Jules Verne

ARP-I

Jules Verne pioneered the science fiction genre. He developed a vocabulary that would

enhance his “novel of science” in 65 volumes, of which the most famous are Five Weeks in a

Balloon (1862) Voyage to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the

Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, and Mysterious Island. These novels also provided Verne with the opportunity to engage in social criticism concerning, for example, the abuses of European colonization, whales as an endangered species, fossil fuel pollution, and slaughtering elephants for ivory. Most people called Verne a prophet for his time. Verne was also a visionary with a sense of poetry evident in his descriptions of the landscapes and animals that fill his fantasic journeys.

Some of Vernes Novel’s had objects or ideas that coincide with the future of his time period or ours. Such as in Twenty Thousand Leagues under