Facing the Flag
A Deadly Invention (also The flying death, high the flag of the Fatherland! Ago or the flag of the Fatherland ) is a technical-scientific science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne. The novel was the first time in 1896 as a book by the publisher Pierre -Jules Hetzel in Paris under the French title Face au Drapeau ( dt = Given the flag ) and advance from 1 January to 15 June 1896 in the Magasin d' Éducation et de Récréation published. The first German -language edition was published in hard life in 1897 under the title Against the flag of their country in the number of known and undiscovered worlds. The English title of the novel is Facing the Flag.
Action
The French inventor Thomas Roch has developed a new explosive of enormous destructive power, he has several States offered in vain to purchase. Broken in this development it is housed in the nerve sanatorium Healthful House, North Carolina. Here he is cared for by working under a false identity also French engineer Simon Hart.
Since it is a showcase sanatorium, it is repeatedly visited by interested persons, including through a Count d' Artigas. This takes advantage of the visit, however, to perform together with his assistants, the kidnapping of the inventor and his nurse. In the further course of the plot developments from the perspective of Simon Hart play. This has initially for to solve the puzzle of how the Goélette the Count is moved despite not set sail without a motor. The solution is to him only at the end of the journey, the island of Back Cup in Bermuda, clear, as it is brought into the interior of this island with a submarine.
The island is known to the narrator, because he has already visited because of rumors that there should be a re-awakened volcano. During his stay Hart notes that it is in the counts alleged by the pirate Ker Karraje. This, the island has chosen as a hideout for his gang and the volcanic activities simulated by targeted explosions. The goal Karrajes is the ownership of the developed Roch weapon to be hereby permanently unassailable. Karraje actually seems to find access to the inventor Roch, this developed for him the desired explosives and rockets.
As Hart sees no other option, it sends a message in a bottle with all the facts obtained in the outside world. This is actually found on the beach of the Bermuda island of Saint Georges. After an initial failed rescue attempt, which was carried out by a submarine of the Royal Navy, the island is attacked by five naval vessels of various countries. After Roch initially sunk one of the ships, he clearly reacting to the setting of the French tricolor on any remaining ships and blows himself and the entire island in the air. Only Simon Hart survived.
Follow the publication
This novel brought Jules Verne a lawsuit against the ( in the former public as suspect shown and at times paranoid suffering ) chemist Eugène Turpin ( 1848-1927 ) that he won. The chemist looked slandered and ridiculed represented in the novel. But Verne must have shown him in his novel relatively faithfully to the original as can be determined later based on an exchange of letters.
Audio books, radio plays and movies
- The book is available on audio cassettes and radio play CDs.
- Appeared in 1975, a radio play Processing " A Deadly Invention " at the German VEB Schallplatten Berlin ( Litera 865 221, ISBN 3-89830-181-8 )
- The book was in 1957/58 filmed in Czechoslovakia by Karel Zeman under the title Deadly Invention.