Jules Verne was a French writer, whose stories are well known world wide. He is often called the "Father of Science Fiction". His stories were about inventions which were far ahead of his time.

Jules Verne made a name for himself with travellers' tales - stories which tell about the adventures people have on journeys. In his life time he wrote 54 major novels which were about life in the future - science fiction.

Jules Verne was born in the sea port of Nantes in 1828. His family had a sea faring ancestry which fascinated the young Jules so much that he ran away from home to be a cabin boy on a merchant ship. He was soon caught out, and sent back to his parents.

Space ship in "From the Earth
to the Moon."

Later, Jules Verne went to Paris to study law, but discovered the theatre. He published his first play in 1850, three years after arriving in Paris. His father was furious when he discovered that Jules had given up his legal studies. He cut off his allowance, so Jules had to make money from selling his works in order to live.

Jules spent a long time studying geology, astronomy and engineering in the libraries of Paris. He looked at the inventions which had been made in his own life time and then added to them his visions and dreams for the future. He was able to invent a future that did not exist until well into the twentieth century. Jules Verne is one of those authors that make you wonder if time machines have been invented after all!

In 1863 Jules Verne published his first novel which was called " Five Weeks in a Balloon" . The concept of long voyages by air was totally unknown and unthought of at the time.

Soon he he was producing novels very quickly, such as: Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864 , From the Earth to the Moon in 1866 (which amazingly predicted space travel and later a landing on the moon) and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea in 1873 ( which predicted humans living and working for very long periods in the deep oceans.)

A stamp featuring an adventure from
"Journey to the Centre of the Earth".

This picture is an illustration from a very early copy of "From the Earth to the Moon".

Many people think that the landing capsule looks like that of Apollo 13. Verne predicted many things which were later part of the Apollo projects. For example, the splashdown point in Verne's book was just a few miles away from the actual splashdown point of Apollo 8 ... and the moon capsule was launched from Florida, just a few miles from the actual location of Cape Canaveral.

The launch of Verne's craft was preceded by an actual by-the-second countdown using an accurate electric clock; its mass, approximately 10,000 kg. was very close to the actual mass of the Apollo command module.

Verne's capsule also had three astronauts on board (two of them American and one Frenchman, in the spirit of international cooperation); it used a chemical system to generate oxygen and another to extract carbon dioxide during the trip and it made a slingshot trip (named Free Return Trajectory a century later) around the Moon in order to return to the Earth.

"Around the World in 80 days" must have encouraged many people in the last century to travel internationally. Even today, it can be a challenge to achieve Jules Verne's journey in his time limit.

"Journey to the Centre of the Earth" tells how a group of people tried to discover the secrets inside the Earth's core

Captain Nemo ponders over a giant
octopus in "20 000 Leagues
under the Sea."

Verne loved to invent machines
for his imaginary travels in the future.

All these books became very popular, making Jules Verne a very rich man. His last novel was published in 1905, the year of his death.

An interesting and little known fact:

One of Jules' earliest works was a novel dating from 1863 that was called Paris in the 20th Century. Jules imagined a Paris that had glass high rise, cars powered by gas engines, calculators, high speed trains and a global communication network. The hero was a young man who could not find happiness in spite of all the wonderful things around him. He died a tragic death. Verne's publisher thought that this sad ending would harm Verne's popularity and advised him to put the book aside and maybe publish it 20 years later.

Verne tucked his book away in his safe, and thought no more of it. It remained there, forgotten, until his great grandson discovered it over a hundred years later in 1989. It was finally published in 1994!

Here are some of Jules Verne's works. It is claimed that he is one of the most translated authors of the world.

His books are as popular today as they were when they were first published - a tribute to the imagination and inventiveness of their author.

You can see from the dates that Verne published one, sometimes two books per year - he was a prolific writer!

• Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq Semaines en ballon, 1863)
• Paris in the 20th Century (Paris au XXe Siecle, 1863, not published until 1994)
• Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre, 1864)
• From the Earth to the Moon (De la terre à la lune, 1865)
• Journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras (Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras, 1866)
• In Search of the Castaways or Captain Grant's Children (Les Enfants du capitaine Grant, 1867-1868)
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, 1870)
• "Around The Moon" (Autour de la lune, a sequel to From the Earth to the Moon, 1870)
• A Floating City (Une ville flottante, 1871)
• Dr. Ox's Experiment (Une Fantaisie du Docteur Ox, 1872)
• The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa (Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais, 1872 )
• The Fur Country (Le Pays des fourrures, 1873)
• Around the World in Eighty Days (Le Tour du Monde en quatre-vingts jours, 1873)
• The Survivors of the Chancellor (Le Chancellor, (1875)
• The Mysterious Island (L’île mysterieuse, 1875)
• The Blockade Runners, ( 1875)
• Michael Strogoff (Michel Strogoff, 1876)
• Off On A Comet (Hector Servadac, 1877)

• The Child of the Cavern, also known as Black Diamonds or The Black Indies (Les Indes noires, 1877)
• Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen (Un Capitaine de quinze ans, 1878)
• The Steam House (La Maison à vapeur, 1879)
• Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon (La Jangada, 1881)
• The Green Ray (Le Rayon vert, 1882)
• The Headstrong Turk (1883)
• The Vanished Diamond (L’Étoile du sud, 1884)
• The Archipelago on Fire (L’Archipel en feu, 1884)
• Mathias Sandorf (1885)
• Robur the Conqueror or The Clipper of the Clouds (Robur-le-Conquérant, 1886)
• Ticket No. "9672" (Un Billet de loterie, 1886 )
• North Against South (Nord contre Sud, 1887)
• The Flight to France (Le Chemin de France, 1887)
• Two Years' Vacation (Deux Ans de vacances, 1888)
• Topsy Turvy, (1890)
• The Castle of the Carpathians (Le Château des Carpathes, 1892)
• Propeller Island (L’Île à hélice, 1895)
• The Purchase of the North Pole (Sans dessus dessous, the second sequel to From the Earth to the Moon, 1895)
• Facing the Flag (Face au drapeau, 1896)
• Clovis Dardentor (1896)
• The Sphinx of the Ice Fields or An Antarctic Mystery (Le Sphinx des glaces, a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1897)
• The Mighty Orinoco (Le Superbe Orénoque, 1897)
• The Village in the Treetops (Le Village aérien, 1901)
• The Master of the World (Maître du monde, sequel to Robur the Conqueror, 1904)
• Invasion of the Sea (L’Invasion de la mer, 1904)
• A drama in Livonia (Un Drame en Livonie, 1904)
• The Lighthouse at the End of the World (Le Phare du bout du monde, 1905)
• The Chase of the Golden Meteor (La Chasse au météore, 1908)
• The Danube Pilot (Le Pilote du Danube, 1908)
• The Survivors of the 'Jonathan' (Le Naufrages du Jonathan, 1909)