Subject: PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Jules Verne

From: "Evelyn C Leeper" <[email-masked]>
Date: 31 Dec 1996 19:54:53 GMT

PARIS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Jules Verne
                    (translated by Richard Howard)
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1997 Evelyn C. Leeper

     This is not Verne's best book, but it has a certain charm that is
lacking from Verne's other works, a certain sparseness of prose that gives
the appearance of an intentional style.  It may be just the translator's
doing, or it may be unintentional awkwardness but for me, at least, it
worked.

     The story takes place in 1960.  Much has been made of the predictions
Verne made, many fairly accurate, others amusingly off.  I suppose one could
consider this a sort of alternate history of the steampunk ilk, but that is
technically inaccurate.  It's more like all those stories from the pulp era
that wrote about the marvels of the 1960s which somehow never came to pass,
and it's only the fact that it's newly published that gives one pause.

     One of Verne's "predictions" is that the great writers of the past will
be forgotten, and be replaced by people who write such works as "Electric
Harmonies," "Meditations on Oxygen," "Poetic Parallelogram," and
"Decarbonated Odes."  Well, one *is* seeing more literature inspired by, or
responding to, science, but Victor Hugo and Balzac are still being read.
However, I haven't heard of either Musset and Lamartine, whom Verne equates
with them.  But it has always been true that no one in a given time can
predict which authors of the time will last and which will fade.  I note
that both Musset and Lamartine are in print, in reasonably priced editions,
and Musset is also available at my library.  And Verne certainly didn't
predict that Hugo's greatest work would become a Broadway musical -- an
opera, technically -- and another one would become an animated children's
film.

     As I said, this is not a great novel, but it will be on my Hugo
nomination ballot.  I will admit that a part of that is that the idea of
seeing Jules Verne win a Hugo, or even just be nominated for one, has a
certain appeal that is hard to resist.  Somehow this year I haven't read a
whole lot of novels which are really that much better.

%T      Paris in the Twentieth Century
%A      Jules Verne
%C      New York
%D      1996
%I      Random House
%O      hardback, US$21 [1994]
%G      ISBN 0-679-44434-3
%P      222pp

Evelyn C. Leeper    |  [email-masked]
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