Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) by Jules Verne with Cian Gill

In this weeks episode I head underground with The Lost Valley’s Cian Gill to trace how Jules Verne turns geology, ciphers and sheer wonder became the template for every lost world adventure. Along the way we talk about deep time dread, dodgy Victorian translations, and the sea-dragon spectacle that still makes modern monster stories work.

Guests

Cian Gill

@the.lost.valley

Congo Book Episode 

Congo Movie Episode

The Book

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

F.A. Malleson 1877 Translation

Oxford World Classics - William Butcher Translation (affiliate link)

Penguin Classics - Frank Wynne Translation (affiliate link)

The Ladybird Classics Edition (the one with the music!)

Links 

Richard Fallon’s ‘Creatures from Another Age’  (affiliate link)

Alan A. Debus’s ‘Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction’ (affiliate link)

Tales from the Hollow Earth with Dr. Eddie Guimont - Wide Atlantic Weird Podcast (Cian’s other show and well worth a listen!)

Transcript

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A Dream Back Through Deep Time

Roland 0:07

I thought I could see floating on the surface of the waters enormous pre Adamite tortoises resembling floating islands. The colossal Mastodon twists and untwists his trunk and pounds with his huge tusks at the fragments of rock that cover the shore. Whilst the megatherian buttressed upon his enormous hinder paws, grubs in the soil, awakening the sonorous echoes of the granite rocks with his tremendous roarings. Then my dream backed even further still. Into the ages before the creation of living beings. The mammals disappear, then the birds vanish, then the reptiles, and finally the fish, the crustaceans, the molluscs. I am the only living thing in the world. All life is concentrated in my beating heart alone. Ages seem no more than days. Plants disappear. Granite rocks soften. The waters again cover the face of the earth. My body is no longer firm and terrestrial. It is resolved into its constituent atoms, and I'm lost in infinite space. I'm Roland

Why Verne Still Hits Hard

Roland 2:00

Squire, and this is really the true beginning of season two, Stones to Stories. That passage you just heard is Axel, our narrator, standing on a raft on an ocean that should not exist, dreaming his way backwards through the entire history of life on Earth, until there is nothing left of him at all. It was written in 1864, and I don't think anyone has captured the vertigo of deep time better in the 160 years since. This week we are going right back to the source. Before the Lost World, before the land that time forgot, before a single dinosaur park was ever pitched to investors, Jules Verne sent a professor, his reluctant nephew, and one magnificently unbothered Icelandic guide down a volcano in search of the centre of the Earth. What they found there, a sea in the dark, monsters out of the fossil record, a herd of Mastodon that may or may not have been a dream, set the template for every subterranean adventure that followed. And I could not have asked for a better travel companion on this descent. My guest today is Kean Gill, host of the Lost Valley Podcast. Nobody I know thinks more carefully or more fondly about this genre, and he arrives, as ever, dressed for an expedition. So pour yourself something warming, mine the ichthyosaurs, and whatever you do, don't look down. This is Journey to the Center of the Earth. Please welcome to the show, Kean Gill. Thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

Cian Gill 3:38

Not too bad, Roland. Yeah, very, very good to be here. This this should be a lot of fun, I think.

Roland 3:42

Yeah, no, really looking forward to it. So before we get into Vern and all the good stuff under the earth, I was wondering whether, for listeners who haven't maybe heard your podcast, just

Lost Valley Podcast Origins

Roland 3:52

tell us a little bit about the Lost Valley show and why you started it. Sure.

Cian Gill 3:56

So I'm uh the uh proprietor and host of the Lost Valley podcast. It's a podcast about the Lost World trope, um, Lost Worlds in life, lore, and literature is what I often say. Uh, I I've been fascinated by the Lost World trope since I was a kid. Uh some listeners will know me better for a much more longer running podcast called um Wide Atlantic Weird, which was a wider range of we took in a lot of cryptozoology, paranormal stuff, but I guess over the years doing that, I kind of learned to hone in on the ho on the Lost World stuff. I really, really enjoyed that. And maybe maybe my interest in cryptozoology and the reading I've done over the last few years has kind of brought me back to something which I always did enjoy as a kid. So, you know, I I want something that has the adventure in there as well, but I also want something that has a bit of maybe weird science and maybe like unexpected zoology or out-of-place animals or or something of that sort. And also huge Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park fan as well, just like yourself.

Roland 4:50

Perfect. That's a that's a big tick. I I what I also love about your podcast is the fact that you you present it as if you're in an explorer's like lounge or stuff, and I love that.

Cian Gill 5:00

That's it, yeah. Yeah, but bringing in some uh some slightly old-fashioned iconography there, but we we try and make the Explorers Club the sort of one which any in which anybody would feel welcome, I would hope.

Roland 5:11

Yes. Yeah. I and and in and in that tradition, I've got myself a little whiskey. Uh-huh. It's actually an Irish whiskey as well. It's a Waterford whiskey. Um so I'll be sipping that throughout this conversation.

Cian Gill 5:25

Tremendous. I have a small amount of Murphy Stout left over from uh an event at the weekend. So Perfect.

Roland 5:32

Yeah, we're not too bad. We're ready. We're ready for the adventure.

Plot Setup And The Descent

Roland 5:36

I was wondering whether you would attempt to kick us off with a bit of a synopsis for the story of Journey.

Cian Gill 5:42

Absolutely. So Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth. This is a uh tale from the mid-Victorian era. We have as it's a classic of High Adventure, I would say, and a very early and important classic of High Adventure. We have three characters. Our scientist is Professor Otto Lidenbrock, or Lidenbrock, depending on your translation, his nephew Axel, and their stoic Icelandic guide, Hans. And together the three of them descend into the Sneffels volcano in Iceland, following the trail of an explorer from hundreds of years earlier, a man by the name of Arne Saknuson, because they have come to believe that this man and his writing can lead them to none other than the centre of the earth. And while on their journey, they learn a whole lot about geology, as it was understood in the mid-19th century. They start coming across uh wide open spaces and caverns deep beneath the earth, including a location known as that that comes to be known as the Lidenbrock Sea, which is a cavern so enormous that it contains a sea or an ocean within it. And once they start making their way across this ocean on a raft, they start to see evidence that there are in fact not only are there fossils of life from all different eras of the earth's history, but there are in fact potentially living creatures, some of which they may indeed come to have encounters with as the story goes on. That's that's the the the the short version of it.

Roland 7:07

That's fab. That's great. Thank you so much for that. What what when did you f could you remember the first time you read it? I sure do.

Cian Gill 7:14

So right here I have my old Ladybird Children's Classics edition.

Roland 7:19

I saw you post that on on your Instagram, and it brought back some amazing memories.

Cian Gill 7:25

These this was from a whole range of books you could get. You bought them with a uh cassette tape, and you would play, and and there's a Lost World version of this too. There's there's a version of Dracula, there's a version of uh I think Arthur Connor Doyle's Lot 249, uh, which is just a few other kind of Victorian era spooky or or science fiction-y classics. And this is a gorgeous book with a very strange style of illustration, slightly eccentric style of illustration here. But I just I remember this from being a kid. I remember stuff like the the how the how the adventure gets started, the fact that they have a uh code crack, you know, the fact that they find a secret, a secret, a secret written document hidden inside an Icelandic medieval piece of writing, the fact that they have to get to the volcano at a certain time of the year in order so that the shadow will fall in the right place and show them where to go. And then I think my mind was blown by the concept of of the Lydenbrock Sea, the idea of an underground cavern so big that you know it has its own atmosphere, it has its own atmospheric system, that there's an ocean there and there's a whole ecosystem there. And then I and I often say this on the show like one of the things I look out for in Lost World Media is the sort of opening Lost World scene where where the characters first realize they're they're not in Kansas anymore. And ever since Jules Fern's journey to the center of the earth, I think having the camera pull back and show a forest of giant fungi.

