The Scientific Prophecies of Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires

The year was 1839, and in the bustling port town of Nantes, France, lived a young girl who wanted one thing more than anything else in the world: a coral necklace. The girl, who clearly had very refined (and oddly specific tastes) in jewellery, knew that the best place to acquire such finery was, of course, the faraway Indies. Unfortunately, while she was desperate for the necklace, she wasn’t desperate to stow away on a ship and brave the treacherous waters standing between her and her goal.

So, she did what any self-respecting young lady would do, and asked a boy to get it for her.

The boy in question was her cousin who, fortuitously, didn’t have her levels of self-respect. In secret, he procured himself a position as a cabin boy on the three-mast ship Coralie. He intended to sail to the Indies and return with the necklace of his cousin’s dreams. And maybe with an extra one for himself, too. 

Unsurprisingly, the boy’s mission was thwarted before he could even leave France. The same day that she set sail from France, Coralie stopped at the commune Paimboeuf. The boy’s father, who had found out about his hairbrained scheme, arrived in Paimboeuf just in time to catch his son, put a stop to his adventure, and make him promise to travel ‘only in his imagination’.

The young jewellery fanatic was named Caroline, and her adventurous cousin grew up to be the famous French novelist, poet, and playwright Jules Gabriel Verne. The story is a poorly researched and greatly exaggerated one, told by Verne’s first biographer and niece, Marguerite Allote de la Füye (try saying her name three times fast). Legends of great escapes aside, Verne was always fascinated by the nautical, the scientific, and the geographical, and his adventurous spirit was matched only by his insatiable curiosity.

While he refused to be called a scientist, Verne’s literary works combined science and storytelling in an effort to make his writing both entertaining and educational. The result was the Voyages Extraordinaires, usually translated either as ‘Extraordinary Voyages’ or ‘Amazing Journeys’. They are a vast collection of novels and short stories, described by Verne’s editor, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, as an attempt ‘to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, historical and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format… the history of the universe’. 

The didactic nature of these means that many of them are considered to be examples of ‘encyclopaedic novels’: works of fiction that either cover a wide range of topics, or provide a detailed exploration of themes, characters, and setting. Encyclopaedic novels get their name from the fact that they provide their readers with an extensive and thorough representation of their subject matter, just like an encyclopaedia.

Verne’s educational ambitions and love of science meant that the Voyages Extraordinaires were much more well-researched than Allote de la Füye’s tall tale of a great escape gone wrong. In fact, Verne argued on several occasions that his stories were intended to be descriptive and educational, not inventive. In a 1903 interview with English writer and journalist Robert H. Sherard, Verne separated his works from those of English science-fiction writer H.G. Wells by pointing out that ‘his stories do not repose on very scientific bases… He invents’. He stated that ‘there is no invention’ in his own writing, firmly and conclusively claiming, ‘I have invented nothing’. 

Verne’s readership often touts him as a prophet of future scientific inventions, despite his refusal to be referred to as either a scientist or an inventor. They do so with good reason. According to a study from 2011 by researchers at the University of Geneva, he has been credited with directly or indirectly predicting over 100 modern-day inventions.

While Verne may not have been an inventor, he was an intelligent researcher. For example, he has been credited with predicting the invention of helicopters. In his novel Robur-le-Conquérant (Robur the Conqueror, sometimes referred to as The Clipper of the Clouds), he describes a flying machine that uses high-speed rotors to propel itself into the air, similarly to a helicopter. There were prototype sketches of helicopter circulating in the scientific and engineering communities while Verne was writing the Voyages Extraordinaires, so, as he claimed in the 1903 interview, he didn’t invent anything in Robur the Conqueror. Instead, his prophecy stemmed from his research; he investigated and analysed existing helicopter prototypes, then imagined how they would develop and fit into the world he was living and writing in.

Similarly, Verne is sometimes incorrectly credited with the invention of the submarine, because of his creation of the fictional submarine Nautilus for his famous story Vingt Mille Lieues sous Les Mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea). The first operational submarine was built by Dutch engineer and inventor Cornelius Drebbel in 1620, 249 years before Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published. Verne himself described being inspired by already existing submarines when creating the Nautilus, including the Plongeur, a French Navy submarine that he saw a model of at the 1867 Exposition Universelle – a World’s Fair that was held in Paris. He even named the Nautilus after the very real Nautilus submarine, which was invented by American engineer Robert Fulton, and first tested in 1800. As with the helicopter from Robur the Conqueror, the Nautilus was a well-researched conflagration of pre-existing prototypes and inventions. It led to another prophecy: Verne is credited with predicting electric-powered submarines, because the Nautilus is powered by electric batteries made of mercury, and sodium extracted from seawater.

