I loved Jules Verne as a child and remember well seeing movies like “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “Master of the World”. In the 1990’s, I came across a story by Verne in the original French, practically unheard of in the English-speaking world, which gave a very different view of Verne as opposed to his reputation as a not-too-literary glorifier of ‘Boy’s Own’ science. This led to a paper I wrote in 2000 for an undergrad science fiction course. We considered having it published then as quite revelatory, but I decided against it at that time. With dystopian science fiction and its predictions and warnings seeming to be emerging as fact, it may be interesting to know something of the take on science the writer generally known as a utopianist really had. Therefore, as a matter of general interest and slightly blushing, I reproduce the paper here, complete with typos and corrections by my lecturer! The original was 5000 words which had to be reduced to 3000 for submission, thus the occasionally stilted turn of phrase and attempt to cram essential detail into footnotes – necessary reading for context.

N. B. Today, I would translate “Le Feu…Il brille au Paradis, il brule l’Enfer” more simply as “Fire – it shines in Heaven, it burns in Hell” and  the literal translation of “Qui qu’en donne” is slightly different from that as it appears in the essay.