title: Paris in the Twentieth Century: Jules Verne, The Lost Novel
author:  Jules Verne 
description: Jules Verne was the Michael Crichton of the 19th century.<b><i>The New York Times</i></b><br /><br />For anyone interested in the history of speculative fiction . . . this book is an absolute necessity.<b>Ray Bradbury<br /></b><br />Verne's Paris is a bustling, overcrowded metropolis teeming with starving homeless andvehicles that passed on paved roads and moved without horses. Years before they would be invented, Verne has imagined elevators and faxmachines. It was a vision Verne's editor flatly rejected. Contemporary readers know better.<b><i>People<br /></i></b><br />An excellent extrapolation, founded on 19th-century technical novelties, of a future culture.<b><i>The Washington Post Book World<br /></i></b><br />Vernepublishednearly seventy books, many of them now considered classics. But this little jewel catches him just reaching stride as a writer of science fiction, a genre that he, of course, helped put on the literary map.<b><i>The Denver Post</i></b>
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  In the Year 2889  
  
  
    
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  # In the Year 2889
  
  
  ### Jules Verne
  
  
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  Produced by Norm Wolcott
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IN THE YEAR 2889
  
  [Redactor's note: In the Year 2889 was first published in the Forum, February,
  1889; p. 262. It was published in France the next year. Although published
  under the name of Jules Verne, it is now believed to be chiefly if not
  entirely the work of Jules' son, Michel Verne. In any event, many of the
  topics in the article echo Verne's ideas.]
  
  IN THE YEAR 2889.
  
  Little though they seem to think of it, the people of this twenty-ninth
  century live continually in fairyland. Surfeited as they are with marvels,
  they are indifferent in presence of each new marvel. To them all seems
  natural. Could they but duly appreciate the refinements of civilization in our
  day; could they but compare the present with the past, and so better
  c