For Amusement only. Paris in the 20th Century- three more striking examples of Verne's prescience using the 'Liverpool' passages of the book.
John Lamb
Dear all,
The inside cover of the 1996 edition of Paris in the 20th Century states that it is an ‘astonishingly prescient view into the future by the world’s most renowned science fiction writer’ while Eugen Weber in his introduction states.
The capital city has become a great seaport, “a Liverpool in the heart of France” crowded with liners and freighters, whilst (only yards from where the Eiffel Tower went up in 1889) an electric lighthouse looms over a forest of flag studded masts…Imagination is the capacity to rearrange available data, or to extrapolate from them, and Verne was a masterful extrapolator.
Verne certainly seems to be able to ‘extrapolate’, to the point where it is almost like he gathered together some of the greatest scientific minds and set them a conundrum ‘what will Paris be like in 100 years’ time?’ and then subdivided those ideas into numerous categories such as science, art, literature, architecture and transport. Regarding the latter, the attached passages offer previously unrecorded examples of Verne’s prescience in Paris in the 20th Century.
With the exception of point 4, they are all of course ‘random coincidences’ but they are also ‘meaningful’ because Birkenhead ‘punches well above its weight’ due to it being at the forefront of technological, maritime and social advancement in Verne’s day. So, there will always be more bizarre coincidences than when comparing Verne’s novels with the equivalent port sized town of Hull on the east coast of England for example.
As stated, numerous times previously, we should not disparage this small town opposite Liverpool as having influenced Verne's early novels far more than his 'beloved' Scotland.
Tied up near the lighthouse in Paris is ‘the recently docked gigantic Leviathan IV’ Verne writes ‘the last century’s Great Eastern would not have been worthy to be her launch’. The Great Eastern was Verne’s favourite ship, financed from Birkenhead, based in Birkenhead, converted back to an ocean liner in Birkenhead and scrapped in Birkenhead. Verne sailed from Birkenhead in the Great Eastern to New York in March 1867.
Verne’s prescience is such that it is almost like there is an invisible force, reminiscent of Mysterious Island and reading his mantra What one man can imagine, others can do perhaps following on from Abraham Lincoln’s earlier instructions The only way to predict the future is to create it.
Attached are the relevant passages in Paris in the 20th Century which create three more prescient links, two of them linked to Birkenhead. These are in the same genre as Weber stating incredulously that there is a 500-foot lighthouse only yards from where the Eiffel Tower went up in 1889.
I hope you enjoy reading the attachment.
Best John
Best John