This, of course, is my follow up to a 6/13/08 post on the inspid new kiddie flick Journey to the Center of the Earth. My RAFBN choice for this week: the novel by Jules Verne. Most dumbasses in our text messaging/Sportscenter/Dancing with the Stars culture MAY have heard of him. Then there are some who say "Oh yeah--science fiction...20,000 Leagues Under the Sea...Captain Nemo...From the Earth to the Moon....Around the World in 80 Days...whatever." To say they don't make them like they used to is the friggin' understatement of the millennia. I know there're a bunch of you still worshipping Tim Russert as an exemplar of our era. He is--but not for the right reasons. Especially when you compare him to this cat with the interior designer-sounding name. Jules Verne. He wrote over 200 novels, essays, newspaper articles, travelogues; indeed only half related to "science fiction or futurism." He was a journalist, public intellectual. Unappreciated as a fiction author while he was alive, he's still often place behind dudes like Dickens and Twain as titans of the 19th century literatti. But of course here's the rub: Jules Verne lived over 120 years ago and just about everything he wrote about in fanciful stories came true--often in detail: from race relations/civil rights to atomic submarines to concrete superhighways to globalization to radical environmentalism to space travel. It's about time to rediscover this man and his body of work. Read and learn: Journey to the Center of the Earth and everything else this man wrote...
