Jules Verne Books

This book includes index of titles & addenda; the books; collected works; works about Verne; notes; source editions and is an expansion and emendation of the work originally published in 1988. The Myers' work was the first organized attempt to describe Verne first editions and first printings in English from a collector's perspective, written by collectors for collectors. To make it, Edward and Judith Myers drew on the experiences of other collectors, of the Library of Congress, and of the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana. Throughout the bibliography are notes which touch on issues important to collectors, such as what makes a book truly rare, and what makes it beautiful and desirable? What even constitutes a Verne "first edition" and how can it be identified? When is a later edition a more valuable acquisition? The bibliography is an in-depth examination, as it were, of a smaller cross section of the Verne oeuvre.

A lucid, intelligent, and ground-breaking study of Jules Verne and his works by one of the top experts in the field. A flood of new imprints, translations, and monographs by/about Verne appeared during 2005 (the centennial of the legendary French author's death). Of these many publications, Unwin's book is one of the very best. Highly recommended.

Although critics continue to debate whether Jules Verne's work is "true" science fiction (SF), rather than scientific romance, Verne is widely credited as one of the founders of the genre and in the popular imagination, he and SF are seen as largely synonomous. Verne has received renewed attention since the publication in 1994 of his "Paris au Vingtieme Siecle", and this has highlighted his importance as a key commentator on the anguishes of modernity. Arthur B. Evans provides a detailed account of the relationship between Verne and the French literary canon, demonstrating the "now-ineluctable trend towards rehabilitation and literary canonization". Daniel Compere exmines narrative technique, versimilitude, defamiliarization, naturalization and dialogism in Verne's work, while Timothy Unwin develops the enquiry into the nature of the Vernian text in discussing the role of science and textual repetition. The interface between realism, utopianism and SF in a number of Verne's novels is investigated by Sarah Capitano.

I meant to give the book 5 stars in the original review, but I missed that. The book should be given a five-star rating.

Is a men who makes a bet to a group of partners of the Reform Club in London and he has to do the trip over the world in 80 days Can he made it?

Verne's fine study of obsession and illusion ranks with Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "L'Eve Future" and Adolfo Bioy Casare's "La invención de Morel." this pocket edition has over twenty illustrations from the original Hachette edition and a short illustrated bibliography of Verne at the end. It's uncut and unencumbered by the lame English translations that marred Verne's reputation in the Anglophonic world. Magnifique!

Note; this book inspired the Quay Brother's recent film "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes."

This book (along with The Mysterious Island) is my absolute favourite of Verne. And it's very different to the Verne books which are commonly known (like Around the World in Eighty Days) all of which I think are very inferior to his more mature work.

The title of the book means "The 500 million of the Begum". The Begum was an Indian princess and the novel begins with two people simultaneously inheriting half of the 500 million as her descendants (a huge sum in the late 19th century!). One is an enlightened French professor, the other is a militaristic and nationalistic German. They both use the money to start cities in a deserted part of the US, each city espousing their view of their builders - the French one as being chiefly concerned with sanitation, health, sanity and well-being and the German one as a military-industrial complex bent on conquest. The main part of the book is the story of the two cities and their struggle, as well as the infiltration of the German city by a disciple of the French professor.

What we have is so much more than sci-fi - this is sci-fi with a conscience, a philosophical basis and a political theory. Of course, the hero-French and villain-German overtones read as simplistic today, but it's still interesting historically (as Verne predicted not only technology but political trends, as the founder of the German city is a classic precursor to the world wars).

The book is fascinating in its descriptions of technology and human nature, as well as in that it asks all the right questions about our ideas of science, progress, technology and ideology - and this is what the very best science fiction is all about. This is Verne at his absolute best - an enthralling adventure story that's far more thoughtprovoking than both his "popular" novels and most other novels too!

i liked lottery ticket by jules verne. one unusual thing about it was the character name that was only a single last name. its one of the rare times verte placed a story in scandanavia--i know: i've read all but 8 of his novels and the only reason i haven't read Mathias Sandorf and others yet is simply because i cannot find them in english!

