World Building & The Potterverse / some Jules Verne's spoilers

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 167422

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214"
<dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
>
> Ken:
> <SNIP>
> 
> > The end of "Around The World In Eighty Days" has a delightful twist
> > because Jules Verne got it right. That is missing here in many
> > instances and while it does not ruin the books for me, it does 
> grate.
> 
> 
> Alla:
> 
> LOLOL. I am sorry but I do find Jules Verne example to be hilarious 
> as 
> example of someone who **got it right**. Okay, contrary to lovely 
> Betsy who managed to touch Sarah Monette books without spoilering 
> them, I am going to be discussing some spoilers here. But I will tie 
> my comments with Potterverse, I hope.
> 
> 
> So, yes, of course Jules Verne **got it right** in Around the world 
> in 
> 80 days. The ultimate surprise of the book depended on him getting 
> it 
> right, hehe. So, if JKR will does something really stupid to resolve 
> the final battle ( well, something more stupid than Potterverse 
> allows, lol) I will buy this contrast, I guess.
> 
> I think right now for me more fitting analogy between JKR, say math 
> mistakes and Jules Verne, would be say Jules Verne "Children of the 
> Captain Grant", "20000 miles in the water", and " Mysterious Island" 
> trilogy, which happen to be my Verne's favorite books ever and I 
> read 
> **plenty** of his books growing up. He was very popular back in the 
> country I grew up in, 
> much more popular than he seems to be in the US.
> 
> Anyways, I digress. If you read Mysterios Island, I will invite you 
> to 
> recall Tom Ayrton's confession to other colonists and then recall 
> when 
> the journey in "The Captain Grant's children" **really** started.
> 
> How many years is Ayrton off? Fifteen? Twenty? I will call it a 
> shameless manipulation of the timeline to make sure that everything 
> fits in the last book, LOL.
> 

Ken:

I didn't mean to say that Jules Verne gets things right more often
than JK Rowling. The Verne example I gave was just to illustrate how
getting the "maths" right can actively delight the average reader and
not just those who read with a slide rule in one hand and a perpetual
calendar in the other.

I've only read "Around the World in 80 Days" and "20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea" from among Verne's works. Those I read before graduating from
high school and I have little memory of them today. If Verne typically
makes grievous "maths" errors and if they grate on you, that really
just makes my point even if my pulling a counterexample from among his
works amuses you. I have not the experience with his work to question
you on that point and in fact I assume that you are correct so I can
see why you would regard Verne as an odd choice to pull an example from. 

But the example still works. And if I had known that Verne was
generally guilty of being "maths" challenged I still would have used
that example precisely because the irony of it would amuse those
familiar with his work. That *is* the sort of bear I am, but in this
case it was accidental.

Ken