Roland 8:53

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cian Gill 8:54

So many writers have used that one over the years. It's it's tantamount to uh having the camera pull back and see that there's you know two moons in the sky or something like that just to show you're somewhere strange now. Yeah. So yeah, really some re really memorable imagery in in this book.

Roland 9:10

I used to love the music that's on the well, I I don't know whether I love it or whether it's just seared into my brain because I had to find the you once I saw you post that, I went onto YouTube to actually find it. I because my when I said to my dad I was doing this this this book, and he said, Oh, do you remember that tape with all that music that just kept coming in every every other page? I think it was like the signifier to turn the page was this same bit of classical music that would be play again and again and again.

Cian Gill 9:39

Well worth a listen, folks. Yeah, there are a lot of those books if you have memories of them, the the tapes are on YouTube. Yeah.

Roland 9:44

I'll I'll I'll link it in the show notes because it was it was it was a good trip down memory lane.

Cian Gill 9:49

Did you read that yourself as a kid as well?

Roland 9:51

I did, yeah. Listen, yeah, listen listening to the the tape mainly to go to sleep. That's just played, you know, it was only half an hour, I think, so I must have listened to it for ages. But I d I remember the vivid memory of the of the water and then the bit where they're listening to the water through the through the walls. That seemed to stick with me because I was lying in bed next to a wall, and I was I'd always sort of imagine what I could hear behind the wall. Maybe I could hear water and stuff.

Cian Gill 10:23

And actually some of those early chapters, before things get a bit wild and wacky, you know, where the where the emphasis is kind of on they're in you know a relatively realistic cave system, except that they've been there for days and days and days, and um Axel, the young narrator, gets separated and yeah, I mean he's dying of thirst essentially. And it's quite a harrowing chapter. It's quite if you've ever been lost, if you've ever been like somewhere where you're in actually in danger of running out of food or water, if you've ever been on um an expedition in a very large country, I I did a little bit of work in the US years ago where we would send groups out in into the wild for days, you know, where where you really genuinely do have to take care in a way that you know it's it's hard to get that lost in in Ireland or the UK, you know, to the same extent. But really, yeah, just just the kind of kind of stuff that Jules Verne himself probably would have read in actual accounts of real

Childhood Editions And Eerie Memories

Cian Gill 11:14

exploration, you know, that was very fashionable at the time. So what what edition did you read for So good question. So when when you reached out, I did not have I wish I had the Oxford or one of the nicer recent translations. Uh William Butcher, I believe, is the Yeah, 92. One of the one of the one of the recent and well-regarded translations. You know what? Like like in a good traditional sense, I I have an old-fashioned Victorian translation. So Jules Verne was ill-served for literally a hundred years by um by shoddy translations into English, almost from the beginning. Um the most infamous one is is by uh Griffith and Farron, which was 1871. Um and this is the edition where like they change the names of characters, they instead of being German, they're all suddenly from Edinburgh. And this made its way into the film, the 1959 movie with James Mason, where it's it's actually quite I actually quite like the Edinburgh sequences in that, but it's all because of this dodgy dodgy translation.

Roland 12:14

I didn't realise that that's why, right?

Cian Gill 12:16

Yeah, so that's from the the 1871 mine. I'm I'm fairly sure now if you buy like a cheap um you know reprint from one of these companies that does that specializes in cheap reprints and they don't specify who the translator is, you're probably dealing with one of these Victorian ones. I'm fairly sure this one is Frederick Mallatin from 1877. Right, okay. So he's the clergyman, isn't he? Correct, yes. Yeah he is. Some of his notes are in this and they're they're very interesting. Like you are reading you're reading some a Victoria a Victorian critiquing another Victorian's work through a Victorian worldview. So there's some there's some fairly dated stuff in the notes here, but a lot of um religious imagery that he always sort of like yeah connects stuff, yeah. And some of these translators will have removed stuff that they they they didn't like. Some of the British translators took out parts where Jules Verne was critical of the British Empire in in some of his books. But I actually really enjoy this one. I it's just the one I happen to have to hand. I have read the Oxford one on another occasion, but this happened to be the one I had in the house. And even though, yes, it's not the most up-to-date translation, it's still hugely enjoyable. And you know, in whatever translation you have, Verne's work is is rollicking. It's there's something fresh and accessible about it. This is probably, I think you said it's probably going to be the oldest work you feature on this series. Yeah. And you know, it's it's very fresh compared to some some writers from the 1870s, 80s, 90s feel stodgier than this in any translation. I I think I feel like Jules Verne has nailed the what we now consider the adventure story format remarkably early. And you know, I went looking for earlier works in this genre to see who was working on who had you know what was the state of paleo fiction prior to this. And um, you know, I I have some works by, for example, uh Richard Fallon, his book uh Creatures of another age, is a chronicle of paleo fiction from before and after this. And there's very little, very, very little in the adventure story genre. So like dinosaurs were huge. It's there's an interesting point, like there's an interesting time in the 19th century roll, and and I'd say when Jules Verne is writing this in in 1864, dinosaurs are not the superstars that they are today. No. I mean, they were still big, you still had the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, they were still a big deal, but also ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were huge, uh, mastodons and mammoths were massive. Dinosaurs didn't necessarily have the emotional heft over those other prehistoric creatures that they do today. And I I kind of think that some of that comes from I mean, a lot of things happened in between this, but by in 1912, of course, Arthur Conan Doyle Rice Lost World. That's when dinosaur fiction really comes of age. And it's worth noting that, of course, when he was at school in Stonyhurst, Arthur Conan Doyle was a huge fan of Jules Fern and he read him in the original French. Wow. Yeah. So I don't know, I don't I couldn't track down that he read Journey to the Centre of the Earth for certain. But he was he wrote Letters Home to His Mother, which I recorded. He he talks about reading From the Earth to the Moon. He was a huge Jules Fern fan, and and it is one of his biggest books, and it was easily available in Britain at the time. So I I have to assume that he might have read this as a as a possible influence way back in the back of the psyche.

Roland 15:30

That sort of adventurous spirit. There are a lot of crossovers actually between the two. We can get to those. I I've read the Frank Wynne edition from uh Penguin Classics. Yeah. It's a it's a really what I really love about it is that it actually returns a lot of the that romance tradition to the to the language. It's quite florid. There's some wonderful sentences that are really quite beautiful. And yeah, the the dreams that happen during the story. You know, they're they're they're they're really quite something in this in this edition. It was really, really nice to actually it's the first time reading it actually for this podcast since uh a child. And I think reading something from the Victorian age sometimes can put people

Bad Translations And Victorian Filters

Roland 16:14

off. But actually then reading something like this, I was I zipped through this so quickly. You know, it was it as you as you say, it's a it's a rollicking read. There is the second the adventure starts, it doesn't stop because it was serialized before it was in book form. Each each little chapter has a start, middle, and end, you know, and it just keeps you going from chapter to chapter.

