It’s interesting to reread Jules Verne’s Mysterious island in light of the movies based on the story, including Ray Harryhausen with his giant, stop action animated creatures and Hallmark Channel with its take starring Patrick Stewart as Captain Nemo.

Captain Nemo provides much of the mystery through unexplained rescues and assistance, but only makes a token appearance at the end when he imparts the news that Lincoln Island, as the castaways call it, is on the verge of destruction by volcanic action.

To complicate matters, Mysterious Island (1874) is set during the Civil War and is a sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869) which was set after the American Civil War. Perhaps Verne figured no one would remember.

The story itself is what became known as a Robinsonade, a story of castaways inspired by Robinson Crusoe,

After Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe, there was an outpouring of similar stories, many of which even included the name Robinson (”nothing succeeds like plagiarism”). The only one from that era that has come down to us today is the Swiss Family Robinson.

The latest wrinkle, of course, is in film and TV where the Tom Hanks movie, Cast Away, becomes a Robinsonade, along with TV’s “Lost” and the old TV show, “Lost in Space”, itself originally conceived as “Space Family Robinson.”

Jules Verne wrote several Robinsonades, of which “Mysterious Island” is the best known.

The story is pretty simple. Five Union inmates in a Confederate prison use a tethered balloon during an escape amidst the siege of Richmond, They are caught up in a storm which sweeps them across the country and into the Pacific Ocean where they eventually come down near a small, deserted island dominated by a dead volcano. They establish themselves rather quickly, receiving occasional help from an unknown source that, among other things, leaves them a chest filled with tools and other necessities.

The leader is Captain Cyrus Harding, an engineer who soon has them manufacturing iron, creating a plantation, domesticating wild animals, producing nitroglycerine with which to access a cavern where they will live, and even setting up a telegraph line from the cavern to their plantation.

The castaways build a boat with which they rescue a repentent pirate who is himself a castaway on a nearby island, fight a mob of deadly pirates, and find Captain Nemo, the name used by Prince Dakkar of India, dying aboard the Nautilus, trapped in a cavern beneath the island but untroubled by the idea of spending his remaining days there. Nemo warns them the island volcano is about to erupt and they work on a larger boat that will get them to civilization. The volcano erupts, destroys everything, but the castaways find refuge on a promontory that remains until a ship comes along to rescue them few days later.

In recent years, it’s been revealed that Verne was in his later years a little less sanguine about the future than his novels suggest. That influence may have always existed to some degree, filtered out by his editor and the translators. Nevertheless, it’s obvious that in this book he believes Harding’s technological knowledge and ingenuity will allow them to thrive in their new home.

Worth reading.