In his 1865 novel De la Terre à la Lune: trajet direct en 97 heures 20 minutes (From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes) Verne wrote about a space gun: the huge cannon Columbiad. Space guns, sometimes known as Verne guns because of their inclusion in From the Earth to the Moon, are impractical for safe human space travel. The g-forces likely to be experienced by a ballistic projectile launched from a contraption like the Columbiad would turn any passengers into unappetising space jelly. From the Earth to the Moon wasn’t groundbreaking for its explorations of space travel; people have been writing about the idea of venturing beyond the earth’s atmosphere since the second century A.D. 

However, Verne’s scientific research would lead him to make yet another prediction, despite the inaccuracies of the Columbiad. In the same story, he wrote that ‘there will some day appear velocities… of which light or electricity will probably be the mechanical agent… we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars’. This is the first published recognition that light could move ships through space, and a precursor to the invention of solar sails: a method of spacecraft propulsion that harnesses the radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large surfaces.

From the Earth to the Moon also inadvertently predicted other aspects of space travel as we know it today: the Columbiad is launched from Florida, it has three crewmembers, and it is made of aluminium. What else launched from Florida, had three crewmembers, and was made of aluminium? Apollo 8: the first manned space flight to reach and orbit the moon. It was even launched in 1968, exactly 100 years after From the Earth to the Moon was first published.

The Voyages Extraordinaires have been an inspiration to scientists, inventors, and engineers since they were published. Russian-American aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky cited Robur the Conqueror as the main inspiration for his invention of the first successful helicopter. Simon Lake, the innovative submarine designer, credited Verne with inspiring his work, and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the co-inventor of the Aqua Lung – the first successful piece of SCUBA diving equipment – referred to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as his ‘bible de bord’ (‘shipboard bible’). The astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission – Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders – were also inspired by Verne, and Borman once commented that ‘in a very real sense, Jules Verne is one of the pioneers of the space age’. 

Verne may have been a prophet, but, as he claimed, he was no inventor. He was a researcher who took the work of the scientific communities that fascinated him, and wrote about how their theories and inventions could change the world. Because of this, he ended up changing the world himself. I think the French general Hubert Lyautey put it best when, after once of his ambitious foreign projects was met with the reply, ‘All this, sir, it’s like doing a Jules Verne’, he responded, ‘ Yes, sir, it’s like doing a Jules Verne, because for twenty years, the people who move forward have been doing a Jules Verne’. 

Sources

Alexander, D. (2019) Prophet or Futurist? 7 Technologies Jules Verne Predicted Leagues Ahead of his Time. Available at: https://interestingengineering.com/culture/prophet-or-futurist-7-technologies-jules-verne-predicted-leagues-ahead-of-his-time (Accessed: 25 August 2025). 

Benett, H. L. (1886) Frontispiece of Robur le Conquerant. [Illustration]. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robur_1.jpg (Accessed: 25 August 2025).

Britannica. (2025) Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Twenty-Thousand-Leagues-Under-the-Sea (Accessed: 25 August 2025).

de Montaut, H. (1868) From Earth to the Moon. [Illustration]. Available at: http://jv.gilead.org.il/rpaul/De%20la%20terre%20à%20la%20lune/ (Accessed: 25 August 2025).

de Neuville, A. and Riou, E. (1871) Underwater Landscape of Crespo Island. [Illustration]. Available at: https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/underwater-landscape/ (Accessed: 25 August 2025).

Evans, A. B. (1988) Jules Verne Rediscovered: didacticism and the scientific novel. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Musée National de la Marine Rochefort. (2025) Le modèle du plongeur. Available at: https://www.musee-marine.fr/nos-musees/rochefort/collections/les-oeuvres-phares/le-modele-du-plongeur.html (Accessed: 28 August 2025).

Sarrailh, S. (2014) Venus. [Digital art]. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/J9w0R (Accessed: 25 August 2025).

Sherard, R. H. (1903) 'Jules Verne Revisited', T. P.'s Weekly, (October 9, 1903): 589. Available at: http://jv.gilead.org.il/sherard2.html (Accessed: 25 August 2025).

Thomas, G. (2024) The First Submarine: A History of Underwater Combat. Available at: https://historycooperative.org/first-submarine/ (Accessed: 25 August 2025).

Turner, J. M. W. (1830) Nantes from the Ile Feydeau. [Watercolour on paper]. Château des ducs de Bretagne, Nantes. Available at: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/nantes-joseph-mallord-william-turner.html (Accessed: 25 August 2025).

Nash, A. (2023) Jules Verne - Extraordinary Journeys. Available at: https://www.julesverne.ca/vernebooks/jules-verne_voyages-extraordinaires.html (Accessed: 25 August 2025).