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Verne, Jules

French Science Fiction Novelist 1828-1905

Jules Gabriel Verne, one of the founding fathers of science fiction, was born in Nantes, France, in 1828. He was the eldest son of a successful provincial lawyer. At twelve years of age, Verne ran off to be a cabin boy on a merchant ship, thinking he was going to have an adventure. But his father caught up with the ship before it got very far and took Verne home to punish him. Verne promised in the future he would travel only in his imagination.

In 1847 Verne was sent to study law in Paris, and from 1848 until 1863 wrote opera librettos and plays as a hobby. He read incessantly and studied astronomy, geology, and engineering for many hours in Paris libraries. His first play was published in 1850, prompting his decision to discontinue his law studies. Displeased upon hearing this news, his father stopped paying his son's expenses in Paris. This forced Verne to earn money by selling his stories.

In 1862, at the age of thirty-four, Verne sent a series of works called Voyages Extraordinaire to Pierre-Jules Hetzel, a writer and publisher of literature for children and young adults. Verne attained enough success with the first in the series, Five Weeks in a Balloon, published in 1863, for the Verne/Hetzel collaboration to continue throughout his entire career. Hetzel published Verne's stories in his periodical, Magasin d'Education et de Recreation, and later released them in book form.

Due to nineteenth-century interest in science and invention, Verne's work was received with enormous popular favor. He forecast with remarkable accuracy many scientific achievements of the twentieth century. He anticipated flights into outer space, automobiles, submarines, helicopters, atomic power, telephones, air conditioning, guided missiles, and motion pictures long before they were developed. In his novels, however, science and technology are not the heroes. Instead, his heroes are admirable men who master science and technology. His object was to write books from which the young could learn.

Among his most popular books are Journey to the Center of the Earth(1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1870), Mysterious Island (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). These five novels have remained in almost continuous print for over a century. Verne also produced an illustrated geography of France, and his works have been the source of many films.

Because of the popularity of these and other novels, Verne became a wealthy man. In 1857 he married Honorine de Viane. In 1876 he bought a large yacht and sailed around Europe. This was the extent of his real-life adventuring, leaving the rest for his novels. He maintained a regular writing schedule of at least two volumes a year. Verne published sixty-five novels, thirty plays, librettos, geographies, occasional short stories, and essays.

The last novel he wrote before his death was The Invasion of the Sea. He died in the city of Amiens, France, in 1905.