Master Of The World - Jules Verne

 MASTER OF THE WORLD - JULES VERNE

First published in 1904 just one year before his death, Master Of The World by Jules Verne is of interest specifically because we are now able to read it from the perspective and vantage point of 2024. At the time of its publication it was probably received as another story of mystery and suspense from the master storyteller, the genre of 'science fiction' in which it now falls at that point not yet being fully defined. 

Is Master Of The World a science fiction book? I guess so but only because of one aspect of it, that being the invention of a machine - a vehicle - that can travel on land, sea and sky at speeds hitherto unknown. A bit like Transformers. And remember that date 1904, and remember that the first sustained flight by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk had only taken place just a bit earlier in December 1903.

The main body of the book involves the investigation by a US government agent into strange goings-on amid the mountain ranges of North Carolina, and reports of sightings of cars and boats travelling at great speeds in other States. Could all these things be connected, the agent wonders? Sure enough, they are. It's all the same vehicle, one that acts as a car, a boat, a submarine and an aeroplane. The invention of such a vehicle is a game changer and the US government want its engineering secrets for with the possession of such knowledge would come great power and huge military advantage. The chase is then on to find the inventor.

Master Of The World is essentially a metaphor and what it's saying is that who owns the science, owns the power. Militarily this has always been pretty obvious, borne out by any number of new inventions being adopted and adapted for the purpose of war be it land vehicles, boats, submarines or planes, all the way to atomic energy. Did the Wright brothers foresee that with their victory over flight that it would one day lead to the destruction of Guernica, Dresden and Hiroshima? Of course they didn't. Such things was not the prize in their eyes but to others it would have been. In fact it would have been their first thought.

And what of today's science and technology? What power does it bring? Well, you only have to look at the rise of such people as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg to see the shift that has taken place in recent years in regard to where power lies nowadays. Power is no longer in the hands of governments who in the past have always had leverage and control of the systems under which people live. Power has now been privatised and the end result of this is that there are new masters of the world who though having no control over production, have control of the marketplace. They are the landlords to whom we all pay rent. They are essentially feudalists by default and their yoke under which we all now live is a form of feudalism, aptly described by Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis as technofeudalism.

Jules Verne's Master Of The World is a decent enough read. It carries you along and it makes you want to find out what happens in the end, although that end is wholly inadequate. Not that it really matters because the point of the book nowadays is that it serves - whether intentionally or not - as a metaphor. A metaphor that's worth thinking about.

John Serpico