Master of the World
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Master of the World was published in 1904, one of the last novels by French pioneer science fiction writer, Jules Verne.
Plot summary
There are a series of unexplained happenings across the eastern United States. They are caused by objects moving with such great speed that they are nearly invisible.The first-person narrator is John Strock, "head inspector in the federal police department" in Washington, DC. Strock travels to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to investigate and discovers that the phenomena are all 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 captuer the Terror but is captured himself instead. 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. Also, a wheeled vehicle could not have managed speeds of over 100 mph on the poor-quality American roads of the period. (See 2000 Miles on an Automobile for the state of US roads in 1902).As in the previous novel, the mysterious Robur is not very well developed as a character.
Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science
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.Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
This novel should not be assumed to follow the 1961 movie, Master of the World. In that 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.External links
- [The Master of the World] from JV.Gilead.org.il
- [e-text of The Master of the World] at Project Gutenberg
- [imdb page on the movie, Master of the World]
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