Cian Gill 16:40

Yeah, I was just looking at um I've got a book here called Um Dinosaurs and Fantastic Fiction by Alan A. Debus. Uh you might have it there somewhere. I've got it here. He just uh he just notes that he says Verne wasn't by any means a writer of the romantic period per se, but a butcher from the 1998 introduction, that's the Oxford edition, claimed that he was influenced by late romanticism. It's it's certainly yeah, it's it's it's late in the game, but it's still he's still of an age that he would have remembered when scientists were also poets, you know. And it's something that Richard Fallon says and and Debos says in his book as well, which is that when you go looking for precursors to Jules Verne's work, right? His his great core idea here, if you want to, if you want to get to cut to the chase here, is the dinosaur fight, right? The idea of having his characters on an adventure in a literal adventure story, right? We're not talking about Jonathan Swift style um allegory here, you know, where characters go to a fantasy land just to like make fun of, you know, the writer's own society. We're doing something different here. We're we're we're saying, no, this is really happening. I'm I'm providing masses of evidence and science here, in the way that Michael Crichton later would, with his, you know, people call them his techno thrillers, and Jules Verne is like an early, an early techno thriller, I suppose, with his his massive info dunks that he tends to put in his books. But uh yeah, it's it's just he he was ahead of the game with this, and he did something that was quite different to what had been done before. But both both both those authors I cited there both mention that prior to the 1860s there was a huge interest in prehistoric animals and in dinosaurs, but most of the paleo fiction was in verse, it was poetry, it was political cartoons, you know, of of uh prominent scientists, and it was a lot of it was in the scientific writing itself. So people like Gideon Mantell, you know, famous for discovering the iguanodon in in Sussex in the early 19th century, he would you know he would he would write these dry enough scientific books, but then he would say, Right, I'm now going to take my imagination on a on a spin and take the reader through, you know, imagine what the world was like when these you know anti-Diluvian creatures were were roaming England. And that like that that's what you get when you look for fiction fictitious use of dinosaurs before Jules Verne. So there there must be there must be more solid predecessors out there, but nothing on the scale that he did, so or with the influence that he had. So in the middle of the novel, I suppose the the the high point for for most people and tends to be on the cover of any book or movie based on it. Got the classics illustrated here from I think I think it's 1951. Apparently, cover artist unknown, but it's it's a wonderful painting of the ichthyosaurus and the Pasiosaurus. And we might do a little reading later if you'll indulge me, we might read a little bit from that scene because it's it's so so fun the way it's written. Uh and this was you know, this is what has kept the book in print for so many years. This is what led, you know, other paleo artists, other paleo writers to say, well, okay, we need our we know we need our animals in in mortal combat. You know, Charles R. Knight draws the famous painting in 1906 of the Tyrannosaurus and the and the triceratops. And of course, forever after, that's the classic lineup. But before that, you had Jules Fern and the Ichthyosaurus fighting the Pleasiosaurus. Wonderful stuff.

Roland 19:58

And supposedly that there was talk that Crystal Palace, the Pleiesiosaur and the Ichthyosaur were gonna be in that sort of locked-in that battle, you know, a actually in the park. There there is word of that was gonna be part of it.

Cian Gill 20:13

It's worth mentioning quickly actually that there's two editions of the book. So the the the basic book came out in 1864. In 1867, there's a kind of a uh revised extended edition, and I'll make a sneak in a Jurassic Park joke and a Father Ted joke here and say that it's it's like a special edition with extra dinosaurs because he he essentially adds in three extra chapters uh that come with more prehistoric material uh which weren't in the original version. So it's it's not certain like what happened in the intervening years, except that there was the interest in in paleontology was just building. Uh there were more specimens found. The there was a Paris exhibition, I believe, in in those years that Fern may have gone to. I presume there must have been fossils on show there as well, being as it was it was big business at the time. But that's when he adds in some of the stuff in the later chapters, when they when they land on the far side of the Lydenbrock Sea and they come across an endless bone yard filled with the remains of creatures from all different eras in the Earth's prehistory. And they come across then kind of a it's described variously as a fossil or as a mummified uh mum anatomically modern human. Now, Jules Verne is being very canny here, he's kind of sidestepping anything about evolution because France, of course, is still a very Catholic and a very traditional country, and his whatever he may have believed himself, uh he he tended to listen to his publisher, Pierre Jules Hetzel, who had his eye on the market and would take out stuff that he thought maybe wouldn't be so popular with your average middle class French person or French family. He liked to keep things family friendly, keep things ambiguous with regards to religion. So Jules Verand doesn't mention anything about evolution. He he drops in a few weird phrases like you know. Evidently creation had advanced much since the previous day.

Roland 22:03

There is there's strange turns of phrases throughout it, which you kind of yeah, that that you're exactly right with the sidestepping the difficult issues, but I think if you I think if you were in the know reading this, then I think you would have understood kind of where he was coming from.

Cian Gill 22:20

Yeah, and I I think contemporaries probably felt the same way, but he doesn't he doesn't show his hand, I suppose, directly in in those cases. And and again, what he hit one theme he does hit on again and again is how there is this gradual a direction, directionalism in the history of life on earth. He doesn't use any words like evolution, but the history of life on earth, the it's like an update on the old Scala Natura idea that you know there's a natural place for everything. God has placed everything in ranking order of becoming more complex and more important, obviously leading up to us. And he does have Lidenbrock say a couple of times that you know man is on top of this whole system, we are the most important. And actually, an interesting thing about did you notice how Lidenbrock is very brave and almost foolhardy? He's like he's like a 1950s science fiction scientist. You know, he's like science is the light, science will show us the way, science, you know. And Jules Verne is actually remembered that way himself because you know his stories portray science in a very positive light. But again, that was his editor. He he was more cynical in real life, and he had stories nixed by Jules Hetzel that didn't fit into this uh positive scientific

Prehistoric Fiction Before Dinosaurs Ruled

Cian Gill 23:32

idea. You know, he had a story called Paris in the 20th century, which was very cynical about a future Paris where technology has advanced and everybody has access to all these wonderful gadgets, but that culturally they have become stagnant, decadent. And his editor said, No, that's not the way your audience sees you. You're the the high priest of science is positive. You know, isn't it? So I but so isn't it odd how Lydenrock is like that, but then Axel, the young fellow, he's a complete scaredy cat. Yes, I love it. He spends the whole novel trying to back out of the expedition.

Roland 24:05

I l I l I love the two the so the juxtaposition between Lydenbrock and you know I think it's important that it is quite a funny book. Like there are and the exchanges between you know, it starts off with the house the housekeeper and him like Lydenbrock bursting in, trying to decipher the code, won't let anybody leave, won't let anybody have any food until he's sorted this out. And there's just very funny exchanges that are going on that yeah, it's it's a there's a light-heartedness to the story that I mean it it has to please everybody, you know. That's so there is everything in this story. There is science, there is adventure, there's romance in its more modern term as well.

Cian Gill 24:51

Of course, the The Last World is very funny as well when you go back and Gordon Doyle is an absolute master of that. And and speaking of the cipher, the the code, Jules Verne was a huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe. And Edgar Allan Poe is famous for several things, including inventing you know an early version of the detective story and you using codes and and and ciphers in his work, particularly in the gold bug. And so I I always enjoy the code that they have to crack at the beginning of this one. But commentators often make the connection between Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe with regards to the idea of the hollow earth, which is a topic we're we're gonna have to get around to. Yeah, actually, it has been an obscure idea for most of my life. I've always been fascinated by it, but I rarely saw much written about it. But it is highly prominent in the Monster Verse movies at the moment, which blows my mind. Like they're these huge, big, noisy blockbusters. The latest one was described as a headache of a movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't know what big.

Roland 25:55

Yeah, so the idea of the Hollow Earth, is that that that is really no pun intended, maybe it is intended. At the core of this is the Hollow Earth theory. Do you mind explaining a little bit about what you or what you what what you take that to mean?

