The mysterious island

A novel by?Jules Verne, published in?1875. The original edition, published by?Hetzel, contains a number of illustrations by?Jules F?rat. The novel is a?crossover?sequel?to Verne's famous?Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas(1870) and?In Search of the Castaways(1867?68), though its themes are vastly different from those books. An early draft of the novel, initially rejected by Verne's publisher and wholly reconceived before publication, was titled?Shipwrecked Family: Marooned with Uncle Robinson, seen as indicating the influence of the novels?Robinson Crusoe?and?The Swiss Family Robinson. Verne developed a similar theme in his later novel,?Godfrey Morgan.

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amszmidtAug 2025

Dan Ingalls answer is much more interesting than anything I could explain ...

From https://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998...

    Ralph -
    
    Many times I have browsed past your article "About the Smalltalk
    Balloon" and been tempted to add to the little bit of history that you
    have there.  While your link is entitled "Why a hot-air balloon is the
    symbol of Smalltalk," you never really answer the question.  The time
    has come to tie up that loose end.  Return with us now to those
    thrilling days of yesteryear, and
    
     The Real Story About the Smalltalk Balloon
    
    Everyone in our group wanted to challenge the ivory tower image in
    Byte's special issue on Pascal, because in fact we were all working
    intensely to get Smalltalk-80 out the door from Xerox at the time.
    The cover of that issue depicted the "land of Smalltalk" as a remote
    island, and that triggered a connection for me out of which was born
    the fanstasy of liberating Smalltalk from the ivory tower by balloon
    ascent.
    
    Here is the connection...
    
    My favorite book from youth was The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne.
    It is the story of an engineer, Cyrus Harding, who gets blown far
    afield in a storm during a balloon surveillance mission in the 1860's.
    He ends up stranded on an island but, through ingenuity and a bit of
    luck, he manages to recreate most of the accomplishments and comforts
    of civilization on his own (with a little help from an amiable
    orangutan ;-).  Cyrus Harding became my childhood standard for
    resourcefulness and the conviction that anything can be accomplished
    if you are clever and persistent.
    
    The fantasy of a balloon as the vehicle for Smalltalk's release stuck
    with me from then on.  When the opportunity came to design the cover
    for the Byte issue on Smalltalk, I made the suggestion of the balloon
    lifting off from the island shown on the Pascal cover, and everyone
    picked up on it.  Robert Tinney executed the wonderful graphic that we
    know so well, and the rest is history.
    
     - Dan
    
    P.S.  There is a further coincidence in this particular literary
    allusion: It is revealed at the end of The Mysterious Island that the
    island is actually the base of operations for a more well-known Verne
    character, and that character happens also to be the childhood hero of
    a more well-known figure in the history of Smalltalk.

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WillAdamsApr 2025

For the machine shop there are the "Gingery" books:

https://gingerybookstore.com/

which is a multi-volume series based on the fact that a lathe is the only tool in a machine shop which can replicate itself, so the first volume has one make an aluminum casting foundry in one's backyard, the second how to use it to make a lathe, then one can use the rough-cast lathe to improve itself (or make a better lathe), and from there make the entirety of a machine shop.

Blacksmithing as noted in the original article is unique in that it is self-sufficient in a way that few other processes are, and downright elemental in what one needs.

Another book which touches on this sort of things is Verne's _The Mysterious Island_ which has a couple of escaped Civil War prisoners making things from essentially first principles:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1268

Less on the nose are _Robinson Crusoe_ and _The Swiss Family Robinson_, though those have starter kits in the form of flotsam and jetsam (rather more than that for the latter).

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aredoxDec 2024

People who want to learn chemistry from first principles in a fun way should read Jules Verne 's "Mysterious Island" or, in manga or anime , "Dr Stone". Lots of fun.

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mindcrimeOct 2024

A few come to mind, over the course of my childhood up to and including high-school.

The "Mad Scientist's Club" series

The Great Brain

Those "Encyclopedia Brown" stories

The "The Three Investigators" series

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

The original Doyle "Sherlock Holmes" canon

The Soul Of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder

The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

Nineteen Eighty Four

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m0d0nne11Oct 2024

Mysterious Island and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (the stilted, nearly verbatim French->English translations STRONGLY preferred! the "improved" translations fail to convey so much of the fascinating details...) and also The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Hitchhikers Guide, of course. And Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

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mindcrimeAug 2024

A few that come to mind.

Fiction:

Neuromancer - William Gibson

False Memory - Dean Koontz

The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

Non-fiction:

The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank

The Discipline of Market Leaders - Fred Wiersema and Michael Treacy