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(1) Le Docteur Ox (Doctor Ox, 1874) (1 volume) 70K words

This collection, which was published by Hetzel in 1874 as part of the Extraordinary Voyages, consists of four novellas or short stories by Verne:


"Une fantaisie du Docteur Ox" ("Dr. Ox's Experiment," 1872)

Plot: In an extremely quiet Flemish town, a chemist called Dr. Ox is building a gas lighting system that he has offered for free. Unfortunately, Ox is a mad scientist who intends to use the substance he has invented to modify the brain chemistry of the town's inhabitants, making them more irascible.

Comment: This was a rather funny novella. The inhabitants of the imaginary town were humorous to begin with, calm and quiet to an absurd extreme, enemies of any passion. Dr. Ox's gas changes all that and makes them choleric and aggressive, willing even to go to war against a neighbouring town for the most ridiculous reasons. Verne makes some reflections about whether we are the result of our brain chemistry, but doesn't really explore this interesting subject more than that, and instead concentrates on the humorous portrait of the town's citizens, who go from one extreme in the beginning to the opposite once the gas starts changing their behavior. Other than that, the plot is slight. So, more humor than science fiction, I would say.


"Maître Zacharius" ("Master Zacharius," 1854)

Plot: Master Zacharius, perhaps the greatest and more renowned among the Swiss watchmakers falls into despair when all the watches he has made and sold stop for unknown reasons, and no one is able to repair them.

Comment: Another novella, this one a dark fantasy in the style of E.T.A. Hoffman and Edgar Alan Poe. I liked the premise, and the story was OK, but, although I appreciate his trying something different, I don’t think Verne was playing to his strengths here. Poe would have made a more terrifying portrait of this prideful watchmaker falling apart and maybe selling his soul.


"Un drame dans les airs" ("A Drama in the Air," 1851)

Plot: The narrator is about to make a hot air balloon demonstration but, just as he is about to take off, a stranger rushes into the basket and forces him to let go of ballast to rise higher and further than he expected.

Comment: This short story is written in first person, in the style of a non-fictional account even though, of course, it’s fiction. Verne was interested in flying devices and this story, originally published more than decade before “Five Weeks in a Balloon,” foreshadows that novel, showing that Verne had in mind that balloon trips could make for an interesting adventure. The plot of the novel is much more substantial, though. The intruder here takes advantage of the trip to narrate at length the story of incidents related to the human quest to fly in lighter than air devices. Imparting didactic information like this is typical of Verne’s early novels, but the problem is that here it takes up too much of the story, given its short length. The adventure, otherwise, is interesting, but I would have liked more of it.


"Un hivernage dans les glaces" ("A Winter Amid the Ice," 1855)

Plot: A captain from Dunkirk and two of his sailors were lost when trying to help a ship in difficulties in the northern seas. His father and his fiancée, not believing that he is dead, set up an expedition to look for him. Their investigation takes them deep into the Arctic Sea.

Comment: An adventure novella, very much in Verne’s style. We see elements that Verne would revisit later in his novels, like the search for a loved one lost at sea ("In Search of the Castaways", "Mistress Branican"), survival in a harsh Arctic winter ("The Adventures of Captain Hatteras", "The Fur Country"), the presence of a traitor... In particular this novella reminded me of "The Adventures of Captain Hatteras", with a ship wintering in the ice, and it also features a message in a bottle being found, like the one from "In Search of the Castaways", only in this case without anything that needed decyphering. I enjoyed it, even though it necessarily is more straightforward than his novels. There was a dubious incident when the characters got snow blindness... during the polar night (!?), supposedly due to the reflection of the Moon on the snow.


The collection also includes a short non-fictional account, "Quarantième ascension française au mont Blanc " ("The Fortieth French Ascent of Mont Blanc"), written by Verne's brother Paul. I say non-fictional because it feels like it, although I don’t know whether it really happened. But Paul gives some details that I, having been in Chamonix a few times, quite enjoyed, recognizing the places mentioned but also appreciating how different mountaineering was back then. Short and without extraordinary incidents, but ascending Mont Blanc in those times was extraordinary enough.