Cian Gill 26:10

Yeah, so the the most important person in the history of this idea is there's a fellow named John Cleve Sims in the early 19th century. He's Captain John Cleve Sims. He's a he's a he's kind of a washed up ex-army fellow um in um St. Louis, Missouri, and he's a trader. He's trading with the with the native peoples, he's swapping goods for people who are heading out west, and this is in in like 1818 thereabouts. And he comes up with this idea, and nobody really knows where he got it from. Probably he read something that talks about Edmund Halley, you know, the the astronomer. Okay. And his he had he had a much earlier version of this idea that he was trying to explain phenomena that weren't well understood at the time, like the aurora borealis, and his idea was like, well, there must be some interior light inside the earth, and it comes out somehow. Okay. And that this is somehow creating the Aurora Borealis. So John Cleve Sims would have had access to a book, a popular book of science, written by of all people Cotton Mather, the the guy from the the the witch trials in in Salem. Oh wow, okay. So he also wrote popular science books as well as being uh a witch hunter, strange guy. But uh, this is one of the few books that he would have had access to that would have uh given him some idea of this hollow earth thing. But uh other than that, it's not really known where he got it from. So his idea was that um the earth the earth was hollow and there were several globes inside the one. And in 1818 he puts out his famous he calls it his circular number one. I'm gonna get you a read up of this because it's it's worth hearing. And it says to all the world, I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within, containing a number of solid, concentric spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life in support of this truth and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in this undertaking. I ask for one hundred brave companions, well equipped to start from Siberia in the fall season, with reindeer and sleighs on the ice of the frozen sea. I engage that we will find a warm and rich land stocked with thrifty vegetables and animals, if not men, on reaching one degree northward of latitude eighty-two, and we will return in the following spring. So he had this idea, yeah, the earth is hollow, and and what he kind of added to the story that nobody had before was that there were these holes in the poles. And this is a weird little idea that pops up again and again in science fiction, in in in kind of cranks and crackpots, in it's in modern it's in modern day uh UFO conspiracism all through the 20th century as well. It pops up again and again. And he's not terribly successful himself. He he's a he tries a lecture tour trying to spread this idea, he doesn't get too far. Eventually, one of his followers um is more successful in getting some some the US to fund some expeditions, but it's more that they're looking for the Northwest Passage, they're looking for a way they're hoping that there's like an open path through the ice or maybe even an open polar sea, which is another idea which shows up in Hollow Earth fiction all the time. But basically, this idea uh Edgar Allan Poe was was was interested in this idea. Also, an American living kind of around the same time. So in the 1840s, he he writes a whole lot of stories which have little hints that there's there's a Hollow Earth idea in there. He has one story where where a chap goes up in a balloon and actually gets to the moon, but on his way up he sees that the earth is slightly flattened at the top and that there's some mysterious dark hole that he can see from from space. So he never goes all the way and explains what's going on there, and he has a famous kind of unfinished question mark novel called Arthur Gordon Pym, the narrative of Arthur Pym of Nantucket. And it has it's kind of famous because it has a weird ending that just comes to a sudden end where he's hinting that there's something extremely weird at the North Pole, but he's not going to let the readers find out what it is. So it's often been presumed that he's kind of he might have been taking that novel in a in a Holloworth uh direction. But he's translated into French by the French poet Charles Baudelaire, and he was very, very popular in France. So Jules Verne was a huge, huge fan. Now, based on that description of Hollow Worth, do you think that Jules Verne had that in mind? Do you think that the journey to the centre of the earth is a true Hollow Worth novel?

Roland 30:28

He feels like he really goes, I don't know, it's it's a diff I think he's using it in a different way. And I think because of reading Alan Debas's book and the idea of the caves and how caves feature in a lot of prehistoric literature, I feel like that that's the angle that he's

Extra Chapters Plus Evolution Tightrope

Roland 30:48

originating from, and that maybe then that's his way into the story, whether it's just a big cave rather than a hollow earth. Does that make sense that there can be two two different things?

Cian Gill 30:58

Yeah, I think I agree with you. And having said all that about the Hollow Earth, I don't think it's a I don't want to overstate the influence of it on Vern here. I think he was aware of it. John Cleve Sims was well known early in the 19th century, even if he was considered a crank by most. I think Vern didn't read any English, I know that. So anything he would have come across, this would have been kind of second-third hand. And and Poe's references to it are quite slight, even though I know Vern was a huge fan. But if you if you when you read Journey, what do they get? About 86 miles down, something like that. So they're only like he's what he's proposing is a series of hollow caverns beneath Europe, basically. So yeah, I I don't know. I I think look it's part of the story, it's part of the history of the Hollow Earth idea, but it's not I I don't know how influenced he really was by by Sims.

Roland 31:49

That's fascinating. I I I hadn't really thought about until you said that, and then piecing that together with the the caves in prehistory and the fact that so as you as you were saying earlier, a lot of the early prehistoric fiction it actually comes from non-fiction. They had to have a way of describing how things fitted together before we arrived, or you know, kind of like hand, you know, hold holding the hand of of of the public to lead them into a a different world. And that's exactly what Verne does with this the idea that caves were where fossils were found, so like cave bears and all of that sort of stuff. So therefore the idea is that that's the environment that they lived in. So therefore, we get these stories.

Cian Gill 32:39

Geology is the main theme of the book, geo geology and and paleontology to some degree. So it makes sense that that's where they would be. And Vern always had a a didactic element to his work. He used he's trying to teach you something. Yeah. So, you know, his books before this were I think uh Five Weeks in a Balloon, which is about Africa, and has all this geographical data, and then he writes um the The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, which is about going to the polls. You know, he his background in writing, outside of being in the theatre and stuff, was writing for family magazines that were effectively science articles or or general information articles. So his job was synthesizing data and making it palatable and understandable to the general public. So I you could say he probably started off with this one as an idea of like how do I where do I set my story, my next adventure, where I want to talk about geology?

Roland 33:30

Yes, yeah. Yeah, probably came from the It's you know, he has to have the science involved because that's what the publisher wants him to have, you know, because the idea that children are gonna there's some education sort of educational element involved in this story. I think the adventure is what he really loves.

Cian Gill 33:49

Yeah, you can you can kind of see the the difference, like his his enthusiasm for the science kind of wanes a little bit and as the book goes on, and he's more interested in in conjuring up fantastic stuff. And he's also he gets extremely loosey-goosey with the the science that he's promoting because the his main idea, like in order for his characters to get into the interior of the earth, he has to do away with the concept of the earth having a you know a red hot molten core, yeah. So because that would that would burn his characters to a crisp. And yet that what you like, we might know this, our reader today mightn't know this reading now, but you know, that's the the the by the time Verne is writing, scientists presumed that the earth was molten and hot. But he has to trot out an already out-of-date theory in order to have his characters be able to get inside the earth.

Roland 34:41

So sort of the adventure of Verne and his so his early life. I read that at the age of eleven he he ran off to sea, essentially, became a ship's boy. He didn't get very far. The ship was planned to get to India, and I think he just got a few miles down the coast before his dad came and picked him up. There was a line that was in Adam Roberts' book. So Verne, when when he was when his father eventually caught up with him, he he he said, I will no longer travel except in my dreams, which is the perfect quote for any poet or author out there that he was ready at the age of eleven.

Cian Gill 35:20

That's it, and and that's a story he told often in his adult life. And and you will often see people will kind of take the next step and say, Oh, he never he never left his home ever again, or he never left France ever again, and he only travelled in his imagination, which is a really tidy kind of a myth that was told about Farin for a long time. Yeah, he was reasonably well travelled, and actually he travelled

Hollow Earth Theory And John Cleves Symmes

Cian Gill 35:39

around Europe and he was spent a very short amount of time in in America as well. And he did own a boat and he would do do a lot of his own travels. So I think it's fair to say a lot of the more exotic places that he writes about in his novels, he he didn't go to those places and he would he was taken information from from textbooks and and such.

Roland 35:55

So the whole process of the book is that they travel into the earth, and my connection to anything while reading it was things like Dante. Lydenbrock is the Virgil in this, and Axel is Dante as his guide, taking him through the the caves and into the underworld. And essentially in Verne, they never they they never ascend the heights of of heaven. Essentially, they don't move very much forward from where they started as characters or as anything. They just they just go through this adventure, and particularly the start of it, even before they get into the earth. Verne loves dissecting every element of how much you pack, how what's what's the practicalities of getting a boat from A to B. All of these things, the the landscapes of the places that he's going to. It's a real travel log, and then that's very cleverly mirrored that when they when they get into the earth, that then that travel log is through time rather than just place.

