Ever heard of CSS Hunley? A hand-cranked submarine from the U.S. Civil War, it accomplished the first successful submarine attack in history.
I’ve written a fictional story set aboard that sub. One of my few ghost stories, Rebel Spirit follows the experiences of a man nicknamed Scowler, a member of the sub’s first crew.
In 1864, Northern warships blockaded Charleston harbor, permitting no waterborne trade. In desperation, the South tried an unprecedented attack from underwater, by submarine. Earlier inventors had attempted submarine warfare without success. Many in Charleston hoped the Hunley, named for its inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley, would prevail.
Think of Rebel Spirit as historical horror. Well, mild horror. For the most part, I’ve adhered to historical accounts while telling Scowler’s story. My tale makes no reference to the politics of the war and does not glorify the South’s cause. As a former submariner with an interest in history, I’m awed by the bravery of the men who served aboard such a dangerous, cramped, man-powered craft.
In real life, researchers have salvaged the Hunley and it resides in a museum in Charleston. I hope to visit that museum one day.
I invite you to read Rebel Spirit. For $3.99, you can buy it at Amazon. It’s a ghostly story of the sea brought to you by—
Poseidon’s Scribe
P.S. I’m planning to speak at Penguicon, a scifi conference in Southfield, Michigan, on Saturday, April 22. I’ll provide more details in the next blogpost by—
At long last, the North American Jules Verne Society has produced its first-ever anthology of new fiction. Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne just got published today. As of today, it’s available from the publisher, BearManor Media, in paperback and hardback, and from Amazon in both versions.
The anthology includes stories by Mike Adamson, Joel Allegretti, Gustavo Bondoni, Demetri Capetanopoulos, Brenda Carre, Eric Choi, Christopher M. Geeson, Kelly A. Harmon, David A. Natale, Alison L. Randall, Janice Rider, Michael Schulkins, and Joseph S. Walker. Credit goes to artist Amanda Bergloff for the splendid cover image.
The stories derive not only from Verne’s better-known novels, but also from the obscure ones many are unfamiliar with. These stories may prompt you to sample Verne’s lesser-known writings.
In addition, an image taken from the original illustrations of Verne’s novels accompanies each story. One appendix lists the sources of these illustrations, and another appendix provides the complete bibliography of Verne’s works.
I’m honored to have served as a co-editor for this volume. I’m proud of the result, and should mention my co-editor, Rev. Matthew T. Hardesty, and the others who served on the anthology team: Dana Eales, Arthur Evans, Alex Kirstukas, Andrew Nash, Reggie Van Stockum, and the Society’s current president, Dennis Kytasaari.
Welcome back to my globe-trotting blog tour. We’re tracing the fictional path of Phileas Fogg as he raced Around the World in Eighty Days, 150 years later. On this date, at 11 am local time, Fogg and his servant reached the city of Suez aboard the steamship Mongolia.
The ship would stay there just four hours to refuel with coal and then cast off to steam toward Bombay. That furnished enough time for Fogg to obtain a visa from the British Consul. He didn’t need the visa to pass through Egypt, but wanted official evidence he’d reached Suez. He’d traveled 2522 miles since leaving London, about 10.3% of the planned distance, but only taken 8.8% of the allotted 80 days.
For Verne’s plot, the refueling stop allowed Detective Fix to see Fogg for the first time, to gain valuable information from Passepartout about Fogg’s intentions, and to firm up his suspicions about Fogg robbing the Bank of England.
Ferdinand de Lesseps
Suez sits at the junction of Africa and Asia, near the southern end of the then-new Suez Canal, completed in 1869. Verne seemed proud of the accomplishment of his countryman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who masterminded the construction of the canal. Lesseps also gets a mention in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
In 1872, Egypt existed as an Ottoman province, known as the Khedivate of Egypt. Isma’il Pasha ruled as the Khedive.
Much has changed in 150 years. They widened the canal to double its capacity. It’s endured wars, the planting and removal of mines, and blockage by a ship running aground.
Long past being a Khedivate, Egypt became a republic with a president, currently Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and a prime minister, currently Moustafa Madbouly.
Today’s traveler needs far less than 4 days to transit from Brindisi to Suez. You can ride by car to Bari, take a flight to Cairo via Istanbul, then hop a bus to Suez, all in 11 ½ hours.
