This Day in History: 1828-02-08

Jules Verne

The French science fiction author who helped envision the future was born this day in 1828. He is probably best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). A subtext running through many of Verne’s novels involved the danger of having powerful technology fall into the wrong hands. Other authors, notably H.G. Wells, Mary Shelly shared this moral perspective.