3 Jules Verne fictions that were much ahead of their time
How many of you remember reading about Londoner Phileas Fog and his French valet Passepartout attempting to circumnavigate the world in a period of 80 days? Yes, yes, we are talking about one of the most celebrated and loved works of fiction Around the World in Eighty Days. This brilliant novel that is part travelogue, part adventure, part natural history, and part science fiction was authored by none other than the celebrated French author Jules Verne. But long before Verne wrote and published Around the World in Eighty Days in 1873, he had written several other novels, all of which have similar themes and centre around geography, science and modern technologies. Today, let us look at three of them which are are futuristic as they allude to quite a few scientific developments of the modern times.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Published in 1870, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was Jules Verne’s sixth novel. It is an adventure novel involving submarines, crude, small and perilous underwater vessels humans were using then to explore the marine world. The story revolves around Captain Nemo and his two associates who hop onto the world’s first submarine called Nautilus with the aim of traversing all the world’s seas, only to be hijacked by a group of treasure hunters. As they circle around the globe underwater, they along with the readers go on a ride into some of the deepest and most mysterious parts of the ocean. Often deemed as Verne’s own favourite from among all his works, the novel is ahead of its time considering it predicts the launch of nuclear submarines of the next century. Interestingly, the first nuclear submarine itself that was a doing of the US Navy was named USS Nautilus, inspired by Captain Nemo’s fictional submarine.
From the Earth to the Moon
Five years prior to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne penned his fourth novel and named it From the Earth to the Moon. The subtitle was “A Direct Route in 97 hours, 20 minutes. This novel has a cutting-edge plot in which a group of adventure seekers associated with the Baltimore Gun Club (a post-American Civil War Society where members were weapon enthusiasts) attempts to build a cannon, large enough to deploy a bullet-shaped space capsule with three human occupants on-board. Their destination? The moon! Oh, and the crew will comprise of a weird combination: The Gun Club’s President, his armour-making rival and a French poet who would take accounts of the mission. The challenge, however, was the physics involved, to balance out the speed of the projectile with the atmospheric pressure and the gravitational forces, so that the spacecraft did not burn up and kill the occupants. In today’s real world as well as in fiction, this seems like a piece of cake. But back in the 19th century, space science was still not that advanced.
What’s interesting about this fiction of Verne is that, here the humans end up orbiting the moon, rather than landing on its surface. It’s mission half accomplished, isn’t it? Okay, but did they ever accomplish the original goal? Well, you also have to read the sequel for that. It’s called Around the Moon published in 1870.
What we are going to tell you will surprise you even more. Verne in his From the Earth to the Moon presents Florida as the most strategic place to launch a space vehicle. However, it took scientists decades to realise that Florida is the most ideal strategic location on earth to launch a space mission. That is why NASA established the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida- in the year 1962. More than 250 space launches have happened from this NASA centre till date. Verne, it seems, is more like a visionary than an author, isn’t it?
Five Weeks in a Balloon
Also known as A Journey of Discovery by Three Englishmen in Africa, Verne’s first novel was born in 1863. It is an adventure fiction wherein the protagonist Dr. Fergusson pioneers a device with the capacity to alter the altitude of a balloon, without relying on its ballast, but solely on favourable wind movement. The story has Fergusson and his companions explore 400 miles across Africa on their balloon while coming face to face with cannibals, and exotic flora and fauna. The novel is full of plot twists and keeps the readers on edge with its geography, history and technical details. At a time when Africa was still largely a mystery for the western world, this fiction offered one of the first glimpses of the continent.