Today, we celebrate the birthday of Jules Verne, born on this day in 1828 in the French city of Nantes. Jules Verne, the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, is known to everyone as a pioneer of the science-fiction genre. Many call him the "Father of Science Fiction", a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and Hugo Gernsback.
His major works include -
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
- Journey to the Center of the Earth
- From the Earth to the Moon
- Around the World in Eighty Days
- The Mysterious Island
- Five Weeks in a Balloon
- Michael Strogoff
- Off on a Comet
- Robur the Conqueror
- An Antarctic Mystery
- Master of the World
Tributes
Check out this twitter site for some new artwork that will be featured in a Jules Verne exhibition in April.
Movie clips and trailers
Journey To The Center Of The Earth (1959) - Trailer
A Trip To The Moon 1902
A few memorable quotes
- Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.
- As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.
- Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.
- We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.
- I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
Futuristic Technology
Jules Verne was not a prognosticator, but one would think he was, based on the many technologies he imagined in his writings, including Nautilus the electric submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
In Paris In The Twentieth Century written in 1863 and set in 1960 Paris, he wrote about skyscrapers, elevators, cars with internal combustion engines, elevated and underground passenger train systems and high-speed trains powered by magnetism and compressed air, electric city lights, wind power, the replacement of classical music performances with a recorded music industry, suburbs, automated security systems, remotely-controlled weapons systems, fax machines ("picture-telegraphs"), and a group of mechanical calculators that could communicate with one another over a network (like the Internet).
Verne himself flatly denied that he was a futuristic prophet, saying that any connection between scientific developments and his work was "mere coincidence" and attributing his scientific accuracy to his extensive research.
Prescient?
Epilogue
Our astute readers probably know much more about Jules Verne’s writings than I do, so hopefully you have memories and insights to share. How many of his books have you read? Did his writings play a role in your life and your thinking? How do compare Jules Verne to other writers?
Further Reading
- 15 Things You Might Not Know About Jules Verne — mentalfloss.com/…
- The Geology Of Jules Verne's Journey To The Center of the Earth — www.forbes.com/...
- en.wikipedia.org/...