"Jules Verne - In the Year 2889b" - читать интересную книгу автора (Verne Jules)

In the Year 2889In the Year 2889
by Jules Verne



Editor's Notes by Blake Linton Wilfong
In 1885, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald
(the same man who sent Stanley to Africa to find Livingstone) asked Jules
Verne to write a short story about life in the United States a thousand
years hence. Ironically, the resulting tale was not printed until
1889--and not in the New York Herald.
It is an unusual work in every way. Verne wrote few short stories,
and no others first published in English. In contrast to his conservative,
plodding SF novels, "In the Year 2889" dashes wildly from one fanciful
extrapolation to another. Experts believe Jules' son Michel may have
authored part of the story.
Many of the predictions for the year 2889 have already come true.
Verne's dystopian concept of one man brought to vast power and wealth
through widely distributed intellectual property brings to mind names like
Samuel Newhouse and Bill Gates. There are also glimmerings of later
science fiction themes, including suspended animation and turning the moon
around a la Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953).
Of course Verne also made mistakes, and some of his predictions
simply have not come to pass. But give them time: there are nearly nine
centuries left before the year 2889.

Little though they seem to think of it, the people of this 29th century live
continually in fairyland. Surrounded with marvels, they are indifferent to
marvels. To them all seems natural. Could they but appreciate the refinements of
civilization in our day; could they but compare the present with the past, and
recognize the advances we have made! How much fairer they would find our modern
towns, with populations exceeding 10,000,000 souls; steets 300 feet wide, houses
100 feet high; with a constant temperature in all seasons; and lines of aerial
locomotion crossing the sky in all directions! If they could but imagine the
state of things that once existed, when through muddy streets rumbling boxes on
wheels, drawn by horses--yes, horses!--were the only means of conveyance. Think
of the railroads of old, and you will appreciate the pneumatic tubes through
which today we travel at 100 miles an hour. Would not our contemporaries prize
the telephone and telephote more, had they not forgotten the telegraph?


Surprisingly, all these transformations rest on principles perfectly familiar to
our remote ancestors, which they disregarded. Heat, for instance, is as ancient
as man himself; electricity was known 3000 years ago, and steam 1100. Nay, so
early as 10 centuries ago it was known that the differences between the several
chemical and physical forces depend on the mode of vibration of etheric
particles, which is for each specifically different. When at last the kinship of
all these forces was discovered, it is simply astounding that 500 years still
elapsed before men could analyze and describe the distinct modes of vibration
that constitute these differences. Above all, it is amazing that the method of