I’ve been pushing my new book, 80 Hours. However, that’s not the only Verne-related piece I’ve written or been associated with. My story “The Steam Elephant” in The Gallery of Curiosities #3 forms an African sequel to Verne’s The Steam House. Think of “A Tale More True” as a clockwork version of Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. “Rallying Cry” celebrates two Verne novels—The Steam House and Clipper of the Clouds. “The Cometeers” follows From the Earth to the Moon as a sort of sequel. I co-edited the anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered, with its obvious Verne connection. I also co-edited an upcoming anthology by the North American Jules Verne Society called Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. Look for news about that here.
If all goes well on our steamship ride, we should reach Bombay (now Mumbai) on October 20, the next entry in this blog trip. Detective Fix may embark aboard the Mongolia as well, along with Fogg, Passepartout, you, and—
We’re continuing our blog-trip Around the World in Eighty Days, 150 years after its publication. Today, we’re in Brindisi after riding with Phileas Fogg and Passepartout by train from Turin.
We’ve covered 1420 miles to this point, already 5.8% of the total planned distance. Yet only 3.8% of our 80 days have elapsed. All looks well.
As with the earlier cities on the tour, Verne neglected to describe Brindisi. Perhaps he could count on his French readers being familiar with it.
Brindisi sits at the high heel of the Italian boot, near the joining of the Adriatic Sea with the Mediterranean. In 1872, 13,800 people lived there. Only two years before, the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) added Brindisi to its route, coinciding with the opening of the Brindisi Marittima railway station.
After leaving the train station, Fogg and his servant would have taken a carriage to the port to board the steamship Mongolia. That ship would take them through the Suez Canal to Bombay (now Mumbai). No fictional creation of Verne, the Mongolia existed. Built in 1865, it displaced almost 3000 tons and, according to Verne, its engines produced 500 horsepower.
The Mongolia got scrapped in 1888, but P&O later built two more ships by that name.
If you visit Brindisi now, you’ll find it’s home to 87,000 people. That Brindisi Marittima railway station closed in 2006, replaced by a car park.
Brindisi Harbor
Getting from Turin to Brindisi today doesn’t require a train ride of 32 hours and 40 minutes, like Fogg had to endure. Just hop a 3 ½ hour flight, which includes a 1-hour layover in Rome.
If you’re wondering what it would be like to fly around the world today, stopping at the major cities of Phileas Fogg’s route, I recommend the book 80 Hours. It’s sold at Rakuten Kobo, Scribd, Tolino, Vivlio, Amazon, Apple Books, and Barnes & Noble.
The voyage to Suez will take four days, so look for the next post in this series on October 9. They’re about to remove the gangway on the Mongolia. Fogg and Passepartout are already aboard, waiting for you and—
Welcome to Paris! Today we’re continuing our trip Around the World in Eighty Days, following the fictional route taken by Phileas Fogg 150 years ago. I hope you remembered to turn off the heat in your room back in London. Passepartout forgot that.
He and Fogg left London the night before, took a train to Dover, a steamship to Calais, and a train to the French capital. Jules Verne spent few words describing this leg of the journey. Little wonder, since his readers knew this portion of the route well. Verne focused on character development here and introduced a major subplot, the pursuit of a bank robber by Detective Fix of Scotland Yard.
Passepartout regretted not spending more time in Paris, capital of his native country. He and Fogg rode in a carriage through the rain for an hour and forty minutes between two train stations.
At this point, Fogg had traversed some 294 miles, about 1.2% of the total distance, and he’d consumed 1.3% of his allotted time. On schedule with no mishaps or delays. The day before, when making the bet, he’d asserted, “The unforeseen does not exist.” So far, that had proved true.
“The Train” Claude Monet, 1872
In 1872, the population of Paris (minus outlying areas) numbered about 1.8 million. Adolphe Thiers served as the President of France, with Jules Armand Dufaure as President of the Council of Ministers.
Today, Paris claims a citizenry of 2.2 million. Emmanuel Macron is the President of the Republic, and the Prime Minister is Élisabeth Borne.
Had Fogg waited 150 years, he could have caught a flight directly from London to Paris with a flying time of one hour and twenty minutes. Truly, that unforeseen did not exist.
Trains, too, have changed. They no longer belch smoke like the one in Claude Monet’s 1872 painting, “The Train.” A traveler today can go by rail from London to Paris, through the Chunnel, in about two and a half hours.
