Jules Verne imagined submarines, moon shots, and world tours before engineering caught up. This tag collects reviews and essays on Verne’s work and adaptations, and the extraordinary track record of his imagination.
Fiction WritingVerne gave Neb one job and no interior life. He is on almost every page of the original and never once in a sentence that matters. This version is the correspondent’s private record, and it exists to correct that.
1950sAround the World in 80 Days (1956) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Mike Todd shot the Verne novel in six countries with about forty recognizable faces in one-scene appearances, invented the modern cameo, and beat Giant…
Book ReviewsVerne's search-and-rescue novel is minor work on its own, but it plants Tom Ayrton on a remote island with a promise of rescue, setting up a thread that won't pay off for eight years and three books. The real story…
Fiction WritingJules Verne gave Tom Ayrton about thirty pages and never went inside him. Twelve years alone on Tabor Island, marooned as punishment, rescued and reformed and killed off as machinery for somebody else’s adventure. This is his account.
Fiction WritingVerne wrote political manifestos with a plot wrapped around them. The situation is strong and there is nobody inside it, so this version hands the narration to the harpooner who wants off the ship.
Fiction WritingGideon Spilett kept two sets of records on Lincoln Island, one for the New York Herald and one for himself. What he left out of the published account was the whole of Neb, and the reason was that an equal…
Character DevelopmentJules Verne wrote three novels across eight years that turn out to be one story, with returning characters, honoured consequences, and a timeline that does not add up.
AdaptationVerne gave Tom Ayrton thirty pages and no interior. This is his confession, taken in sessions after twelve years alone on Tabor Island, including what he did for his wife.
FebruaryJules Verne imagined submarines and space travel before either existed and is the second most translated author in history. On his birthday, the father of science fiction, reimagined from the inside.
Jules VerneH.G. Wells founded the opposite half of science fiction from Verne. Where Verne loved the machine, Wells used the impossible to hold a mirror to humanity. A look at the divide that still runs through the genre.
Black and WhiteMéliès's 1902 14-minute fantasy short. The first proper science fiction film.
1960sMysterious Island is the Harryhausen adaptation of Jules Verne. The film adapts Verne's 1874-1875 novel L'Île mystérieuse, with substantial creative liberty.
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