Cian Gill 37:00

I think it's one of the things that makes the novel feel fresh, is is the and is that first militude. Like Axel keeps the log while they're travelling on the Lydenbrock Sea. So when they're in the most ridiculous part of the story, he's using a technique which you've already seen used while he's travelling to Iceland, you know, while he's yeah, so you you kind of buy it for that reason, you know, it's it's very effective.

Roland 37:22

And that that blending of you know, that's that's where the Crichton kind of connection I think comes in, like to take it to Jurassic Park is starting with those big wide shots and then slowly zooming into the story, and because you've been bombarded with all of this scientific data and sort of ideas that you just it it it sort of beats you into submission and going, I believe this story, and then before you know it, the adventure's kicked off, and then you forget to ever sort of question the world that you're in.

Cian Gill 37:56

Even even to the end when the the most ridiculous part of the story, of course, is how they get back up again at the end, which is that they're on this flimsy raft which ends up in the in the channel of a volcano. Which I know it doesn't make if you stop and think about it for like a moment, it's really and yet you're swept along with it because the book is so good, the writing is so good.

Roland 38:16

It feels like it feels like I need to find the ending to this story, and so that's what that that's what he does.

Cian Gill 38:22

Yeah.

Roland 38:22

So at the set you know, at the the middle of the story and the bit that really stays with us, the bit that gets on the front cover of all the books, is the Ichthyosaur, Pleiesiosaur battle. What do you think this what do you think of this moment in in for for this story? Why why why do you think that out of all the other encounters in it is the bit that is it because essentially it is just a big fight? Is that what is that why it's still it feels like the main part of the story?

Cian Gill 38:51

Yeah, you know, there there's a time when I talk about this material when I just I break down from all the analysis and I just say, look, dinosaurs are cool, right? And this happens to me when I'm talking about Jurassic Park as well. I've done episodes where I I get into the weeds about Crichton's attitudes towards science and and you know um, you know, linkings to to Mary Shelley and Frankenstein and everything. But there's just something like it's just an amazing subject matter, and he looked out when he when he came up with that. And there's a reason why it's it's I I he's done a lot of interesting stuff, but there's a reason why it's the one that hits home still, you know, and we in a hundred years that's the one thing he did that would be remembered. And I think it's the same for Jules Fern and choosing these these creatures, that these monsters. Okay, they're not dinosaurs, I'll put that out there for anyone, anyone who's screaming at their at their phone. But you know, he chose he just chose really, really well. Like ichthyosaurs are and plesiosaurs are astonishing animals. Like the whole history of the Loch Nest monster comes comes from the you know, turn of the century fascination with with Plesiosaurus. It absolutely does. You know, you you've got you've got them showing up in in books and movies ever since. And I suppose the the characters themselves are so tiny in that scene, they're constantly at risk of being swept away by the mere movements of these animals, what they do to the ocean. It's like Godzilla, you know, it's like the humans are shrunk in in their importance, and it's a reminder of you know what these prehistoric animals meant to the Victorians, which was the discovery of this world where humans are or we're not important. We're we're we're here now, but it's like it's like they realize we're only here on sufferance, you know. Things uh if we if we messed up and or or do something wrong to the earth, you know, things could change. In their day, they worried about maybe displeasing God. In our day, we worry about climate, we worry about in environmentalism. Although there's a tiny little note in Journey to the Center of the Earth where Jules Farn has this weird uh conservationist moment where he he talks about the coal deposits and he says they'd all be gone in in less than 300 years if the industrialized nations of Europe don't learn to ration their activities, which is extremely but it's it's all about man's place in in the world and this this discovery of a world where we were not the most important thing. We're physically small, we're helpless, and here we are being battered around on this raft as these creatures. They don't even know we're there.

Roland 41:08

It's almost Lovecraftian, right? Yeah, we are so low down in the pecking order that we're not we're not factoring into the like we can see their world, but we're not part of it. We're not part of their world at all.

Cian Gill 41:19

And isn't that like when when people try and understand like why why do why are kids inherently fascinated by dinosaurs? Is it because they represent this power greater than the teacher, greater than the parent? Is it you know, something that dwarfs us and doesn't care about us? And there's there's something exciting about that. So but uh it's also right place, right time, you know. Nobody had done this before. Uh it's a perfect climax to a story. Everything is building to this. He's

Geology Lessons Versus Rule Of Cool

Cian Gill 41:43

carefully laid the the foundations to this. You know, there's there's a great um what would you call it, foreshadowing a couple of chapters before this, when they're on the boat, they're realizing just how big this sea is. And I think it's it's uh Hans pull drops uh a tool down into the ocean just to gauge the depth of it, and he pulls it up and it's got teeth marks in it, and you know that it's something in there. There's something big and dangerous in there. Oh tremendous it's like the it's like the water uh you know, shivering in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex is nearby. Did you want to read us a little piece for me? Let's do a little bit. And in fact, two liquid columns were rising to a considerable height above the sea. We stood amazed, thunderstruck, at the presence of such a herd of marine monsters. They were of supernatural dimensions. The smallest of them would have crunched a raft, crew and all, at one snap of its huge jaws. Hans wants to tack to get away from this dangerous neighborhood, but he sees, on the other hand, enemies not less terrible. A tortoise 40 feet long, and a serpent of 30, lifting its fearful head and gleaming eyes above the flood. Flight was out of question now. The reptiles rolled, they wheeled around our little craft with a rapidity greater than that of express trains. They described around us gradually narrowing circles. I took up my rifle.

Roland 43:17

Great stuff, fantastic. I love the I I love the amount. So when I was at the Crystal Palace and talking to Andrew there, and the the fact that the only way to describe these creatures was to use present-day animals and things that so an amount they were all amalgamations of things. They were either frogs and the the plesiosaur is a a a a turtle with a shell, and it's it's all these different creatures combined into one mon it's it's a monster, and that's where that word yeah really comes into play with with i in the in this battle.

Cian Gill 43:54

Yes. I I also really enjoy there's loads of tremendous passages in this, but uh I even the stuff with the with the with the vegetation they come across. And again, another thing I look out for on the podcast very often when I'm looking at Lost World stories is like how do you convey the sense that the landscape they're in is eerie and weird. And I just I enjoy like it it iconography of let's say the Carboniferous period has always given me that vibe, you know? Yeah. You know, in the kid in the when you're a kid and you have a book on dinosaurs, so there's always a chapter on the Carboniferous forest. And you've got the you've you've got the the giant moss trees and everything and you've got the the meganura the the giant insects the flying insects and you've got and it's just so alien. Yeah. And Jules Verne later on in the novel they they come across the the the the the the sea the the forest of of mushrooms and and they come across an area of vegetation from every part of the world all living in harmony in one place but without any sunlight and therefore without any colour. You know presumably no chlorophyll they're getting their they're getting their nutrients from somewhere else. And so they're all described as this kind of monochrome brown which is deliciously eerie. Yeah.

Roland 44:59

And one I've never seen I've never seen a film or or an artist tackle that one quite in a way that I suppose well the the the interesting thing about those just you saying that is so the original well the 1959 version of Journey to the centre of the earth I suppose is there for its technicolor. Where really you you couldn't you you couldn't have that sort of element in there because you wanted to show off the colour and the vibrancy of it and then actually when Brandon Brendan Fraser's film comes out that's a 3D. So there so that's a new technology that it's throwing into it.

