Paris in the Twentieth Century

Book excerpt: In 1863 Jules Verne, famed author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth, wrote a novel that his literary agent deemed too far fetched to be published. More than one hundred years later, his great-grandson found the handwritten, never-before published manuscript in a safe. That manuscript was Paris in the Twentieth Century, and astonishingly prophetic view into the future by one of the most renowned science fiction writers of our time. . . . Praise for Paris in the Twentieth Century “Jules Verne was the Michael Crichton of the 19th century.”—The New York Times “For anyone interested in the history of speculative fiction . . . this book is an absolute necessity.”—Ray Bradbury “Verne's Paris is a bustling, overcrowded metropolis teeming with starving homeless and ‘vehicles that passed on paved roads and moved without horses.’ Years before they would be invented, Verne has imagined elevators and faxmachines. It was a vision Verne's editor flatly rejected. Contemporary readers know better.”—People “An excellent extrapolation, founded on 19th-century technical novelties, of a future culture.”—The Washington Post Book World “Verne published nearly seventy books, many of them now considered classics. But this little jewel catches him just reaching stride as a writer of science fiction, a genre that he, of course, helped put on the literary map.”—The Denver Post