Jules Verne’s famously critiqued H.G. Well’s novels because Wells refused to give the technical specs for his time machines, Martian tripods, and human-animal hybrids on Dr. Moreau’s island. Vernes, by contrast, goes into minute detail into how the Nautilus functions, how professor Von Hardwigg descends beneath the Earth’s crust, and how Phineas Fogg accomplishes a circumnavigation of the world in only 80 days.

Of course, as many critics have noted, Well’s characters actually feel like real people in impossible situations, who learn about themselves and humanity through their harrowing experiences; Verne’s characters are mostly ciphers just there to keep the action moving–they are never tested, they are never relatable. While Well’s stories have beginnings, middles, and ends, there is no plot arc to Vernes–the reader, for example, waits in vain for the big reveal about Captain Nemo’s history in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, because it’s not about Nemo, but the blasted submarine.

Moreover, Verne’s scientific ideas now feel laughably outdated–modern geology has debunked most of Verne’s premises in Journey to the Center of the Earth, the Nautilius is no longer novel technology, and we can now circumnavigate the world in 24 hours (90 minutes if it’s by space shuttle).

Wells, by contrast, still feels relevant because, though his science is likewise specious, nevertheless his novels are not actually about the science:

The Time Machine is less about the 4th dimension (just as Back to the Future isn’t actually about the flux capacitor) or even Well’s clearly shaky grasp of evolutionary theory, than it is about the ultimate futility of all the acts of man (a theme that, in our darker moments, still feels salient today).

War of the Worlds isn’t so much about Martians as it is an open critique of British Imperialism, showing a global superpower what it feels like to be invaded by a superior military force (also still relevant).

And Island of Dr. Moreau isn’t so much about human-animals as it is about our creeping dread of the dehumanizing, abominating effects of technology unrestrained (in our age of nuclear weapons and over-processed foods, not an idle fear).

This is all to say that Verne cared about how things work, while Wells cared about what things represent.

But then, Verne was French and therefore of Catholic background, while Wells was English and therefore of Protestant background.

Verne’s background is relevant because Catholicism is a religion where the wafer is transubstantiated into the actual body of Christ–that is, in Catholicism, things don’t represent, but actually are, through a process. Therefore, functions and processes would be the focus of a Catholic, not representation, just as Vernes cares more about the Nautilus’ functions and processes, than he is about what the Nautilus and Nemo represent (as English-language film adaptations of the novel have focused more on).

Likewise, Well’s background is relevant because the Protestants (especially English Puritans) dismissed such transubstantiation as idolatrous and distracting from the higher spiritual reality that the bread represents, though the bread is not the actual reality itself. Hence, Wells would find such focus on functions and processes to be distracting from the higher ideas that the stories represent.

Apropos of this site, I now wonder where a Mormon reading of these early Sci-Fi pioneers might be located on this axis. It is of course not a novel insight that we have Protestant-style Church services: our sacrament bread and water very much only represent Christ’s body and blood, not literally become them. Yet with our insistence upon proper Priesthood keys and an astonishing sense of literal-mindedness to our doctrine (e.g. God is literally embodied, has his own planet, we anoint with literal olive oil, build physical temples, wear sacred physical under-garments, etc.), our theological tendencies lean far more Catholic. We care very much how things work and what they represent–indeed, we often collapse the distance between the symbol and the referent.