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I'm reading this book, Dr. Jones' Picnic. A little more than 1/3 of the way through. Found it via MobileRead. It was pitched as an adventure somewhat in the vein of Jules Verne.
And, indeed, there is an element of that. It doesn't have Verne's depth (no pun intended), but it is a tale of a grand adventure of exploration. It's lighthearted and charming. Looking back more than a century after its publishing (1898), it even seems rather quaint (a perspective which would no doubt horrify the author).
Basic premise is that Dr. Jones comes up with a scheme to be the first person to successfully reach the North Pole. He'll skip over the hazards of traveling across shifting ice floes and make the trip by air. He designs what amounts to a giant hot air balloon carrying a full apartment and a year's worth of supplies. They'll float to the pole in perfect comfort and safety.
There's a fun little bit (the best part of the book so far) where his wife, who is described as capable and intelligent, tells him that she won't let him go unless he can convince her that it's perfectly safe. And then she sits quietly in the room for months while he and his friends plan things out. He's fretting because he knows there's a storm coming and she's being too quiet. And then the time comes. He confronts her, all ready for a fight, and... she says yes, it's clear that it's perfectly safe and she'll happily give her consent for him to go... on one condition: she's coming, too! He's stunned and confused. Starts to tell her no, it's too dangerous for... oops. And so, just as she'd planned all along, she goes with him.
Then it's time to actually build the thing. They try for private funding, but no one will sponsor it because, nifty as it would be to actually make it to the pole, there's no profit to be made. So... they go to the government. In a single paragraph, they easily impress the entire board of the Smithsonian, get full federal funding, and become world famous and universally adored. Yay!
The craft is built. Did I mention they're making it out of the most wondrous metal in the world? Yes, the hot air balloon is actually a 200 foot-wide aluminum sphere. Which can be instantly cooled by opening the vents or instantly heated by pumping in superheated compressed air heated with a mechanism that uses almost no oil. Oh, except, actually it's later mentioned that the design was improved by using airtight glass partitions to create two large helium-filled chambers. And a layer of zinc provides such excellent insulation that nary a degree is lost even after several hours without additional heat being added. Never mind that zinc is a metal with a reasonably high thermal conductivity. Oh, and the air is being heated to about 130 degrees. That should be plenty to float a giant metal sphere with a fully furnished and stocked 1600 square foot living space attached to the bottom and an enclosed observatory with a huge flagpole attached to the top, right?
As for navigation? No problem. If the prevailing wind isn't going in the right direction, all they have to do is change altitudes to pick up a different breeze. The equator is warm and the pole is freezing, so naturally they should have no trouble finding a wind that blows North at some level, right? And if they don't for a while, well they can just weigh anchor and wait until conditions change. ... Sure. Why not?
Oh, and they keep the windows open. Happily step out onto the balcony as they fly a couple thousand feet over northern Canada. The walls are insulated and there's a hypocaust running from the air heating system (which, remember, uses hardly any fuel at all), so everything's fine. (But that's later.)
So they get into the big shiny metal ship and it floats into the air over the streets of DC. There's a huge American flag flying from the aforementioned flagpole (which is to be planted precisely at the North Pole). The crowd below oohs and aahs. And then everyone sings the national anthem and it's all so beautiful andjingoistic patriotic.
There are seven of them. Dr. Jones, his best friend, and the architect they worked with are the core group. Then there's Jones's wife. And, because he insisted that she have female company, some friend of hers who turns out to be afraid of heights and is almost never mentioned except as a quick aside. There's also an observer from the Smithsonian. But no one cares about him.
Oh, and the never before mentioned cook, Ah Sing. He's "Mongolian." He pops out every now and again to speak a single line of comically broken English before disappearing back into the kitchen. Where he clearly belongs. Just as the nice Christian family they later encounter has "an Indian half-breed" as a servant, and she, too keeps well to the background.
They float off over Ohio. Look out from the observatory and praise God. Then they talk about how it'll be Sunday soon, but it's okay because they have bibles and hymns and an organ and everything aboard, so they can just have services mid-air. And, just for fun, they sing songs to praise God some more, and it sounds so beautiful. Then there are some poems about how great God is. I mean, I respect the author's faith, but he doesn't miss a single opportunity to tell us that the good doctor and his friends really love God.
They cruise along to Canada at breathtaking speed. 20, sometimes 30 mph, or even more! (But don't worry; they're moving with the wind, so it doesn't affect them when they're out on the balcony.)
On a whim, they descend upon the house of a fur trapper, scaring the whole family (and the aforementioned "Indian half-breed") half to death. Except that Ma is dying of incurable cancer. She's been to the best city doctors, but nothing has helped. Pa says he's fed up with doctors and just wants her to be left to die in peace. And then, 30 seconds later, agrees to allow Dr. Jones to give her some mysterious medication. Which cures her overnight.
