not2sharp
Platinum Member
- Joined
- Jun 29, 1999
- Messages
- 20,518
I just finished reading Jules Verne's Mysterious Island again. It had been many years (OK a few decades) since I had last read this and I had almost forgotten about this classic survival adventure. This was written in 1874, but it holds up fairly well. I particularly enjoyed the brief exchange the characters have over limited energy resources and coal; which felt as though it could have been pulled from this morning's paper.
The story follows a group of castaways who find themselves stranded on a deserted island with little (actually nothing) in the way of resources. It is just like in the Tom Hanks movie. But, unlike that movie, we quickly see that these guys are not from 1990s nor do they suffer from an overly large dose of environmental protectiveness. So challenged, they simply plant a flag and set out to recreate civilization to their own liking. No one is going to bother to waste time taking to a silly socker ball in this story. Instead we are threated to detailed descriptions of the various industries they establish to produce just about everything that they want, and their approach seems both logical and credible.
This story has been made into movies a number of times. But, although these were often good and entertaining in their own right, especially the memorable 1961 version with the Ray Harryhausen effects, they never really did justice to the original story. You are not going to find tiny elephants, or gigantic predatory chickens in the original novel; The book is just a straight up survival tale, with a small and barely intrusive element science-fiction to keep the publisher happy.
I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in survival and adventure, and I wonder whether any of you has actually tried any of the many solutions described in the story.
n2s
The story follows a group of castaways who find themselves stranded on a deserted island with little (actually nothing) in the way of resources. It is just like in the Tom Hanks movie. But, unlike that movie, we quickly see that these guys are not from 1990s nor do they suffer from an overly large dose of environmental protectiveness. So challenged, they simply plant a flag and set out to recreate civilization to their own liking. No one is going to bother to waste time taking to a silly socker ball in this story. Instead we are threated to detailed descriptions of the various industries they establish to produce just about everything that they want, and their approach seems both logical and credible.
This story has been made into movies a number of times. But, although these were often good and entertaining in their own right, especially the memorable 1961 version with the Ray Harryhausen effects, they never really did justice to the original story. You are not going to find tiny elephants, or gigantic predatory chickens in the original novel; The book is just a straight up survival tale, with a small and barely intrusive element science-fiction to keep the publisher happy.
I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in survival and adventure, and I wonder whether any of you has actually tried any of the many solutions described in the story.
n2s
