★★★★☆ Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne
Fun non-SF adventure romp by SF pioneer Jules Verne
Around the World in Eighty Days
Jules Verne
Fun non-SF adventure romp by SF pioneer Jules Verne
When I was a kid, I learned that Jules Verne was the first science author. Since then, I have learned that this is a sexist lie, and that Mary Shelley scooped him by several decades. OK, fair enough. Still, I think we can fairly call Verne a pioneer of Science Fiction, if not the very first to set foot on that new shore. (Caution -- metaphors becoming dangerously mixed.) Verne earned the science fiction pioneer title with novels such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and From the Earth to the Moon. One of his most popular books, however, Around the World in Eighty Days, is not science fiction at all, but a simple travel adventure story. I first read it as a child, but then had occasion to look into again it recently for a reason I will describe.
Around the World in Eighty Days succeeds mainly because of the characters: Phileas Fogg, a wealthy gambler who bets his fortune that he can circumnavigate the Earth in 80 days, Aouda, the Indian princess whom he rescues (a very silly subplot), and above all his servant Passepartout, with whose hiring the novel begins, and from whose point of view it is told.
Two or three years ago I took an advanced course in quantum mechanics. We were required to write a term paper on geometric phase. A key plot twist in Around the World in Eighty Days depends on geometric phase. I based my paper, entitled "Around the world in eighty days—Berry’s phase on the surface of a spinning sphere" on this plot twist, and had tremendous fun with it.