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watching the ships coming and going, fantasizing about travels and exotic places. He had it so bad, that one day he stowed away on a ship to the West Indies, but the voyage abruptly ended when he disembarked in the next port only to find his father waiting.

Wells books were immediately accepted by the public, whilst Verne's were rejected over and over again because of their "too scientific" approach. Nevertheless, he would grow as a writer to the extend of being the third most translated author in the world, being the Bible the first, and Don Quixote the second.

His series "Extraordinary Voyages" which include

Journey to the Center of the Earth - 1864
From the Earth to the Moon - 1865
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - 1869
Around the World in 80 days - 1872

... wore pretty accurate descriptions about the future, From the Earth to the Moon, wears a bizarre resemblance to the real Apollo program, when three astronauts are launched from the Florida Peninsula and have a splash landing at the return.

Journey to the Center of the Earth, was a novel that did not age well, and that was because when the time came to have expeditions to the center of the earth, nothing was like Verne had described.

From the Scientific Romances series by H.G. Wells, each book in the collection has been turned into a movie production:

The Time Machine
The Invisible Man
War of the Worlds
The First Men in the Moon

He was a great humanist, supported feminism, and wanted to change society and help everyone, and he used to critique Verne here and there, ..."My imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea" referring to Verne's "Thousand leagues Under the Sea"

Yet... it happened.

Wells was well known in the political arena because of his socialist ideologies. he believed that people should advance solely by merit rather than birth. He knew he was born in poverty, handicapped from the beginning, nevertheless he outgrew his limitations, and became an extremely wealthy man who put his fortune into trying to make a difference, he believed most of all in: "You make your success, shape up, move on, or don't do nothing and stay behind."

He had many lovers and married twice, he had children in and out of marriage, and his women were mostly activists, like American Birth Control activist Margaret Sanger, or the writer Amber Reeves or the novelist and feminist Rebecca West. He died in his sleep while working on a project about the dangers of a nuclear war.

Verne stayed married with the same woman, and had a son, with whom he had a bad relationship because his son was always the "enfant terrible" but their communications was restores when the boy became a man.

He was appointed Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion d'Honneur, the Legion of Honor.

Verne's novel, Paris in the Twentieth Century,is about a man who lived in a world of skyscrapers, high speed trains and cars, air conditioning, gas-powered automobiles, calculators, a worldwide communication network and other modern conveniences very similar to today, but the young man can't find happiness and comes to a tragic end.

The novel was so pessimistic that his editor told him to put it away in a safe and publish it in twenty years. In 1989, one hundred years later, his great-grandson found it and published it in 1994.

Both were excellent writers, yet Verne was born thirty-eight years before Wells, that makes Verne, a writer "Way ahead of his time"

Learn more about this author, Brenda Lachman.
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