of a two-story house, lavishly supplied with champagne. Jules never rode the thing--he had a wife and kids now--but he retired into his study with the plot-line of his first book, and drove his wife to distraction. "There are manuscripts everywhere--nothing but manuscripts," she said in a fine burst of wifely confidence. "Let's hope they don't end up under the cooking pot."

_Five Weeks In A Balloon_ was Jules' first hit. The thing was a smash for his publisher, who sold it all over the world in lavish foreign editions for which Jules received pittances. But Jules wasn't complaining--probably because he wasn't paying attention.

With a firm toehold in the public eye, Jules soon hit his stride as a popular author. He announced to the startled stockbrokers: "Mes enfants, I am leaving you. I have had an idea, the sort of idea that should make a man's fortune. I have just written a novel in a new form, one that's entirely my own. If it succeeds, I shall have stumbled upon a gold mine. In that case, I shall go on writing and writing without pause, while you others go on buying shares the day before they drop and selling them the day before they rise. I am leaving the Bourse. Good evening, mes enfants."

Jules Verne had invented hard science fiction. He originated the hard SF metier of off-the-rack plots and characters, combined with vast expository lumps of pop science. His innovation came from literary naivete; he never learned better or felt any reason to. (This despite Apollinaire's sniping remark: "What a style Jules Verne has, nothing but nouns.")

Verne's dialogue, considered quite snappy for the period, was derived from the stage. His characters constantly strike dramatic poses: Ned Land with harpoon upraised, Phileas Fogg reappearing stage-right in his London club at the last possible tick of the clock. The minor characters--comic Scots, Russians,