Other editions of book The Master of the World

In the remarkable passages of the recital, it is important that you should believe my word. For some of the facts I can bring no other testimony than my own. If you do not wish to believe me, so be it. I can scarce believe it all myself. The strange occurrences began in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina. There, deep amid the Blueridge Mountains rises the crest called the Great Eyrie. Its huge rounded form is distinctly seen from the little town of Morganton on the Catawba River, and still more clearly as one approaches the mountains by way of the village of Pleasant Garden. Why the name of Great Eyrie was originally given this mountain by the people of the surrounding region, I am not quite Sure It rises rocky and grim and inaccessible, and under certain atmospheric conditions has a peculiarly blue and distant effect. But the idea one would naturally get from the name is of a refuge for birds of prey, eagles condors, vultures; the home of vast numbers of the feathered tribes, wheeling and screaming above peaks beyond the reach of man.

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Jules Verne, author of such works as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days, is recognized as one of the masters of the golden age of science fiction. In The Master of the World, a series of catastrophes strike the Atlantic Seaboard of the United States, and an intrepid investigator postulates that they might all be connected to a mysterious mad scientist who is sequestered in a compound in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Master of the World (French: Maître du monde), published in 1904, is one of the last novels by French pioneer science fiction writer, Jules Verne. It is a sequel to Robur the Conqueror. At the time Verne wrote the novel, his health was failing. Master of the World is a "black novel," filled with foreboding and fear of the rise of tyrants such as the novel's villain, Robur, and totalitarianism.

Chapter 1 WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MOUNTAINS If I speak of myself in this story, it is because I have been deeply involved in its startling events, events doubtless among the most extraordinary which this twentieth century will witness. Sometimes I even ask myself if all this has really happened, if its pictures dwell in truth in my memory, and not merely in my imagination. In my position as head inspector in the federal police department at Washington, urged on moreover by the desire, which has always been very strong in me, to investigate and understand everything which is mysterious, I naturally became much interested in these remarkable occurrences. And as I have been employed by the government in various important affairs and secret missions since I was a mere lad, it also happened very naturally that the head of my department placed In my charge this astonishing investigation, wherein I found myself wrestling with so many impenetrable mysteries. In the remarkable passages of the recital, it is important that you should believe my word. For some of the facts I can bring no other testimony than my own. If you do not wish to believe me, so be it. I can scarce believe it all myself. The strange occurrences began in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina. There, deep amid the Blueridge Mountains rises the crest called the Great Eyrie. Its huge rounded form is distinctly seen from the little town of Morganton on the Catawba River, and still more clearly as one approaches the mountains by way of the village of Pleasant Garden. Why the name of Great Eyrie was originally given this mountain by the people of the surrounding region, I am not quite Sure It rises rocky and grim and inaccessible, and under certain atmospheric conditions has a peculiarly blue and distant effect.

Strange events are occurring around the world, involving lights, sounds and flags that are hung in seemingly impossible to get to locations. At the meeting of the Weldon Institute in Philadelphia, Uncle Prudent (President) and Phil Evans (Secretary) and the membership debate about whether their balloon the Goahead, should have its directional screw located in the front or the back. A man called Robur interrupts and takes over their meeting; he insists that to master the skies, a flying vehicle must be heavier than air. His remarks infuriate the balloonists and after their meeting, Uncle Prudent and Phil are kidnapped and taken on an around the world trip in the Albatross, Robur’s heavier than air “Clipper of the Clouds.”

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