼
杀手和联络人 庄家，输家和赢家 帮主和副帮主 大侠和送礼人
艄公和过渡的 摆擂台和打擂台 仇人和报仇者 用毒的和中毒者
保镖和劫镖者 蝉，螳螂和黄雀
监狱故事
真实供词 千万赃款 奔向自由 公平交易
探访时间 人性弱点 报应不爽 继续努力
一双眼睛
阴谋杀人故事
真和假 异和同 生和死 新与旧
常见的男人与女人故事
聪明·笨 是·不是 卖·不卖 能·不能
烂醉·醒 诚实·骗
《聊斋志异》全盘现代化
快刀 美人首 孙必振 红毛毡
鬼妻
旧货巷故事
黄铜制申缩型单筒望远镜 缺嘴断柄无底款宜兴紫砂旧茶壶
沈绍安款脱胎金漆韦驮像 云林子折带皱太湖石墨竹图
哥窑粉青冲耳壁裂纹六足炉 宋克柔手制獦丝花鸟册页
元不忽木草书《点绛唇》全套
想当年故事
人犯 肉搏 钉梢 豪举
私奔 刑罚 拼酒
其他作品
心变 通神 异军 骗徒
秘密征空 金三角 男人女人故事 活埋
石缝中 神仙手高飞传奇 游侠列传传奇：太虚幻境
呼伦池的微波
第01章
第02章
第03章
第04章
第05章
第06章
第07章
第08章
第09章
第10章
第11章
第12章
第02章
第03章
第04章
第05章
第06章
第07章
第08章
第09章
第10章
第11章
第12章
第一节
第二节
第三节
第四节
第五节
第六节
第七节
第八节
第九节
第十节
第二节
第三节
第四节
第五节
第六节
第七节
第八节
第九节
第十节