Geeks in History: Jules Verne
For all of our readers who are science-fiction geeks like I am, today’s historical geek was a pioneer in that field. He was imaginative, writing over 54 novels and many more essays and short stories. Of course, the one I am referring to is Jules Gabriel Verne.
Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in Nantes, Brittany in France, to Pierre Verne, an attorney, and his wife, Sophie. Growing up in the harbor town of Nantes, he was surrounded by the view of many ships. He and his brother paul would rent one from time to time, inspiring his short story, Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse. He and Paul were sent to boarding school at the Saint Donatien College where he studied Latin and might have been influenced by the creator of the US Navy’s first submarine, Brutus de Villeroi, who was rumored to be one of his teachers.
By 1848, he was out of school and living in Paris, working with Michel Carré writing libretti for operettas. His focus was to be law, but when it turned out he spent more time writing than studying, his father withdrew financial aid and so Verne went to work as a stockbroker. While he hated the work, he was good at it, but still pursued his passion of writing, meeting with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas for advice. It was also during this time that he met his wife, Honorine de Viane Morel, and married her on January 10, 1857.
Verne’s fortunes changed when he met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who had also published Victor Hugo, and in 1863 Five Weeks in a Balloon or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen was published after some coaching from Hetzel. From then on, two more works per year were published including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), and its sequel, All Around the Moon (1870). After a while, his stories were serialized in a Hetzel biweekly publication, Magazine d’Éducation et de Récréation, and Verne became rather wealthy and famous.
Verne had a mentally ill nephew named Gaston who shot him on March 9, 1886, leaving Verne with an incurable limp. After the deaths of people close to him, his works grew darker, and then Verne entered politics, becoming the town councillor of Amiens. On March 24, 1905, Jules Verne died in his home, and his son Michel made sure his last works, Invasion of the Sea and The Lighthouse at the End of the World, were published.
One of the ironies about Jules Verne is that he wrote a story in 1863 called Paris in the 20th Century about glass skyscrapers, calculators, a world-wide communications system, high-speed trains, and more things that we find common place in our society today. The main character could not find his happiness as the works of literature and classics had been put aside in a society where only financial gain and technology are valued. Hetzel, the publisher at the time, did not release it because he thought it was unbelieveable. It’s definitely worth a read and is very affordable on Amazon. Would people have heeded this warning had the book been released then? Truly Verne was a visionary with a clear view of how far forward (or backwards) science could take us.
Geeks in History is a biweekly column about notable geeks of the past and how they impacted modern life.
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