I've decided to treat myself to only one of these a week after reading the first 4 this weekend. Who knows if we'll ever get new Verne stories again by authors of this caliber. (The editorial review doesn't do justice to the contributors. Check the table of contents scan.) Each story deserves to be savored fully. The first four are each very different - one's even a parody of Paris in the 20th Century - reflecting the various strengths and tastes of the authors; but, at the same time, you feel that you are reading Verne himself somehow. Even the parody!

The Meteor Hunt, a translation of La Chasse au météore, is a work of the foremost literary importance, both within and outside its genre. This is one of the best Verne translations I have read (in over nearly forty years of reading Verne), filled with idioms vividly conveyed in a modern manner that reveals the experience of the team of noted Verne translators Frederick Paul Walter and Walter James Miller, the dean of American Verne translators. As the first critical English-language edition of an original version of Jules Verne's posthumously published novels, and as science fiction, The Meteor Hunt is one of the most significant publications of its type.

There are two major misconceptions about Verne's later works. First, that they demonstrated a slackening imagination and literary ability, and second that they reveal a distrust of science which is distinct from the optimistic tone of his earlier, more famous books. Verne's later books, without the editorial guidance (and censorship) of his mentor, publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, are more slender and tightly plotted, devoid of extraneous matter. Verne's focus is stronger, and The Meteor Hunt demonstrates this with its continual tracing of the meteor's human effects, with only minor subplots that enhance the primary narrative.

The Meteor Hunt is revelatory of Verne's view of the United States, the capstone of a series of stories using an American setting or persons. The tone is light, the characterizations memorable, full of sharp wit and delicate irony, with the whole perfectly plotted. The Meteor Hunt also displays a warm cynicism, gently chiding the amateur scientists, the American competitiveness they represent, and the greed first for glory, then for gold that is a basic element of human nature.

The tension mounts as the two astronomers, simultaneously discovering the meteor, become antagonists, spreading the conflict to their families, ultimately igniting the partisan press and leading to an international rivalry. With the realization that the meteor is composed of gold, and descending in its orbit around the Earth, their own feud over its ownership is reflected in larger terms against the backdrop of the possible global economic ramifications. Verne was aware that any meteor of gold would have melted in the atmosphere, given the low temperature at which gold becomes liquid, but scientific accuracy was not the purpose. As international conferences struggle to resolve the matter ineffectually, Verne carries his satire to a new level, with a global indictment of competing national interests over an extra-terrestrial object.

Previously, La Chasse au météore had only been available in translations from a version rewritten by Verne's son, Michel, variously entitled in English The Chase of the Golden Meteor (first published contemporaneously with the French edition in 1909) and The Hunt for the Meteor (published in 1965). The Meteor Hunt is unique among the original editions of the posthumous novels in that the reader can easily access a translation of the alternate text that Michel wrote: The Chase of the Golden Meteor was reprinted in 1998 by the very same press that is now publishing The Meteor Hunt, but without noting the issue of authorship (see my review under that title). From a literary standpoint, The Meteor Hunt is superior, especially for its translation and critical notes. Nonetheless, many readers, especially science fiction enthusiasts, will be curious to read the other edition. In this way the differences between the two texts may be explored and readers may decide for themselves on the respective merits of the two Vernes, father and son.

Michel makes his most substantial intervention in the novel by changing its genre from what might be most appropriately called speculative fiction into outright science fiction. While his father's forecasts were usually limited to what could be extrapolated from the known science of the day, Michel went considerably beyond these confining bounds of probability. While lacking the effortless simplicity of his father's expression, Michel deepens his father's themes, adding to the melodrama.

The Meteor Hunt is the first in a projected series of four Jules Verne books from the University of Nebraska Press that were previously translated only in the versions modified by Michel, using manuscripts that were discovered in the 1970s. The Meteor Hunt was translated from one of the seven posthumously published Verne novels that were guided into print by Michel. For many years, the Verne family argued that Michel's changes did not go beyond stylistic polishing, updating, or possible verbal instructions from father to son; indeed the two had already collaborated during the father's lifetime. Whatever the reason or motive, Michel altered all the works posthumously published under his father's name, in both minor and major ways, even originating two of the books himself. Subsequently, Michel carried forward his rewriting of his father's stories by adapting them to the screen as a movie producer. The story of Jules and Michel and their collaboration, both together and after the father's death, is a saga of science fiction authorship that is only beginning to be told, and The Meteor Hunt and the University of Nebraska Press series do much to bring it to light for readers.