If you’re enjoying this blog voyage, perhaps you’d like my latest story, 80 Hours, inspired by Verne’s tale, but updated to modern times. It’s available as an ebook from Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Rakuten Kobo, Scribd, Tolino, Vivlio, and Amazon.
All aboard! Next stop—Turin. We should arrive there tomorrow, according to your conductor—
150 years ago today, Phileas Fogg made his famous fictional wager and started his journey Around the World in Eighty Days. To commemorate the anniversary, let’s travel along with him for the next eighty days and find out how the world he circled has changed.
The Reform Club, as it looked then
He made his bet and started his trip at the Reform Club. Jules Verne didn’t invent that club—it had existed for thirty-six years. A gentlemen’s club originally devoted to promoting the passage of the Reform Act of 1836, it conducted business in a building on Pall Mall Street in central London.
The Reform Club today
The club still exists today, but with some changes. Once political, it’s now mostly social. Once all-male, it admitted women in 1981.
In 1872, greater London boasted a population of 3.9 million. Queen Victoria sat on the throne of England, and William Ewart Gladstone of the Liberal Party served as Prime Minister. The 20th Parliament performed legislative duties.
In October 2022, greater London’s population numbers 8.8 million. The monarch is King Charles III, and the Prime Minister is Liz Truss of the Conservative Party. They’re up to the 58th Parliament now.
The date of October 2 fell on a Wednesday in 1872. Fogg set a departure time of 8:45 pm, since he planned to take the train to Dover leaving at that time.
In 2022, the second day of October falls on a Sunday. Trains still run from London to Dover, and the trip takes less than two hours. You could also drive by car, rideshare with others, take a bus, or fly. Fogg lacked all of those latter options.
Next Sunday, October 2, 2022 marks 150 years to the day after Phileas Fogg began his trip Around the World in Eighty Days. I’ll celebrate this fictional event in two ways:
My story “80 Hours,” will be available for purchase, though you can pre-order it now.
I’ll begin a series of blogposts on the days when Fogg and his companions arrived in each city on their trip.
To Jules Verne’s reading audience in 1872, it must have seemed astounding to think someone could circle the globe in as little as eighty days. Today, we’re accustomed to the space station and manned spacecraft orbiting the earth in a little over eighty minutes.
For the rest of us non-astronauts, imagine facing the challenge of circumnavigating the earth in eighty hours with no preparation and with unknown, promised obstacles along the way. That’s the problem confronting shy and sheltered Wendy Pegram in “80 Hours.”
You may pre-order “80 Hours” in ebook form now at Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Tolino, and Vivlio. Starting next Sunday, you’ll be able to get the book at those sites, and at Amazon, Scribd, and Rakuten Kobo.
If you’ve been itching to make the trip around our globe, you can do it for real. Or (far cheaper) you can read your way around the world by two different methods, courtesy of—
Three days after the party and I’m still recovering. No, not really. It was a Facebook party to celebrate the launch of the anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered. No music, no dancing, relatively few drinks.
We held it last Thursday night, the first Facebook party I ever attended, and I was one of the two hosts. We had 32 attendees, including both co-editors (Kelly A. Harmon and me), and 7 of our 16 authors.
Much credit goes to those authors, who kept things interesting by posting fun facts about themselves and their stories. I heard feedback from one attendee who said the author bios were the best part of the party.
We gave away prizes, some randomly based on numbers of comments and shares, and some based on correctly answering trivia questions. Prize winners got to choose from among Pole to Pole Publishing’s collection of anthologies.
Prior to the party, I’d been thinking about the wide variety of settings for the anthology’s stories, and made a map of all of them. I posted the map during the party and people seemed to like it. One party-goer said all anthologies should make similar maps!
One of my daughters is particularly talented with 3D printing and has printed models from my various stories before, pictured here, here, here, here, and here. Recently, she made a near-replica of the submarine pictured on our anthology’s cover. I’m to blame for the poor paint job, but still. Kinda cool.
If you missed the party, you can still enjoy the retrospective here.
Grand Prize Still Up for Grabs!
