Ancient history

Jules Verne:When fantasy becomes reality

Few cases like Jules Verne they fit into the concept of "fortune teller", which today many charlatans appropriate to validate their delusions and deceptions. The French writer, whose imagination made him the foremost maker of fantastic stories that have been enjoyed by generations of children and adults throughout the years, passed away on March 24, 1905, exactly 109 years ago, and his legacy has been a source of inspiration for inventors and scientists who, in all that time, have turned into reality some of their visionary creations of adventurous children's literature. Let us remember in this semblance who was Jules Verne and how his novels have been a fundamental part of the technological and industrial evolution of the 20th century.


It is not a known issue, much less confirmed that the author of “Around the world in eighty days” has cultivated the quality possessed by fortune-tellers to glimpse the events that the future holds. However, judging by many of the works that this famous French writer left for posterity, it would not be a very far statement from the truth to assert that Jules Verne he was a fortune teller. Jules Verne He is, without a doubt, along with H. G Orwell, the most progressive writer that world literature has given us.

The importance of the work of the father of the science fiction and adventure novel is incalculable. The novels of Jules Verne they had a vast scientific basis, because the writer dealt deeply with advances in technology and new discoveries. Young Verne's almost obsessive fondness for collecting all kinds of publications and articles related to science and technology is well known. His predilection for writing about the advances made possible by human intelligence led him to bequeath us a good number of fantastic novels that people all over the world still value. Verne's descriptive ability coupled with his inexhaustible imagination was the source of the most accurate predictions ever made in world literature.

Thus, for example, in his famous novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Verne is ahead of his time by telling us about a machine capable of diving underwater and allowing the crew of this steel racing car, will reach the very bowels of our planet. Years later, the world would know that Captain Nemo's Nautilus, to which Verne referred in his book, was nothing other than what we know today as submarines.

This was not the only surprising prediction of the Gallic writer. In another of his books (Robur the Conqueror), this genius of letters tells us about the appearance of a kind of yacht that had propellers capable of sustaining it, that is, the invention that would eventually be called a helicopter. The restlessness of Jules Verne to discover the world, was the reason that most of the characters in his novels were always traveling and trying to explore places that man had never been able to reach.

Jules Verne he was the son of Pierre Verne and Sophie Allote de la Fuye. His birth is recorded on February 8, 1828, on the island of Feydem, in Nantes, France. The oldest son of five, his father came from a family dedicated to the practice of law and his mother descended from a family with a military tradition. The family confrontation that took place when the future writer decided not to pursue the law degree that he had successfully completed in Paris, led him to suffer more than necessary in his attempt to finance his life while he dedicated himself to reading a large number of books and spend many hours in the libraries of Paris.

The first fantastic futuristic work that was born from the genius of Verne, was called Paris in the 20th century, a work whose publication took place in 1994, 89 years after the writer's death, which occurred on March 24, 1905. This was followed by:Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), The Children of Captain Grant (1867), Twenty Thousand Leagues of Submarine Voyage (1869), The Mysterious Island (1874), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), Miguel Strogoff (1876), The Ice Sphinx (1897), The Superb Orinoco (1898), etc.

A strange incident whose causes are still unknown left him lame in one leg for life. It is believed that after a strong argument with his nephew named Gastón, he received a bullet in the leg that caused a severe injury.

As a result of this unhappy event, which was accompanied shortly after by the death of his mother, Verne began to write much more tragic and pessimistic novels than he had written. created up to then. The passage of the father of the science fiction novel through politics, left a good impression of an altruistic man who was of mature age. (Jules Verne he was elected councilor of Amiens, where he proposed and carried out a number of positive plans for the city).

Jules Verne he passed away at the beginning of the 20th century, a victim of diabetes. He left the world of the living to begin an existence within the thought of the collectivities in the different regions of the world. The search for Jules Verne for always writing works that people could dream of in a realistic way and be able to expand their mentality and horizon without the need to move away from life on this planet, was a constant in the rich work of this excellent writer. The technological discoveries that the writer himself dreamed of were always inventions that would serve to improve the lives of men on earth and were never discoveries made to destroy or harm humanity, a characteristic that reveals the philanthropic soul of this giant of letters. worldwide.