As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, this book is quite poorly written. But I think it's still enjoyable, in part because you can see the hand of the author pulling the strings so much that it becomes funny. I read an annotated version with context and comments from Verne's editor, and would recommend you to do the same if you're curious.
As an example, there's an entire chapter dedicated to Michel and his professor friend going through a long list of nineteenth-century authors and passing judgment on them. You would expect this to be the thinly disguised opinions of Jules Verne, but no, it's the thinly disguised opinions of Verne's editor, which Verne included in the hopes that it would help the book get published. Obviously, this was not successful.
I have a theory about Verne that's strongly based on this book. He is sometimes called a technological visionary, but most of the inventions of his books were already known at his time (the first submarine was made in 1620, Around the World in Eighty Days is likely based on an itinerary in a magazine Verne read, etc.), and what was not known, Verne often made work using lots of artistic license (like the giant gun from the Earth to the Moon, which would kill the passengers with the acceleration; Verne did not invent rockets). No, Verne's genius was that he took the progress that was already visible and used it to create adventures, that he created a vision of the future where all this technology is used to explore deep underground caves and the sea floor and outer space and find fascinating things there. And Paris in the Twentieth Century is the negative version of this, a world where technological progress does not expand imagination, but instead limits it, as everything gets economically optimised to death. It's a good warning to keep in mind.
Case in point: Pangram says this article is 80% AI-written. [1] I only started suspecting in the very last paragraph ("Michel Dufrénoy crosses Verne's frozen Paris carrying almost nothing: a memory of books, a love of poetry, a handful of dying flowers and the name of someone he loves." is a vaguely poetic-sounding structure that I've already seen dozens of times in the last year).
Ignore the debates about quality. This means that this article's message is a lie; all of the opinions expressed here come not from a human, perhaps an inhabitant of Paris, but from a machine. The salvation suggested in the form of Parisian 1960s poets does not come from someone who likes to read them, but from a machine reporting on its training data. (Here it's not controversial -- what else can an LLM know about a poet besides what has been written about them?)
I feel like exploring a cave now.
[1] The 20% flagged as human is mostly direct quotations from the book, which is a nice sign that Pangram isn't making things up randomly.
It would have been more interesting if it had been published in 1991 so as to directly invite comparison to David Brin's _Earth_ in which that author did much the same (imagine life in the future), or not until 2012 so as to be contrasted with KSR's _2312_.
Interestingly, another David Brin novel was nominated for the Hugo in 1996 (_Brightness Reef_, one of his Uplift books).
The nice thing is that once it’s been published, you can re-read it at any time, and then compare it with whatever book you want. I don’t see how the publication year is really relevant, books don’t just expire after 6 months.
> At the Grand Entrepôt Dramatique, plays are assembled like manufactured goods. One clerk handles expositions, another denouements, another entrances and exits. There is a clerk for rhyming couplets, a clerk for punch lines, a Department of Puns and a central office of jokes. Art has survived as an assembly line.
While is predictions are technology were way more accurate for the 1960s (his intended target), his predictions about society and culture are prescient for the 2020's with the advent of generative AI
> "With Montaigne and maybe Rabelais it was What Do I Know? In the nineteenth century it was What Does It Matter to Me? And nowadays we say: How Much Does It Earn?"
For me, this also summarizes the introduction of the Internet to the masses, all the way to the present day.
This is eerily reminiscent of scriptwriting guides like Save the Cat with templates for story beats to the minute. I hear that Hollywood loves this kind of stuff...
I read it, and my disappointment was immeasurable, and day ruined. The novel is just bad. It seems the real story is that it was a draft which J.Vernes and his publisher discarded exactly because it was below expected quality line, and not because "prophecy implausible". Fast forward to our times, and someone decided (not without a reason) that it's possible to sell anything with J.Vernes name on it, and marketed it as a "lost manuscript" accidentally found in "family safe".
Yes, coincidence. It was submitted for publication but rejected in 1863 (and then lost in a pile of papers and re-found in 1989). Anybody familiar with e.g. how most of Tolkien’s works were published posthumously won’t be surprised. Jules Verne wrote a lot, and he did not have a Christopher to comb through the boxes of papers he left. There are 200k pages of drafts, letters and manuscripts in a museum in Nantes, and not everything ended up there.