What did he give her? Well, it so happens that the primary symptoms of her cancer almost exactly mimicked the symptoms of arsenic poisoning. And God's law is that like cures like. So he gave her a measured dose of arsenic. And she was magically cured. Simple! It's just fortunate that she hadn't been taking any medicines, as that would have messed things up even more. As for treating cancer by surgically removing the tumor? Perish the thought! It can only serve to make things worse. (Which, given the state of medicine in 1898, is perhaps more understandable.)
It's a theme we return to as the doctor expounds upon his theory to his friends and again when they make their next stop and the doctor magically cures an old man of debilitating rheumatism with some other deadly poison which, it so happens, mirrors the effects of the disease.
Why isn't everyone treating their patients like this? Give a small dose of whatever poison would give the same symptoms and, instead of making things worse, a single dose will instantly turn things around! A few weeks of sustained treatment, and any "incurable" disease can be mended!
They move on. The doctor and his friend talk about how much better the world has become in the last 50 years or so. Science, the arts, culture... it's clear that the last 50 years easily measure up against the sum total of prior human history. And just look at how many bibles are being printed!
Except, well... the schools. It's obvious that they're much improved, and yet... all that book learning can't be healthy. You try to cram all that into a brain, and the body naturally suffers. Better to have your child be completely illiterate than to allow him to lose one drop of health. Why, the smartest, most educated man the doctor has ever met was forever sickly. Finally killed by a wild boar. Speaking half a dozen languages availed him nothing in the face of that. Surely he'd have traded all his learning for a strong, dependable pair of legs.
And moral fiber! Why, if our values had grown stronger rather than weaker, it's clear that the nations of Europe would have long since banded together to kick the Turks out of Armenia. It's simply inhumane what those filthy Muslims are doing to what was once a good Christian country. Killing Christians by the thousands, as if they were on some kind of holy crusade or something. Good Christians would never allow anything of the sort!
In sum: Bad science, gratuitous religion, casual racism, bad medicine, down with learning!, painful irony, and worse. It's all just... desk-shattering.
And yet, for all that, the overarching tale is a fun little adventure story about a fantastic expedition to the North Pole. The lighthearted, bright-eyed charm of it is just enough to keep pulling me along even as my metaphorical desk gets more and more banged up. *sigh*
And, indeed, there is an element of that. It doesn't have Verne's depth (no pun intended), but it is a tale of a grand adventure of exploration. It's lighthearted and charming. Looking back more than a century after its publishing (1898), it even seems rather quaint (a perspective which would no doubt horrify the author).
Basic premise is that Dr. Jones comes up with a scheme to be the first person to successfully reach the North Pole. He'll skip over the hazards of traveling across shifting ice floes and make the trip by air. He designs what amounts to a giant hot air balloon carrying a full apartment and a year's worth of supplies. They'll float to the pole in perfect comfort and safety.
There's a fun little bit (the best part of the book so far) where his wife, who is described as capable and intelligent, tells him that she won't let him go unless he can convince her that it's perfectly safe. And then she sits quietly in the room for months while he and his friends plan things out. He's fretting because he knows there's a storm coming and she's being too quiet. And then the time comes. He confronts her, all ready for a fight, and... she says yes, it's clear that it's perfectly safe and she'll happily give her consent for him to go... on one condition: she's coming, too! He's stunned and confused. Starts to tell her no, it's too dangerous for... oops. And so, just as she'd planned all along, she goes with him.
Then it's time to actually build the thing. They try for private funding, but no one will sponsor it because, nifty as it would be to actually make it to the pole, there's no profit to be made. So... they go to the government. In a single paragraph, they easily impress the entire board of the Smithsonian, get full federal funding, and become world famous and universally adored. Yay!
The craft is built. Did I mention they're making it out of the most wondrous metal in the world? Yes, the hot air balloon is actually a 200 foot-wide aluminum sphere. Which can be instantly cooled by opening the vents or instantly heated by pumping in superheated compressed air heated with a mechanism that uses almost no oil. Oh, except, actually it's later mentioned that the design was improved by using airtight glass partitions to create two large helium-filled chambers. And a layer of zinc provides such excellent insulation that nary a degree is lost even after several hours without additional heat being added. Never mind that zinc is a metal with a reasonably high thermal conductivity. Oh, and the air is being heated to about 130 degrees. That should be plenty to float a giant metal sphere with a fully furnished and stocked 1600 square foot living space attached to the bottom and an enclosed observatory with a huge flagpole attached to the top, right?
