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DID YOU KNOW?
FACTS & FICTION WITH A MEXICAN TWIST
MAY 2008Did you know that...
...an early story by Jules Verne, the science fiction and travel author, was set in Mexico? By Tony Burton Copyright © 2008
What's more, he wrote it without ever setting foot in Mexico!Most people know Jules Verne (1828-1905) as one of the pioneers of science fiction writing. His most famous works include Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (a submarine voyage with Captain Nemo as the enigmatic hero), A Journey to the Center of the Earth (in which Prof Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel descend into an extinct volcano in Iceland and discover an underground world), and From the Earth to the Moon, a vivid forerunner of future space travel. Verne's other popular works include numerous stories such as Around the World in Eighty Days, in which eccentric Englishman Phileas Fogg races round the world to try and win a bet, Five Weeks in a Balloon, in which the heroes drift across unexplored areas in Central Asia and The Mysterious Island.
What is much less well known about Verne is that one of his very first published stories was set in Mexico. Originally called Les Premiers Navires de la Marine Mexicaine (The First Ships of the Mexican Navy), it was published in 1851, when Verne was only 23 years old. Having never visited Mexico, Verne relied on the tales he heard from seafarers in his native port of Nantes, and from Jacques Arago, a friend in Paris who had fought in Mexico's War of Independence.
The First Ships of the Mexican Navy is set in 1825, shortly after Mexican Independence from Spain...
Read the complete article, with a photo...
Did You Know Index
Text © Copyright 2008 by Tony Burton. All rights reserved.
- - - Sombrero Books Page
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