Alfvin Toffler, “Future Shock”, 1970 was the topic of an earlier blog post.
Alvin Toffler’s definition of “future shock”: is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future.
Here I present: Jules Verne (1828~1905), “Paris in the Twentieth Century”, 1863 which was a “near-future” SciFi novel. BELOW is the “table of contents” listing of 17 chapters.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Chapter I. Academic Credit Union.
Chapter II. A Panorama of the Streets of Paris.
Chapter III. The Eminently Practical Family.
Chapter IV. Concerning Some Nineteenth-Century Authors, and the Difficulty of Obtaining Them.
Chapter V. Which Treats of Calculating Machines and Self-protecting Safes.
Chapter VI. In Which Quinsonnas Appears on the Ledger’s Summit.
Chapter VII. Three Drones.
Chapter VIII. Which Concerns Music, Ancient and Modern, and the Practical Utilization of Certain Instruments.
Chapter IX. A Visit to Uncle Huguenin.
Chapter X. Grand Review of French Authors Conducted by Uncle Huguenin, Sunday, April 15, 1961.
Chapter XI. A Stroll to the Port de Grenelle.
Chapter XII. Quinsonnas’s Opinion on Women.
Chapter XIII. Concerning the Ease with Which an Artist Can Starve to Death in the Twentieth Century.
Chapter XIV. Le Grand Entrepot Dramatique.
Chapter XV. Poverty.
Chapter XVI. The Demon of Electricity.
Chapter XVII. Et in Pulverem Reverteris.
The 1863 book presents Paris in August, 1960; 97 years in Verne’s future, where society places value only on business and technology.
The protagonist is “Michel Dufrenoy”, a 16 year-old Literature major; and, his dream is to be an author.
However, to support himself “Michel” takes a bookkeeper job at Casmodage & Company Bank. Protagonist “Michel Dufrenoy” has as his love interest “Lucy Richelot”.
The couple in Paris of “Michel” & “Lucy” is focus of the storyline. “Michel Dufrenoy” gets fired from Casmodage & Company Bank; as, it was work he is not suited for.
Next work, “Michel” writes a book of poetry entitled “Hope”; however, the book is rejected by every publisher in Paris.
As the year comes to end, the winter for all of Europe is frozen in thirty degrees below zero. “Lucy Richelot” has left her apartment; and, “Michel Dufrenoy” has lost her forever.
In the climax of the story, heartbroken “Michel” bereft of friends and loved ones, wanders through the frozen mechanized, electrical wonders of Paris.
Here I presented: Jules Verne (1828~1905), “Paris in the Twentieth Century”, 1863 which was a “near-future” SciFi novel.
George Orwell, “Nineteen Eighty Four”, 1949 which was a “near-future” SciFi novel was the topic of an earlier blog post.