August 15, 2003
Phileas Fogg's Balloon
I recently finished reading Jules Verne's Around The World in Eighty Days. It was a surprisingly good read -- interesting characters, a little bit of intrigue, some adventure. Quite fun. But there was one thing missing: The Balloon. I don't know where I got the idea, but I had it in my head that at some point on this trip, Fogg and his companions travel by balloon. For some reason I was really looking forward to reading that part. At every turn of the page I'd anticipate a scenario where they'd need a balloon to travel the next leg of the journey, but it never came. At one point near the end of the story, the notion of crossing the Atlantic in a balloon is mentioned, but that's it.
However, it turns out that I might not be completely crazy. Apparently there have been various film and television productions of this story, and at least one of them features a balloon/airship ride. Although I've never seen any of these films, the presence of the balloon ride in film portrayals might explain the association of Fogg with balloons in popular culture and hence my own expectation. (There's even a reference in the Simpsons where Martin pretends to be Fogg while standing in a balloon.) Furthermore, the original cover art on the book (see link above) shows two men looking up at a spherical object. The object is a stylized planet Earth, but could be mistaken for a balloon.