As for navigation? No problem. If the prevailing wind isn't going in the right direction, all they have to do is change altitudes to pick up a different breeze. The equator is warm and the pole is freezing, so naturally they should have no trouble finding a wind that blows North at some level, right? And if they don't for a while, well they can just weigh anchor and wait until conditions change. ... Sure. Why not?
Oh, and they keep the windows open. Happily step out onto the balcony as they fly a couple thousand feet over northern Canada. The walls are insulated and there's a hypocaust running from the air heating system (which, remember, uses hardly any fuel at all), so everything's fine. (But that's later.)
So they get into the big shiny metal ship and it floats into the air over the streets of DC. There's a huge American flag flying from the aforementioned flagpole (which is to be planted precisely at the North Pole). The crowd below oohs and aahs. And then everyone sings the national anthem and it's all so beautiful and
There are seven of them. Dr. Jones, his best friend, and the architect they worked with are the core group. Then there's Jones's wife. And, because he insisted that she have female company, some friend of hers who turns out to be afraid of heights and is almost never mentioned except as a quick aside. There's also an observer from the Smithsonian. But no one cares about him.
Oh, and the never before mentioned cook, Ah Sing. He's "Mongolian." He pops out every now and again to speak a single line of comically broken English before disappearing back into the kitchen. Where he clearly belongs. Just as the nice Christian family they later encounter has "an Indian half-breed" as a servant, and she, too keeps well to the background.
They float off over Ohio. Look out from the observatory and praise God. Then they talk about how it'll be Sunday soon, but it's okay because they have bibles and hymns and an organ and everything aboard, so they can just have services mid-air. And, just for fun, they sing songs to praise God some more, and it sounds so beautiful. Then there are some poems about how great God is. I mean, I respect the author's faith, but he doesn't miss a single opportunity to tell us that the good doctor and his friends really love God.
They cruise along to Canada at breathtaking speed. 20, sometimes 30 mph, or even more! (But don't worry; they're moving with the wind, so it doesn't affect them when they're out on the balcony.)
On a whim, they descend upon the house of a fur trapper, scaring the whole family (and the aforementioned "Indian half-breed") half to death. Except that Ma is dying of incurable cancer. She's been to the best city doctors, but nothing has helped. Pa says he's fed up with doctors and just wants her to be left to die in peace. And then, 30 seconds later, agrees to allow Dr. Jones to give her some mysterious medication. Which cures her overnight.
What did he give her? Well, it so happens that the primary symptoms of her cancer almost exactly mimicked the symptoms of arsenic poisoning. And God's law is that like cures like. So he gave her a measured dose of arsenic. And she was magically cured. Simple! It's just fortunate that she hadn't been taking any medicines, as that would have messed things up even more. As for treating cancer by surgically removing the tumor? Perish the thought! It can only serve to make things worse. (Which, given the state of medicine in 1898, is perhaps more understandable.)
It's a theme we return to as the doctor expounds upon his theory to his friends and again when they make their next stop and the doctor magically cures an old man of debilitating rheumatism with some other deadly poison which, it so happens, mirrors the effects of the disease.
Why isn't everyone treating their patients like this? Give a small dose of whatever poison would give the same symptoms and, instead of making things worse, a single dose will instantly turn things around! A few weeks of sustained treatment, and any "incurable" disease can be mended!
They move on. The doctor and his friend talk about how much better the world has become in the last 50 years or so. Science, the arts, culture... it's clear that the last 50 years easily measure up against the sum total of prior human history. And just look at how many bibles are being printed!
Except, well... the schools. It's obvious that they're much improved, and yet... all that book learning can't be healthy. You try to cram all that into a brain, and the body naturally suffers. Better to have your child be completely illiterate than to allow him to lose one drop of health. Why, the smartest, most educated man the doctor has ever met was forever sickly. Finally killed by a wild boar. Speaking half a dozen languages availed him nothing in the face of that. Surely he'd have traded all his learning for a strong, dependable pair of legs.
And moral fiber! Why, if our values had grown stronger rather than weaker, it's clear that the nations of Europe would have long since banded together to kick the Turks out of Armenia. It's simply inhumane what those filthy Muslims are doing to what was once a good Christian country. Killing Christians by the thousands, as if they were on some kind of holy crusade or something. Good Christians would never allow anything of the sort!
In sum: Bad science, gratuitous religion, casual racism, bad medicine, down with learning!, painful irony, and worse. It's all just... desk-shattering.
And yet, for all that, the overarching tale is a fun little adventure story about a fantastic expedition to the North Pole. The lighthearted, bright-eyed charm of it is just enough to keep pulling me along even as my metaphorical desk gets more and more banged up. *sigh*