Sci-fi set in history

Gaurav Kanthwal 

Jules Verne, famous for his works, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), is acclaimed for being the pioneer in genre of science-fiction. Most of his acclaimed work is about space, air and underwater travel, much before it actually became a reality. Verne’s fascination for Indian landscape is visible in some of his popular creations but not many Indians know that the famous French writer has written one of the 54 sci-fi novels wholly set in India. 

La maison a vapeur or The Steam House was translated in English with alternative titles Tigers and Traitors, The End of Nana Sahib and The Demon of Cawnpore.

The 412-page novel is a riveting story of an imaginary steam elephant drawing two enormous bungalow-sized cars mounted on four wheels, all the way from Calcutta to the Gangetic plains up in the north. The juggernaut stops just short of climbing up the Himalayas but that does not stop Verne’s fertile mind from describing the Himalayas by taking a narrative detour.

The novel is set in 1867, a time when India’s First War of Independence had been crushed, with Nana Sahib, the adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao II, having fled from the scene, and the British setting up railway lines in India. It is from here Verne takes his cue and blends a mystical cocktail of history, science and geography, fermented in his fantasy.

Verne’s mechanical marvel — The Steam Elephant — is a plot device to take the reader through the journey of India, enriching him in the process with his ingenuity. 

The result is a heady novel that transcends the borders of Steampunk — science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired steam-powered machinery — to become a romantic narrative of a country in its oriental grandeur.

Narrated in first person, it is also a tale of revenge of lead character Colonel Munro who wants to avenge his wife’s death, reportedly killed by Nana Sahib. The story keeps shuffling between various subplots but the main narrative, the travelogue, carries on till Verne has exhausted of every scrupulously researched detail. And then the novel finally meets its foggy end.

Published in 1880, The Demon of Cawnpore was preceded by Tribulations of a Chinaman in China and followed by Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon. By then, Verne was well past his creative peak (1864-73) but his craft of storytelling was as prolific as ever. His stated aim was not just restricted to cover all corners of the earth but to penetrate the heavens, the moon… and what not.

“It is my intention to complete, before my working days are gone, a series which shall conclude in story form my whole survey of the world’s surface and the heavens; there are still left corners of the world to which my thoughts have not yet penetrated. As you know, I have dealt with the moon, but a great deal remains to be done, and if health and strength permit me, I hope to finish this task.”

The book comes with an introduction from Abhijit Gupta where he establishes the novelist’s India connect — and probably the need for a new edition. He builds up the tempo with a brief history of Verne from a magazine writer to a novelist, who wrote a series of 54 sci-fi novels between 1863 and 1905. The genesis of this novel lies in his earlier works, Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) and The Mysterious Land (1874-75).