Was Jules Verne the viewer of the Modernity? what was the secret of his prophetic skills?

reply to post by Cyberbian


Cyberbian,

The concept of a Novelist that can reach the collective unconcious in his books is not restricted only to Jules Verne. There is a so famous case in the end of the the XIX Century, and it was an actual and so impressive predicton of sink of the Transatlantic Titanic. This Novel was published 13 years before the White Star decided to builld that line of Olympic ships.

Morgan Robertson (September 30, 1861 - March 24, 1915) was a well-known American author of short stories and novels, and the possible inventor of the periscope.

Nowadays he is best known for the short fictional novel Futility, first published in 1898. This story features an enormous British passenger liner called the Titan, which, deemed to be unsinkable, carries insufficient lifeboats. On a voyage in the month of April, the Titan hits an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic with the loss of almost everyone on board.

Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, which was written 14 years before RMS Titanic's ill-fated voyage, was found to have many parallels with the Titanic disaster; Robertson's work concerned a fictional state-of-the-art ocean liner called Titan, which eventually collides with an iceberg on a calm April night whilst en route to New York.

Huge amounts of people died because of the lack of lifeboats. Both Titan herself and the manner of her demise bore many striking similarities to the eventual fate of Titanic, and Robertson's novella remains in print today as an unnerving curiosity.




All this information is posted in the Titan pages on Wikipedia, if you want to know more about it.

thanks,

your friend,

The Angel of lightness

reply to post by Cyberbian


I'm not a member of ATS but was looking for a Verne related location to make a comment that may or may not be of interest to Verne fans or students, but I thought it VERY interesting.

I read recently about the invention of Buckyball paper and I was wondering if this could qualify as one of those 'predicted inventions' of Verne's. I'd like to nominate it as one!

Master of the World's airship was made out of a special strong paper. Could it have been a 'vision' of Buckyball paper?

Though the ship was thought to be indestructible it did crash, all materials must have their limits.

I don't know of any new remakes on the Master of the World movie/novel but does anyone know if they have or ever plan to? It would be great with modern methods of filming, knowledge of new tech... maybe Master's ship could be made out of BUCKYBALL PAPER. (Just puttin' it out there in case any Hollywood screenplay writers are reading this...).

What do you think?? That is one of my favorites of Verne's, I love the humor, I love the Vincent Price version of it even if it wasn't exactly the same as the novel.

From, Way Out in Not So Sunny California