And I don’t see why the Internet is relevant: not everything that happened since the mid-1980s are internet-related conspiracies.
I've been very disappointed in the various screen adaptations of Verne's books. The Nautilus series is unwatchable. The Mysterious Island shows are hideously bad. And so on.
It should at least have been a woodcut of the AI skyline, just like those in those blue books. We had more or less a full set of those, printed in the late 1800s/early 1900s which I voraciously read as a child. Reading 'The Children of Captain Grant' and seeing those images of Tierra del Fuego or the jungle or any of the other scenes really brought the 'pathos' of the stories alive, as if I were a Victorian setting out to see the wonders of the world. They still do for me, probably 'cause of my early experience with those books.
As an example, there's an entire chapter dedicated to Michel and his professor friend going through a long list of nineteenth-century authors and passing judgment on them. You would expect this to be the thinly disguised opinions of Jules Verne, but no, it's the thinly disguised opinions of Verne's editor, which Verne included in the hopes that it would help the book get published. Obviously, this was not successful.
I have a theory about Verne that's strongly based on this book. He is sometimes called a technological visionary, but most of the inventions of his books were already known at his time (the first submarine was made in 1620, Around the World in Eighty Days is likely based on an itinerary in a magazine Verne read, etc.), and what was not known, Verne often made work using lots of artistic license (like the giant gun from the Earth to the Moon, which would kill the passengers with the acceleration; Verne did not invent rockets). No, Verne's genius was that he took the progress that was already visible and used it to create adventures, that he created a vision of the future where all this technology is used to explore deep underground caves and the sea floor and outer space and find fascinating things there. And Paris in the Twentieth Century is the negative version of this, a world where technological progress does not expand imagination, but instead limits it, as everything gets economically optimised to death. It's a good warning to keep in mind.
Ignore the debates about quality. This means that this article's message is a lie; all of the opinions expressed here come not from a human, perhaps an inhabitant of Paris, but from a machine. The salvation suggested in the form of Parisian 1960s poets does not come from someone who likes to read them, but from a machine reporting on its training data. (Here it's not controversial -- what else can an LLM know about a poet besides what has been written about them?)
I feel like exploring a cave now.
[1] The 20% flagged as human is mostly direct quotations from the book, which is a nice sign that Pangram isn't making things up randomly.
Interestingly, another David Brin novel was nominated for the Hugo in 1996 (_Brightness Reef_, one of his Uplift books).
While is predictions are technology were way more accurate for the 1960s (his intended target), his predictions about society and culture are prescient for the 2020's with the advent of generative AI
> "With Montaigne and maybe Rabelais it was What Do I Know? In the nineteenth century it was What Does It Matter to Me? And nowadays we say: How Much Does It Earn?"
For me, this also summarizes the introduction of the Internet to the masses, all the way to the present day.
THE BLAKE SNYDER BEAT SHEET
PROJECT TITLE:
GENRE:
DATE:
1. Opening Image (1): 2. Theme Stated (5):
3. Set-up (1-10):
4. Catalyst (12):
5. Debate (12-25):
6. Break into Two (25) 7. B Story (30):
8. Fun and Games (30-55):
9. Midpoint (55):
10. Bad Guys Close In (55-75):
11. All Is Lost (75):
12. Dark Night of the Soul (75-85):
13. Break into Three (85):
14. Finale (85-110):
15. Final Image (no):
Page 51 here: https://ia800109.us.archive.org/31/items/snyder-blake-save-t...
I am not sure I belive the story about thr manuscript however. It surfaced just as the Internet was becoming a thing. Coincidence?
And I don’t see why the Internet is relevant: not everything that happened since the mid-1980s are internet-related conspiracies.
I was very glad to re-read it when:
https://www.usni.org/press/books/20000-leagues-under-sea
was published.
https://janbecke.com/portfolio-item/paris/
Take from that what you will.
Here's a site - ignore the warnings about the certificate - showing some of these images: https://jv.gilead.org.il/evans/illustr/