Cian Gill 45:38

Either would be too inclined to give you some monochrome yes yeah I want this all to be black and white this bit and you're like oh yeah that's I'm reminded of of something else about the film which is that um I had a memory as a kid of watching the filmation cartoon version of uh journey to the center of the earth in the 1970s so filmation did the the cartoon versions of the the Star Trek cartoons right okay yeah yeah yeah so they they look like Hannah Barbera cartoons but um they're they're well some of them are more interesting and they also did a short lived Planet of the Apes um oh I know that one yeah so they did a cartoon version of Journey to the center of the earth every episode the characters are trying to you know find the center of the earth and they come across some like lost civilization or some lost world or something and there are three or four characters traveling and there's they have a a duck or a goose a duck with them. There's a a duck yeah and I could not believe that that was taken from the film I I thought oh that that's such a silly Saturday morning cartoon they've got a duck with them you know it's like Scooby-doo. And it was actually it's actually from the film.

Roland 46:43

I couldn't believe it no there's and I watched recently a another Jules Verne adaptation although it's very very loosely Jules Verne. It's got Vincent Price in it and they're all under it's it's when they're all under it's like a city of the City of the gods. Oh demons of the something It's not Jules Verne and or uh Captain Nemo and the underwater scene no it's um it's it's more Edgar Allan Poe than it is Verne and it's got the person from Mary Poppins, the dad from Mary Poppins David Tomlinson and he's got a chicken with him the entire time. So as clearly it's filmed just after Jennifer says the earth so they needed we need a foil animal in that. Although the chicken does survive the entire journey I I still can't get over the fact that the the the spoilers I'm terribly sorry but the duck does not survive going into the he comes to an awful end. Awful end yeah oh man I think that's the interesting part of the adaptations actually of a lot of Verne stuff. Have you read any other Verne?

Cian Gill 47:50

Have you read like a around I've read from the Earth to the moon and I've read 2000 Leagues I must have read something I've I've made a start on Mysterious Island but that's at least huge fan of the 1961 film.

Roland 48:03

Yes. And what what what they do in adaptations like what watching

Why The Monster Fight Endures

Roland 48:08

is Kim Newman saying about this but well firstly the the boom for Verne adaptations at that time was the fact that he'd um come out of copyright and so it was eight so that was he was certainly free so slightly cheaper films to make out of yeah but he he thinks and I I agree that actually the film versions are s are sometimes slightly more not not better but like as a story wise there are elements to it so Journey they have a female a strong female character that that follows them into the earth there is a villain there is almost like a ticking clock element to these stories. The only one that really has that is Around the world in 80 days because he needs to do it in 80 days. The other stories are more big sprawling adventures really that like the ending of Journey Center of the earth he just has to find a way to end the story so let's shoot back up in big steam of water because otherwise I think he'd just keep writing and writing and writing you know some of that is due to him being a pioneer you know he's yeah he's writing at such an early stage of the the formation of the what we now recognize as the adventure novel.

Cian Gill 49:18

Those tropes that we expect weren't set many of them you know and and you like what did he have to like you go back and read Edgar Allan Poe which was a big influence in him and and some there's elements there that are recognizably adventure stories you know like in our Arthur Arthur Gordon Pym is is about a disastrous sea voyage but at the same time it's it's shapeless and messy compared to what we now expect from a screenplay or from a story and you know a huge influence in everybody would have been the likes of Robinson Crusoe or the Swiss family Robinson you know which are like they're they're very moral very instructing they're there to teach you a lesson on how to be a good Christian like yes they have adventures in them but they they have different goals and I think Jules Verne is a huge step forward on the road to the modern adventure story. And when when and where his stories work it's where I think he's accidentally or or by design he's he's hitting on you know it's it's comparable I would say to the you know the evolution of the the modern blockbuster in the 1970s with with Spielberg and George Lucas you know they they were slowly crawling towards this form that we now recognize as being all all powerful. And then when you go back to stuff earlier than that like go back and watch you know film from the 60s and earlier and it's just all the expectations are different, the timings are different, the beats are different they were they they knew what they were doing but we've just we've been so surrounded by a particular form of media for so long now that going back and looking at the original and what where it came from is is it can be alienating sometimes.

Roland 50:51

Yeah that but I do enjoy because there are no rules set I love so a couple of my favourite moments are the mastodon scene with the the 12 foot giant that they suddenly stumble across and there is no resolution to that at all. It is just presented to you that you s that they see a herd of mastodon and then underneath the way it's really unsettling how he describes it that they see this giant essentially underneath a tree and his hair is messy they can't see his face and they don't investigate anymore. They don't even speculate really they just turn tail and go.

Cian Gill 51:37

And that might be a little bit of the capital R romantic in there rather than the realism of an adventure tale, you know Axel is not even sure that he really saw this after they leave he he's wondering if it's a dream and it's presented in a way that is kind of dreamlike and Jules Fern has made extensive use earlier when they're on the raft of the dream sequence Axel has a hallucination of all of the history of life passed before his eyes and it's wonderful. So on the other hand those are some of the later chapters that he stuffed in after 1867 and he was just looking to put in more prehistoric material because it was popular at the

Carboniferous Weirdness And Film Adaptations

Cian Gill 52:14

the the the underwater fight had been popular with the public he's also he's kind of treading on thin ice when he deals with the history of humans because of this this tightrope he's trying to walk you know and he he mentions actual fossil finds from from France at the time that were current yeah but he doesn't want to go into what the implications were. Now Charles Darwin's Origin of Species had come out only a few years before it was 1859 I I couldn't tell you. I think it was translated in French maybe three or four years after that. So around about the time that I mean French scientists were aware of what was in it but you know really not long before he's writing his book so it's very fresh. It's still very controversial and he's extremely careful about what he does and doesn't say and yet isn't isn't that the obvious you're right to say that it goes nowhere.

Roland 53:01

There's no resolution and yet the whole time he's building up from you know first they find prehistoric vegetation then they find fish then they find ancient reptiles then they find you know ice age mammals and now they find man there's there's a there's a scale to it that would have made sense to a Victorian in terms I wonder whether the fact that he adds the giant if that makes him a giant is a way to take away from the fact that it's it's somebody that we could recognise as ourselves maybe distancing it a little bit more and bringing it back to the classical realm of giants and stuff in Greek or or even the biblical you know yes of course yeah yeah perhaps it it's it's it does feel theatically satisfying to me because of that chronology of life that he's going for but yes like he almost has to leave it a little bit mystical a little bit vague maybe it was a dream maybe I'm not being literal here and maybe he wasn't really human either maybe he was something else you know but it's it's it's brief but it is spooky. It is it is I remembered always used to the illustration in that Ladybird book always used to freak me out. And I never used to really like looking at that that picture and yeah it I just I just I sometimes I'm always that I love anything that sort of dangles a carrot but doesn't give you the full it leaves the mystery there as well.

Cian Gill 54:28

And in general he d like he doesn't really explain why there are prehistoric animals inside the earth in any way. There's a theory mentioned which is that the earth has cooled or gone through a cooling period um in in deep time and that therefore this cooling caused the earth's surface to buckle and crack and at certain points and that you know animals or plants may have fallen down into these caverns at that time. But he's a bit ambiguous about it and he's especially ambiguous about the the boneyard that they find you know are all these creatures are they just fossils the the same way fossils are on the surface or are these animals all which live here now in this cavern you know and and he Axel actually wonders out loud after they find the the fossil of a human he says are are these cavemen like are they are they here there could could I meet one walking down the beach if I was to go and that's very haunting. So even if Jules Verne had never gone full caveman later you know that that little that little hook there if he'd left that hang that would have been spooky enough.

Roland 55:29

Yeah well I think and again when they pull up the the the the the the the way with the the with the bite marks and it he's all about that foreshadowing and almost tune in next week to hear to hear how the story goes you know he's he's really savvy in that way of how you keep how you keep a reader reading of the the story.

