Maurice Crosland, "Popular science and the arts : challenges to cultural authority  in France under the Second Empire:" (1)

Jules Verne and the Creation of Science Fiction

It might be claimed of Jules Verne (1828–1903) that it was he more than anyone else who brought  together science and literature.  The term ‘ literature ’ is used here in its

widest sense. Many of the dozens of stories churned out by Verne under contract would hardly be classified in the same category as some of the masterpieces of Balzac, but whereas the latter  could have reasonably  expected to be elected to the Académie française, Verne himself realized that his constant outpouring  of tales of adventure to satisfy his publisher would never qualify for consideration by that august body.

In some ways Verne could be regarded as a popularizer of science, although  that was never  his  principal  intention.   He  was  interested  in  telling  stories  in  which  science, technology and  adventure  were prominent.  As a young man Verne had  been directed towards the profession of law but he preferred literature.    A crucial event in his life was his introduction in 1850 to Jacques Arago, the explorer  and  brother of the prominent scientist François.  Jacques Arago ’s house was a meeting place for scientists and travellers. The conversation there stimulated Verne to become seriously interested in science. Other influences included the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, who opened a new chapter in literature by his treatment  of the fantastic. It is significant that Verne should later have commented that he would have had a higher opinion of Poe if he had ‘respected a few elementary laws of physics ’. Verne’s particular genius was to incorporate fact skilfully into a narrative and to marry fact with fiction. The facts were usually geographical, scientific or technological. Part of his success lay in his recognition that most readers wanted to be amused rather than educated. Any teaching was, therefore, incidental. In some of his stories there is a fair input of popular  science. Thus in Twenty Thousand  Leagues under the Sea he provides a long list of authorities  on many branches of science. He also goes into considerable detail in the classification of shells, molluscs and fish.  Verne was successful in presenting  the possibilities of science in a romantic  light.  In many stories he presented  real scientific possibilities of the future.

Like many of the professional popularizers of science, Verne’s stories were often first published in magazines or newspapers.

Thus his early book Un Voyage en ballon [A Voyage by Balloon] was first published in the periodical Musée des familles (1851) under the heading ‘ Science for the family ’. His later book De la Terre a la lune [From Earth to the Moon] appeared first in the Journal des débats in 1865. Verne ’s friend and publisher Herzel saw his writings as part of an increasing popular interest in science. He wrote as follows in his preface to Verne ’s Voyages et aventures du Capitaine Hatteras (1866) :

"The novels of M. Jules Verne have just come at the right time. When an eager public can be seen flocking  to  attend  given  at  a  thousand   different  places  in  France,  and  when  our newspapers carry reports of the Académie des sciences alongside articles dealing with the arts and the theatre, it is surely time for us to realise that … the day has come when science must take its rightful place in literature …lectures given  at  a  thousand   different  places  in  France,  and  when  our newspapers carry reports of the Académie des sciences alongside articles dealing with the arts and the theatre, it is surely time for us to realise that … the day has come when science must take its rightful place in literature …

Verne shared  with the popularizers  the idea that  science could be applied to human progress,  although  he maintained  a certain  scepticism about  making  too  much  of the powers of the scientist. . . .

It would be a mistake to think of science fiction as primarily of interest to scientists; on the contrary, Verne’s novels were read by a wide public. Some were even set to music. In his operettas the irrepressible Jacques Offenbach satirized the world of the Second Empire. Through  his music  he  produces  a  revolution  in  popular  taste.  His  Orpheus  in  the Underworld had taken Paris by storm and he saw distinct possibilities in the work of Jules Verne. He accordingly transformed Verne’s De la Terre a la lune (1865) into an  opera,entitled Voyage dans la lune, in which one scene was set in the Paris Observatory.  A later opera  by Offenbach was Le Docteur Ox  (1877), based on Verne’s novel of that  name, which fantasized  on  the  effects a  new  doctor  created  on  the population  of  a  sleepy provincial town by administering large doses of oxygen. Thus science not only overlapped with the world of literature but also that of music.