Fuck Jules Verne

A buddy of mine used to have a big beef with Jules Verne. Yeah, the old French writer, Jules Verne. He read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which was a great book, and loved it. Then he read some others, and when he got around to reading The Mysterious Island, he was pretty well-versed in Verne. Needless to say, he was excited at the prospect of a sequel to Leagues, since the original was so good. What he got was, in his words, "A steaming pile of Verne-shit. Fuck him!"

At the time, I, also, had read a lot of Verne. And a bunch of H.G. Wells, too. Overall, I would say that I like Wells' best better than Verne's best, but Wells had some pretty boring shit, whereas Verne always maintained a certain degree of suspenseful action; at least enough to carry the show to the end. His books might have been kind of lame at times, but they always had at least one great concept.

Anyway, when my buddy read the Mysterious Island, he became royally pissed. He said the majority of it was based on some strange dude lurking around, or some such shit. I never actually read that particular book. The point is, it really wasn't much of a sequel, and I guess he was so angry because he'd been sold a false bill of goods.

I recently finished Verne's Around the World in 80 Days, and I, too, feel I was played the victim. For decades, what one mode of transportation springs to mind when you think of that book? I'll give you a second....

It's the fucking air balloon. Everyone associates the air balloon with that book. And guess what? There's not one fucking air balloon in that goddamn book! He only mentions it in one sentence near the end, and he's pretty much dissing it as far as a form of transportation goes.

Now, I know, once again, this isn't really Verne's fault per se, but fuck him anyway. He was probably a dick to someone, at some point of his life. And anyway, what's he going to do about it?