Propeller Island
1895 novel by Jules Verne
Propeller Island (French: L'Île à hélice) (also published as The Floating Island, or The Pearl of the Pacific, and as The Self-Propelled Island) is a science fiction novel by French author Jules Verne (1828–1905). It was first published in 1895 as part of the Voyages Extraordinaires. It relates the adventures of a French string quartet in Milliard City, a city on a massive ship in the Pacific Ocean, inhabited entirely by millionaires.
Plot
A French string quartet (Sébastien Zorn, Frascolin, Yvernes and Pinchinat), traveling from San Francisco to their next engagement in San Diego, is diverted to Standard Island.
There is also a comic interlude when they arrive at night and are being ignored after playing good music. So they intentionally play out of tune, getting an immediate response.
Standard Island is an immense man-made island designed to travel the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The wealth of residents of the island can only be measured in millions. The quartet is hired to play a number of concerts for the residents during their tour of the islands (Sandwich, Cook, Society) of the South Pacific.
The island seems an idyllic paradise; however, it is an island pulled between two factions.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Propeller Island” as 1895 novel by Jules Verne. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1895 novel by Jules Verne. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1215553. VIAF identifies the subject as 174761835. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1828, 1905 and 1895.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Propeller Island” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.