The Flag of the Fatherland

The brilliant scientist Tom Rok is the inventor of the “fulgulator,” a weapon of the greatest power. Humiliated by repeated failures, Rok sells the fulgulator to the leader of a band of villains and swindlers from around the world… and becomes his captive himself.

Note:

A literal translation of the novel’s title is “Face to the Banner.”

In the novel, an opening of new explosive substances at the end of the 1880s and the improvement of ballistics and artillery are reflected. The image of the mad inventor Tom Rok was inspired by a real, much-publicized court case involving the famous French chemist Eugène Turpin—inventor of trinitrophenol. In France and Russia, it was called melinite; in the U.S., picric acid; and in Japan, shimo sa. Turpin proposed using it to equip artillery shells. However, in 1885 the French government refused to grant a patent to the inventor or to buy his invention. Later it accused him of disclosing state secrets and selling technical novelties abroad.

Some sources state that the novel was written no later than 1893; others claim it was written in 1894–95 within four and a half months.

The first publication of the novel was in Etzel’s magazine “Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation” from January 1 to June 15, 1896. The first book edition appeared on July 16, 1896, and was illustrated by Léon Benett.

This novel, together with “Clovis Dardentor,” was included in the thirty-second “paired” volume of “Extraordinary Voyages,” which was released on November 30, 1896. The novel “The Banner of the Homeland” contained 42 illustrations by Léon Benett and 6 color pasted-in plates.

In the autumn of 1896, Eugène Turpin initiated a lawsuit, seeing in the novel offensive hints about himself, despite the fact that—according to general opinion—there were no hints or, above all, direct references. Turpin’s defender in this case was Raymond Poincaré, the future President of France. By the end of November, the proceedings ended in favor of Jules Verne and his publisher—“for lack of evidence.” Nevertheless, some sources claim that in the correspondence between the author of the novel and his brother Paul, there are sufficiently detailed considerations of Turpin as the model for Tom Rok. There is also, however, another version according to which the model for Rok was Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who more than once expressed regret that he had given the world such a destructive power.

The first Russian translation of the novel was printed in 1896 in the magazine “Vokrug Sveta” under the title “Native Banner,” and in the same year it was released as a separate book by the publishing house of I. D. Sytin. Another translation under the same title was included in the complete works of Jules Verne published by P. P. Soin. After that, it was not issued in Russian until the release of the 12-volume collected works in the late 1950s.

The weapon described in the novel, Tom Rok’s “fulgulator,” is depicted as a self-propelled projectile filled with explosive; it has a liquid detonator and is launched from a launcher. The projectile explodes either directly when it hits the target or near the target. In fact, the novel describes a prototype of a combat rocket. The inventor says that the diameter of the blast is several kilometers—so one might say that, to some extent, the atomic bomb was predicted.