Father of science fiction: who is Jules Verne?

The geographies that Jules Verne told left magical effects just like the legends. The boundless machines he dreamed of inspired other imaginations. The names he gave were used when the day came and they were invented.

Jules Gabriel Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905[3]) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well documented, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.

Nautilus became the name of the first true nuclear submarine. Research devoted to unraveling the mystery of the universe, satellites, and rockets, was named Jules Verne. Anyone who has read at least one or two of his books can quickly sense his extraordinary imagination and colorful world, and then perhaps, with great conditioning, think he's just calling out to children. However, Jules Verne's books describe a world that will fascinate all ages.

Jules Gabriel Verne was the eldest of Sophie and Pierre Verne's five children. The city of Nantes, where he was born on February 8, 1828, was as crowded as Europe of the same years, and the island on the Loire River, where he spent his childhood years, was just as uninhabited. His imagination, which started at the age of nine when he went to naval school with his brother Paul, was accelerated by this early isolation, according to some.

He was interested in literature and theater in Paris, where he went to study law in 1847. He begins to frequent the famous literary salons of Paris. He befriends a group of writers and artists, including Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and his son. After graduating in 1849, he continued to stay in Paris. The following year, his one-act play Les Pailles Rompues is staged. His interest in theater deepens and he continues to write despite the pressures of his father, who wanted him to continue his career in law. In 1852, when Verne refuses his father's offer to open a law firm in Nantes, his father stops sending money. The author works as a low-paid secretary at the Théâtre Lyrique, allowing him to perform plays such as Le Colin-Maillard and Les Compagnons de la Marjolaine.

In 1857 Verne married Honorine de Viane (1831 – 1910), with whom he had two daughters. Although he worked as a stockbroker in Paris under the influence of his wife's brother, who was a stockbroker, he did not interrupt his writings, and his first book was published in Salon 1857 that year. Together with his close friend Aristide Hignard, he went out of France for the first time in 1859 and toured the British Isles. His notes on this trip inspired his novel Journey to Scotland. In 1861, the couple's only child, Michel Jean Pierre Verne, was born.

Verne's book is rejected by publishers, but his luck turns when he meets editor and publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1862. In 1863, Five Weeks in a Balloon, the first book in the Extraordinary Voyages series, was thus published. There is great interest in the book. The French photographer, known as Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), took off with his balloon named Giant (Le Géant) and took pictures of Paris, which further increased the interest in the book. Verne agrees with Pierre-Jules Hetzel, many of his works will appear in his educational journal. The Adventures of Captain Hatteras was published in 1864. In this novel, Verne talks about this event 50 years before the North Pole was discovered.

In Journey to the Center of the Earth, published in 1864, he describes the adventure of Axel, who set off from a volcano to the center of the earth with his geologist uncle.

Written in 1865, nearly a hundred years before the astronauts landed on the Moon, one of the earliest examples of science fiction, Journey to the Moon is one of the best examples of Jules Verne's scientific and literary genius. The moon voyage in Jules Verne's novel is surprisingly similar to the Apollo 11 expedition, which successfully completed its mission in 1969. Verne's fictional space capsule contains three people, two American and one French. The Apollo 11 flight is also performed by three astronauts. The dimensions of Verne's capsule are unbelievably close to those of Apollo. Jules Verne created Michael Ardan, the hero of Journey to the Moon, inspired by the French photographer Nadar.

He buys a large yacht and goes to the USA in 1867 with his brother. Verne not only tours Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles and the Mediterranean region, the USA, but also writes most of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and some of his novels on this yacht. One of his best-known works, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, published in 1870, tells the adventures of Captain Nemo and Pierre Aronnax, Conseil and Ned Land, who had to be guests on his ship, in the Nautilus. Set in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Baltic Sea, the South Pole, and the Lost Continent of Atlantis, the novel has been adapted for cinema many times.

The novel Around the World in Eighty Days, published in 1873, is based on a true story. That same year, George Francis Train, a businessman, announced that he could travel the world in 80 days after running for president of the United States. However, it can finish the trip twice the time. After several attempts, only 20 years later, in 1890, he managed to circumnavigate the world in 67 days.

Phileas Fogg, a wealthy Englishman in the novel, while leading a gentleman's life, makes a bet at a club he joins, using his financial means to the fullest. He will circumnavigate the whole world in 80 days, he sets out to make his tour without a schedule. He also does not neglect to say "Gentlemen, wait for me here on December 21".

Keraban, published in 1883 by Jules Verne, is a novel that takes place in the Ottoman geography and most of its heroes are chosen from the Ottoman people. However, Jules Verne has never been to Turkey. The events that started in Istanbul in the late 1800s in the novel end in Istanbul after a wide and interesting Black Sea tour.

They see Jules Verne as the father of science fiction, while some do not agree with such a determination, saying that his novels in this genre are at most a part of all his works. Jules Verne, described as a science fortune-teller and prophet of technology, told Strand Magazine in February 1895: “Undoubtedly it stems from my always trying to make everything as real and simple as possible, even when inventing scientific facts. I owe much of the accuracy of my descriptions to the fact that even before I started writing stories, I always took lots of notes out of every book, newspaper, magazine, or scientific report I came across.”

It is said that he did physics experiments at home before writing his books. Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio and radio, declared that Verne was of great help to him. Simon Lake, who invented the submarine and ships, openly said that he was inspired by Verne. Undoubtedly, Verne was primarily a man of letters and brought the unconscious to the agenda before Freud, and the class struggle before Marx.

Many urban legends have been told about Jules Verne. Some sources write that Jules Verne was exaggerated and turned into a legend. They explain with examples that many of the inventions he describes in his novels were actually thought of and written by other scientists or writers before. They also say that many inventions that are not even mentioned in their works are reflected as his foresight.

If we list the most important works of Jules Verne, we can count Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Journalist's Journey Notes, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island, Chancellor Survivors, Michael Strogoff, A 15-Year-Old Captain.

Verne's work can be divided into two periods. Initially, he is hopeful for the future of humanity due to technological progress, and then pessimistic. During this period, Verne predicts the dangers of becoming an industrial nation and the misuse of science by big businessmen and new power elites. Hetzel, the publisher of the Paris novel he wrote in 1863, did not publish it on the grounds that he was too pessimistic. His family finds the novel in an old chest in 1990 and it is published in 1994, attracting great attention.

Jules Verne sends his rebellious son to a reformatory in 1876, but Michel runs into bigger problems because of his relationship with a minor. In 1886, he was shot in the leg by his mentally unstable nephew and had to spend the rest of his life with a cane. In 1887, he enters a pessimistic period with the death of his friend Hetzel and later his mother. Entering politics in 1888, Verne deals with cultural issues such as schools, urbanism, and theatre. Verne, who lost his sight, albeit partially, in 1902 due to progressive diabetes, died at his home in Amiens on March 24, 1905. In his tomb is a statue made by a sculptor named Albert Roze in 1907, with the inscription "Towards Eternal Youth...".