Also, a grand prize is still available! Here’s how you can earn it, simply by posting book reviews during the month of August 2020. Post your reviews of 20,000 Leagues Remembered and any other anthology from the Pole to Pole Publishing archives on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, your blog, and any other online public forum. Email Pole to Pole Publishing at submissions(‘at’ symbol)poletopolepublishing.com with the URLs of your reviews. Each posted review at each public site earns you 1 point, but reviews of 20,000 Leagues Remembered earn 2 points each. (The co-editors of that anthology reserve the right to judge what constitutes a legitimate review.)
If you post the most reviews during the month of August, you’ll win…wait for it…3 (yes, three) books of your choice from Pole to Pole Publishing, in either ebook or paperback format.
I’d like to win that prize myself, but, <heavy sigh> one of the few people in the world who isn’t eligible for it is—
One century ago, war raged across Europe. They called it the Great War then. The year 2018 will mark a hundred years since the ending of that massive conflict. Today I thought we’d examine an alternate history scenario. How might WW I have been different if H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds had really occurred in 1901? My recently launched book, “After the Martians,” explores this scenario.
First, some background. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna created a sustainable peace across Europe. Half a century later, that peace had frayed. Five nations then dominated the mainland continent and vied with each other for supremacy—Austria, Denmark, France, Russia, and Germany (under Prussian leadership).
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck
Enter Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, who combined the ‘balance of power’ concept with a pragmatic or ‘realpolitik’ approach to foreign policy. He ensured Germany maintained a changing web of alliances with two of the other powers, while engineering a series of short wars designed to unite and strengthen the German states while weakening enemies. After each war, he’d shift the alliances, always maintaining three on his side against two on the other.
This strategy sustained a workable balance until Bismarck’s resignation in 1890, after which he predicted, “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.”
After that time, the European powers armed themselves against each other and tensions increased—the so-called “powder keg.” Without any minor wars to relieve this tension, the strain increased such that even a small event could trigger a major war. That’s what Bismarck had foreseen.
So far, that’s an interpretation of how things actually happened. Let’s insert a fictional twist. Assume the attack of The War of the Worlds really occurred, in 1901. In H.G. Wells’ novel, the Martians only invaded Great Britain, but it makes no sense for a superior alien race to restrict their assault to just one country, so we’ll suppose the Martians spread their forces more widely across the globe.
In time, the Earth’s bacteria sickened and killed the alien aggressors, but only after they’d wiped out a significant portion of the world’s population. Human weaponry of 1901 had been almost useless against the Martians, so our war machines lay in ruin. However, the aliens had left behind their tripod fighting machines, heat rays, “black smoke” poison gas, and some flying machines.
The nations of Europe, then, would have faced two choices. Stunned by the devastation of the Martian War and fearful of another attack from that planet, they could have joined forces and combined their energies to prepare for another assault by a common enemy. Or they could have examined the advanced Martian military technology and used it to refill the powder keg.
After the Martians assumes, as backstory, that the latter occurred. I postulate that the same triggering event—the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand—lit the fuse and set off the Great War.
Using the weaponry of Mars, WW I would have gone quite differently. Trenches would be useless against one hundred foot tall walking tripods with heat rays. Each side would have gone underground, using the Martian “assembly machines” to construct huge subterranean bunkers with hidden surface entrances.
Moreover, the heat rays and black smoke would have killed off the plant and animal life on every battlefield. There would have been vast areas of bare dirt. The combatants would have spared only the mountainous zones, since it would have been difficult to maneuver the tall three-legged fighting machines on sloped ground.
This is the (alternate) reality faced by my character Johnny Branch in my new book. As you mark the centennial of the real WW I, consider reading “After the Martians,” by—
That’s right. I’m announcing the upcoming launch of a new book in the What Man Hath Wrought series. It’s called “After the Martians,” and the cover is sensational.
Here’s the blurb for the book, an alternate history occurring after the events of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds:
In 1901 the Martians attacked Earth, but tiny bacteria vanquished them. Their advanced weaponry lay everywhere—giant three-legged fighting machines, heat rays, and poison gas. Now, in 1917, The Great War rages across Europe but each side uses Martian technology. Join Corporal Johnny Branch, a young man from Wyoming, as he pursues his dream to fight for America. Follow magazine photographer Frank Robinson while he roams the front lines, hoping to snap a photo conveying true American valor. Perhaps they’ll discover, as the Martians did before them, that little things can change the world.
Gypsy Shadow Publishing and I are planning for a book launch in early May. You’ll find more news about “After the Martians” here at this website, so check back frequently with—
