[school-discuss] Gutenberg Radio Press Release for the first week in May, 2003

[Mike Eschman <meschman@etc-edu.com>]

May 2003 Broadcast of Gutenberg Radio.

Featured :

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.
[The conclusion of Nemo's tale, Captain of the submarine Nautilus.]

Stereo : The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Mono : The Legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles.

For Download :
[all downloads are in stereo, .mp3, zipped, one file per chapter.]

Franz Kafka Metamorphosis.
Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Jules Verne The Mysterious Island.
H. G. Wells The Time Machine.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Bram Stoker Dracula.

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biographies and histories, thought these will be introduced somewhat later.

The Legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles.

In the time of the Great Rebellion, the Manor of Baskerville was held by
  Hugo. There was in him, a wanton, cruel humour. He came to love the
daughter of a yeoman, who held lands near the Baskerville estate. But
the young maiden would avoid him. So Hugo, with five or six companions,
stole down on the farm and carried off the maiden.  By the aid of the
growth of ivy which covered the south wall of the manor, she escaped.
Hugo cried that he would render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil,
if he might overtake her.

Hogo's companions followed him over the moor,  it opened into a broad
space, in which stood two of those great stones,  which were set by
forgotten peoples, in the days of old. The moon was shining bright upon
the clearing, and there in the center lay the maid where she had fallen
dead.  Standing over Hugo, plucking at his throat, stood
a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, larger than any hound that
mortal eye has seen.  The thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville.


Some thoughts on the Gutenberg Edition of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Born in the French river town of Nantes, Jules Verne (1828-1905) had a
  passion for the sea.  The stimulus for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
was an 1865 fan letter from a fellow writer, Madame George Sand.
Initially, Verne's narrative was influenced by the 1863 uprising of
Poland against Russia.  But in the 1860s, France had to treat Russia as
an ally.

Shark attacks, giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and
other rip-roaring adventures erupt at random, giving the novel an air of
documentary realism. Verne adds backbone to the action by developing
three recurring motifs, Nemo's past life and future intentions, the
mounting tension between Nemo and harpooner Ned Land, and Ned's ongoing
schemes to escape from the Nautilus.

Verne regards the sea from many angles,  in the domain of marine
biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral,
sometimes in great catalogs that swirl past like musical cascades; in
the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and out; in
  the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who
lay the Atlantic Cable or dig the Suez Canal.  And Verne's marine
engineering proves authoritative.  His specifications for an
open-sea submarine and a self-contained diving suit were decades before
their time.

Much of the novel's brooding power comes from captain Nemo.  Inventor,
musician, Renaissance genius, he's the prototype not only for countless
renegade scientists in popular fiction, even for Sherlock Holmes!

Dr. Robert D. Ballard, finder of the Titanic, confesses that this was
his favorite book as a teenager, and Cousteau, most renowned of marine
explorers, called it his shipboard bible.

This Gutenberg translation is a faithful  rendering of the original
French texts published in Paris by J. Hetzel et Cie.  Although prior
English versions have often been heavily abridged, this new translation
is complete, to the smallest substantive detail.


F. P. WALTER.

University of Houston.




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