The Floating Island by Jules Verne

It’s been a slow week so far. I got an nice form letter from the EFF, thanking me for a contribution and they sent along a shiny black bumper sticker with their logo on it. The sticker is printed on some sort of plastic and smells just like those inflatible toys that kids play with at the beach. Another Tai Chi class monday. I’m finally getting the hang of the first three or four moves.

I picked up an out-of-print book on eBay that I’ve been searching for. The Floating Island (aka Propeller Island) by Jules Verne. Like most really cool ideas, Verne seems to have thought of constructing a floating city on the ocean long before most. Buckminster Fuller came up with the same idea back in the 50’s and there must be dozen groups promoting the idea today as if they’d thought of it, such as Oceania, Freedomship, Celestopea, and Aquarius. One of these days I’m going to put together a web page of info on the whole Sea City idea. The other claim to fame for The Floating Island is that it is supposed to be the first novel in a European language to be written in the present tense and third person. The copy I bought is just under 100 years old but is well-preserved and includes all those cool illustrations that you don’t get in modern reprints of Verne books.