Knowing the Unknowable: What Some Science Fiction Almost Does (Critical Essay‪)‬

The science fiction tales of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne share various characteristics as key works in the modern development of the genre, but in one major respect each of the two writers stands at the head of a different line of descent. Verne was well aware of this, as shown by his insisting on several occasions that--as he put it in 1904--he made a practice of He went on to contrast this with Wells, "a purely imaginative writer," who specialized in "creations ... belong[ing] unreservedly to an age and degree of scientific knowledge far removed from the present" (Smyth 42). Verne indeed seldom strayed beyond reasonably plausible extrapolations from existing science, whereas Wells was drawn to subjects about which science not only had little to say, but in some cases seemed unlikely ever to say anything at all.