Cian Gill 55:50

Yeah I've just gone through my notes there I have um I don't know like as you come across your as you go through your season and you and you explore later later books and you're going to be thinking about the influence of Vern being as it is as you say the earliest stop stop on the on the journey it's interesting to think about the ways in which what he did here in this book was and wasn't used. What was used, what was discarded going forward. Certainly the the use of dinosaurs or or pre-circuitures for sensation was was a huge hit. The the maybe the geology and the didactic the the the the educational sections maybe less so although again Crichton like I mean his the the joy of reading Crichton even as a kid was always those tech bits you felt like you were learning something about how the world worked and you it was like being let in on a secret about whether he was talking about some type of science or some type of industry or or you know he could be talking about all sorts of things and you believe him for the he he he did enough research to make you believe that he knows what he's talking about. And yeah in that way a very direct descendant of Jules Verne.

Roland 56:56

Yeah and I was at the in Alan Debas's book he says again about the mystery of the element of this story the fact of the code that's got to be cracked at the start is similar to the DNA that has to be extracted from the amber and therefore that lets this story happen. It can't the two things that you need to have that element of that mystery.

Cian Gill 57:20

Actually there are there are a few elements in in this book precisely which make it feel particularly modern because they did go on to become solid tropes of lost world fiction and adventure fiction and one of them is the secret document right that tells you that kicks off the adventure the the call to adventure I particularly I I I generally prefer it when characters are deliberately going looking for a thing rather than just suddenly come across when they fall on it by accident. Like Jurassic Park 1 is better than Jurassic Park 3 because they're paleontologists they care about dinosaurs they are having an emotional reaction to seeing their lives work in front of them in real life whereas three and I have a lot of good things to say about it is about some people who don't really want to be there. Yeah and it it kind of happens by accident. And and that that is an important emotional difference. So the fact that Lyndon Brock is a scientist and he's a geologist you know I think a lot of great adventure stories have the main character be a specialist in the area that they're going to they're going to you know we meet Alan Grant on the on the dig you know because it's setting us up for him having a satisfying emotional experience later on and it's the same with with Lyden Brock he deeply cares about what he's doing. We learn about what his house is like how it's full of it's full of types rock samples and and fossils and even Axel doesn't want to be there and I do think that's a bit of a misstep it is funny but yeah when you have a character who doesn't want to be there like over three quarters of the way through the the writer has to keep coming up with artificial ways to he's always like bumping his head or or something it's the most accident prone person you I can think of. You've got the you've got so the the you've got the the map something that tells you how to get there which was been set by so and this is very interesting to me because all these are all these famous stories of exploration right the journey to the centre of the earth the lost world and King Solomon's minds probably three of the most important examples of the genre all of them have characters who are following an example set by somebody else they're not actually the first people to go there and do it. Yes you know you've got the the Maple White diary right that leads Professor Challenger to the Lost World isn't it it's that element of like science if we're called the some of them science fiction stories it's that element of building out the world which and again that adds to the believability of of of this place is that this is lived in this has an existence wouldn't I wouldn't you imagine that a writer would say oh it'll be better if these characters are the first people to ever go to the place right to find the the mysterious lost world and yet in practice it's kind of more interesting when they have to solve some kind of a puzzle or follow clues and that necessitates someone else having done it before.

Roland 59:53

Like we never find out how Arnie Sacknusson figured all this out how did he know to go to this particular Sneffel's cone at a particular date and you know and he's sort of lost through because they they find they find runes of him or marks of him through the through the earth but really that sort of ditch towards towards the end did he get there? Did he go any further down than they did? We don't know he's lost don't find him you don't that's another connection that the film then tries to make is the villain of the pieces yeah the bad guy counterfact he's in the cartoon as well actually right okay although he looks quite different and he's got a he's got a kind of a goofy psychic as well although he kind of does in the film too.

Cian Gill 1:00:30

But though it's a it's just amazing to me how those elements have been a part of adventure fiction all throughout the 20th century. Yeah you know the the the the map or the the codex that starts off the adventure and then having to follow the clues having some historical adventure who's done it first the one character who believe the the crazy scientist who believes in this jaft

Adventure Tropes Verne Set In Stone

Cian Gill 1:00:51

thing and no one no one else takes him seriously. That's underplayed a bit in this book but you have to assume that if Lydenbrock if there had been a scene where Lydenbrock had to go down to the local university and and plead his case that he'd have been laughed off the stage as Professor Challenger would be. Yeah. You know there's more of it I think in Lost World isn't there because I think although it is hinted that he's he's seen as a bit of a joke by his students.

Roland 1:01:13

Yeah yeah and he's obviously clearly an eccentric you know the way that he way that he is and I think another bit is that cave bit the going through the cave and that is the start or that's the passage that you need some physical thing to go through to actually enter into this lost world or whatever.

Cian Gill 1:01:34

Just like Professor Chalger has to cross over the gap between the the crag and the and and the plateau. Yeah there has to be um a physical a barrier or a physical crossing and I think the most I I'm I will go to bat for defending the Peter Jackson King Kong as one of my favourite lost world stories which not everybody will but there's a really overdone sequence where Anne Darrow is crossing onto the ship the venture and he sl undercranks the camera as her foot steps onto the the gangplank and he's like he's beating over the head of the like she is now leaving the regular world and entering the the special world if you if you want to get into what's his name you know uh hero uh hero of a thousand faces type stuff you know yeah and he overdoes it in that film but I know what he's going for and that is an important moment if you get it right.

Roland 1:02:21

Yeah there's a there's an element and I mentioned it on my Jurassic Park film episode which is that when Alan Grant opens up the caravan the door opens the wrong way as when you switch the shot. Now that could just be a mistake however now this is somebody that I know that told me about this he was a huge fan of Kubrick Spielberg friend of Kubrick's student of Kubrick as well the scene in the shining of when Jack goes into the walking freezer the door closes one way but when he's let out by the ghosts it opens another way. You'd nearly believe that sort of thing with Kubrick you know that he meant it.

Cian Gill 1:03:06

I have to ask so I are you a believer in the this is an insight are you a believer in the Alan Grant fastening the seatbelt in the helicopter yeah I know that one the fact that it works on two levels right the the one which is more plausible is that it shows that he's a problem solver. Yeah yeah that's the other one the other one people often will say is that it's a hint as to the the dinosaurs reproducing while being all female.

Roland 1:03:33

Yeah I I like the idea I like the idea that the barrier for Grant because the second he steps into that caravan he then meets Hammond that's what starts his journey is that weird clip of him that's that's and I I I I see it every time now that and I think this is the starting point of the film. And there's a couple of other when I was watching Rebirth or thinking about rebirth I don't know have you seen the latest Jurassic and the idea of the cave and I thought how does the family enter the the island where they get thrown in the water and then they go into through a cave system actually into the into the and it's it's I it's that element that you need something that is the physical to actually give you the audience the the jolt into the new world that they will then accept everything from this point forward as being as true as the bit that came before.

Cian Gill 1:04:29

And if you want to go even further for and and I I I first saw this written about of all things the the the planet of the apes that was made by Jim Burton not a great film but when when Marky Mark comes out of his Mark Wabork comes out of his space pod and he's he it sinks down into you could actually you could say this about the original Planet of the Apes too but it's more it's more obvious in that one. It's a literal rebirthing scenario where he comes out of his pod, he comes out of the water and he's in this new world but I I really I really like when there's a clear definite separation of the mundane world and then the special world. Yeah and it can be done in lots of different ways. It can be subtle or it can be can be sledgehammer but I I always enjoy that and again something that you get a certain amount of in in in journey that they have to I suppose the the figuring out which passage to go down the volcano is is a type of a cipher as well as a type of type of code that they have to crack as part of the following the the breadcrumbs that were left by by Sack Newson.

