Happy Birthday, Jules Verne, 2/8/1828

I’m having trouble getting to these posts lately, what with finishing the novel, trying to organize some teaching for myself, updating my writertopia page for the Campbell Award, trying to submit stuff on a regular basis and the usual insomnia. But today is Jules Vernes’ birthday, so happy birthday, Jules. There is a nice write-up here at Wired magazine.

What’s interesting among other things is that the electric rifles used in Twenty Thousand Leagues… were later (1969) revisited by Thomas Cover when he invented the TASER, which is an acronym for Thomas A Swift’s Electric Rifle. Tom Swift (Swift by name and nature!)being the teenage hero of the juvenile scifi book series launched by Victor Appleton (a pseudonym) in 1910, and obviously referencing Verne.