8 Reasons You Should Read More Jules Verne
Verne was one of the fathers of science fiction, yet today, he is hardly read, and books by him are hard to find.
Jules Verne is one of the founding fathers of science fiction, yet today, his books are difficult to find and rarely read. Many people know his works just as 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in 80 Days, but he wrote nearly 100 books exploring every part of the world.
1. Robur the Conqueror – the real first Avenger.
Later in his life, Verne created his first super villain, Robur the Conqueror. He sails the world in a ship that sails in the air, not on the water: The Albatross. The Albatross is a gigantic ship raised into the air via huge propellers.
Sound familiar? Yup, Robur sailed around the world in a prototype of the Avengers' Helicarrier.
All this, 17 years before the Wright Brothers flew their first plane.
Robur later returned in Master of the World to play havoc in a super-powered submarine, speedboat, and automobile. Each capable of traveling between 150 and 200 miles an hour.
2. Verne wrote fan fiction
Verne was obsessed with the works of Edgar Allan Poe. In his 1897 novel, The Sphinx of the Ice Fields (often called An Antarctic Mystery in English), Verne takes Poe’s only novel, A Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which leaves off in a cliffhanger, and finishes the narrative. He tries to explain some of Poe’s quasi-supernatural events with scientific explanations.
3.Verne prompts the writing of Dracula.
In 1893, Verne wrote the novel The Castle in the Carpathians about a mysterious castle in Transylvania where there is said to lie a curse. It is entirely possible that Irish author Bram Stoker took Verne’s tale and changed Verne’s plot of modern scientific wizardry to one of superstitious vampires four years later when he published Dracula.
4.Verne Invents Steampunk
While many of his predicted technologies do not require steam power (rather he explains everything away as some form of electricity), Verne does use steam power in his 1880 novel The Steam House. In it, he has a group of adventurers traveling around in a steam-powered elephant!
5.Verne Invents Dystopian Fiction
In 1994, Verne did something no one thought he would ever do: publish a new novel. This was unexpected since he died in 1905. The story goes that Verne wrote a novel entitled Paris in the 20th Century in 1863, but his publisher thought it was too bleak for the public to read, so the novel was locked away in a vault for 131 years. When rediscovered, it was found that Verne had written a dystopian version of the future (1960 Paris) where science and technology held sway and the humanities were lost and forgotten. This can be seen as one of the earliest works of dystopian fiction. Its publication nearly 90 years after the author’s death only creates more mystery about the book.
6.Verne’s Dystopia Predicts the Real Future
In Paris, he also predicted this that actually came true like the fax machine, elevated trains, modern atonal and electronic classical music, electric lights, skyscrapers, a large lighthouse in the center of Paris (what would be the Eiffel Tower – which, has currently has a restaurant in it named The Jules Verne), and the INTERNET.
7.Verne Wrote Crime/Mystery Novels
Not all of Verne’s works were sci-fi. He wrote several novels that can only be described as early crime mysteries such as The Tribulations of a Chinese Man in China (insurance scams and murder) and The Star of the South (a diamond theft).
8.Verne Accurately Predicted the Apollo Missions
Probably the most accurate prediction of the future Verne made was in the voyage to the moon. In his novel From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel Around the Moon, Verne correctly predicts many of the important details of what would later be the Apollo Missions. His accurate predictions include the launch site (Florida), approximate cost, capsule size and weight, crew size, weightlessness, escape velocity, time to get to the moon, and the exact spot of landing (2 miles from the spot in the middle of the Pacific that Apollo 8 actually landed).
Sadly, there are two things hindering your reading of Jules Verne. First, his books, aside from the most famous 3 or 4, are incredibly difficult to find in print. Second, many of his books are poorly translated from the French into English. In fact, the translators in the 1800s would often change the titles, omit sections, rename characters, and even add in their own social commentary.
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