Robur the Conqueror
1886
Strange lights and unexplained sounds in the sky have baffled scientists worldwide. Then Robur appears at the Weldon Institute in Philadelphia, a secret society of balloon enthusiasts, and makes a declaration that will change everything: the future of flight belongs not to lighter-than-air vessels, but to his magnificent flying machine, the Albatross. When the members laugh him out of the room, Robur takes more than his leave. He kidnaps the club's president and secretary, spiriting them aboard his creation for a journey that will circumnavigate the globe and force them to witness the impossible. Verne imagined powered flight decades before the Wright brothers, and Robur the Conqueror crackles with the tension between visionary genius and the fear it inspires. Is Robur a prophet or a tyrant? The answer may depend on whether you're steering or along for the ride. A propulsive adventure about what it costs to believe in tomorrow before anyone else is ready.
Editions
X-Ray
“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.””
— Jules Verne
“You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.””
— Jules Verne
“Never test another man by your own weakness.””
— Jules Verne
“It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.””
— Jules Verne
“It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.””
— Jules Verne
“How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?””
— Jules Verne
“It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much”
— Jules Verne
“Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live.””
— Jules Verne
“He did not care what the end would be, and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion.””
— Jules Verne