Roland 1:05:31

And and the practicalities of building the raft and all of these sort of things that goes on through the and you have the stoic presence of hands all the way through as their as their as their helper who never complains and is just waiting for his payment at the end of all of this. This is just there to serve.

Cian Gill 1:05:48

And Vern cheats a tiny little bit with his technology sometimes so he's he's known as this like in terms of science fiction as as you know as science fiction goes he was his reputation is that he predicted things that Happened shortly afterwards, right? He he wrote about men going to the moon, he wrote he writes about a submarine, which is more advanced than actual submarines were at the time. But so he he's relatively soft science fiction in general, at least in how he's remembered. But he cheats the time a little bit. He gives these characters a type of torch and a battery that is able to do things that batteries were not able to do at the time, which he kind of needs to, or else they won't be able to traverse these caverns. In in 20,000 leagues, the the Nautilus is powered by electricity, but Captain Nemo says he says something like, Oh, my electricity is not everyone's. So he's like, he's got some power source that I'm not going to talk about. Yeah. So he's not afraid to do a little bit of do a little bit of a bit of hand waving.

Roland 1:06:43

Yeah. Fab. I was wondering if there was one moment or one landscape that if you could take a listener of this and just drop them into what what would be that scene? What would be that moment of this story?

Cian Gill 1:06:57

So there's a section when Axel has been goofing off as usual and gets himself lost and he requires, I think, a whole day of sleeping to recover.

Favourite Scene To Step Into

Cian Gill 1:07:06

And he wakes up and he hears the sound of the ocean.

Roland 1:07:09

Yeah.

Cian Gill 1:07:09

And which I think you mentioned earlier. And he's again, he just doesn't really realise what's going on. He he's still saying, like, lads, we can still turn around and go home. This yeah, we all know this isn't going anywhere. And uh they they kind of forcibly take him to the edge of the cavern where he sees the Lytton Broxy for the first time, and it's the first time that the book really gets like heavy science fiction, you know, up until now they've been spelunking effectively, and and this is where something really out there happens. And I really enjoy this scene in the movie, in the 50s movie. I think it's it's a lovely matte painting. Yeah. And yeah, again, I've always been haunted by that scene in the in the Ladybread book as well, you know, from in uh as a much simpler version of it. But yeah, we'd love to be able to see that. It's it's one of the classic moments of you're not in Kansas anymore. Yeah. That's fab.

Roland 1:08:00

Well, I'd just like to say thank you so much for taking this journey into the center of the earth with me. It's been really fun.

Where To Start With Lost Valley

Roland 1:08:07

So with the Lost Valley podcast, is there what what do you recommend people starting with in your in in in your back catalogue? Is there a particular way in, do you think?

Cian Gill 1:08:18

You know, I think if you're listening to this and you're you're a Crichton fan, uh we have two episodes about uh the book and the movie Congo. Now you may not be a huge fan of either of those, not a terrible not a huge amount of people are, but I I love them both so much and I go I go into so much detail on them. And for me, it's uh they're both a really, really interesting take of the Lost World story in in recent years. It's a it's a comparatively late version of the genre. It there it's written and filmed at a time when I suppose the the genre is considered a tiny bit washed up, perhaps. And I think you'll be surprised and interested to see what someone as creative as Crichton was able to do with this when he he kind of deliberately set about resuscitating an old-fashioned genre with the book. And uh you'll be surprised also how much interesting stuff that's in the book actually made its way into the admittedly a little bit daft movie. So yeah, I would recommend checking out those episodes.

Roland 1:09:12

I'm very I I love those episodes, and actually Eddie Guimont, who you've got who you've had on the podcast various times, he'll be joining me in a few episodes time to to look at the crypto zoology element of the the real life story behind some of the Lost World adventures, so which will be really fun. I look forward to that. And I was wondering if there was an episode that you have coming up on the show that you're really excited about working on.

Cian Gill 1:09:40

Yeah, so I'm uh gearing myself up for going through the Arthur Collendorle's Lost World, perhaps chapter by chapter, maybe perhaps two chapters per episode, something like that. There's a lot of great writing and a lot of great commentary on that book out already. So I'm hoping to make it, I don't want to be doubling up or doing anything redundant, I hope to make it really, really personal. Um I hope to be able to explain why it's so important to me, why it is to me, it is really the core of this whole genre. There's a reason the genre is named after it. What did Conan Doyle get right? Why was that that the right place and the right time? And how was it that he was able, even with such amazing precursors as Jules Verne, why did it require someone like Conan Doyle to write this book at this particular time to bring the the the concept of the dinosaur novel and bring it to bring it of age?

Roland 1:10:28

Yeah. Oh, fantastic. I can't wait to that. There's there's a dinosaur resurgence, I'm feeling it. I feel like I feel like what with with everything that's going on, yeah, I I feel like we're maybe entering a bit of a golden age for for dinosaurs. And I was wondering how people can find you online if indeed you want them to.

Cian Gill 1:10:46

So I I definitely do not put the effort into or I don't have the time to do the promotion that I used to, and I I'm I'm way down on my socials. However, if you're if you're interested, I am at I'm on uh Instagram at the dot lost.valley. And I'm also on usual podcasting platforms, just look for the lost valley and uh you'll you'll find me. But uh bring a little something to drink and uh be dressed for uh be dressed for an expedition just in case you ever know. Amazing.

Roland 1:11:16

I love all the I'm very jealous of all the book books that you that that you post on there. I I'm a huge fan of like going to a a secondhand bookshop and finding a book with an old an old illustration on there or something. And so, yeah, I they're very inspirational images. I love it. Lovely, yeah. There's there's nothing better, is there? No. Great. Well, I'll just say thank you very much for joining me and yeah. Safe safe safe travels. Thanks very much, Roland. It's been good fun. That was Kean Gill, and honestly, I could have stayed down in that cavern with him for a few more hours. If you enjoyed this conversation, and I can't imagine that you didn't, go and subscribe to the Lost Valley podcast right now. It's on all the usual platforms, and Kean's two-part deep dive on Congo, both the Crichton novel and the gloriously dark film, is the perfect place to start. You can find him on Instagram at the.lost.valley, where he posts the kind of beautiful old illustrated editions that make me very jealous indeed. A few quick things from me.

Host Wrap Plus Next Journey Tease

Roland 1:12:28

Everything we mentioned today, including the Mallison translation we read from, which is free in the public domain, plus that gloriously repetitive read-along tape music from my childhood, is linked in the show notes. And if you've got 30 seconds, a rating or review genuinely helps other deep time obsessives find the show. You can find us on Instagram at Jurassic Pirates Pod. Next time on Stonester Stories, we leave the centre of the earth and head for the Jurassic coast of England. Because the sea dragons are waiting.

Matthew Myerscough 1:13:00

And it was just complete surprise when I was entombed in the snow, and I describe it as like being encased in a block of concrete. I remember thinking, yeah, if I can start up with my hands and try and dig away, but I honestly couldn't even move, I couldn't even move at you know the tips of my fingers or anything like that. So it was it it did feel quite desperate. And then that's when I had that kind of emotion of surprise and was like, this, you know, this is this is how it's gonna pan out for me.

Roland 1:13:27

Next time I'll be joined by Matthew Myers-Goff, author of In Search of Sea Dragons, to talk ichthyosaurs and Pleesiosaurs and all the wonderful Victorian fossil hunters that inspired him to get out his hammer on his incredible journey to recovery. Much more on that next time. If you like the big story in battle today, you are going to love where we go next. Until then, keep your raft steady, keep your log up to date, and hopefully, the pirates don't eat the tourists!