On this day in 1828, in Nantes, France, Jules Gabriel Verne was born. It is nearly impossible to overstate Verne’s importance to the genre of science fiction, which wouldn’t even be called “science fiction” until a quarter of a century after he died when Hugo Gernsback coined and popularized the term around 1929 (although, if you want to start a brawl in the con-suite an a science fiction convention at 2:00 in the morning, mention snarkily that *actually* the first recorded use of the term “science-fiction” appeared in William Wilson’s A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject in 1851.)
Anyway, Jules Verne. Helluva guy. He basically taught the world how to imagine the future in a serious, detailed way, taking the cutting-edge science of his time and asking the question at the core of all SF, “What if?”. Verne sent humans to the Moon, under the sea, and around the world with a mix of wonder, math, and engineering that made the impossible feel plausible and close enough to touch. His stories weren’t just adventures; they made readers excited about technology and exploration, and a lot of real scientists, inventors, and sci-fi writers later said Verne was the reason they started dreaming big in the first place.
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