“Trees to caves,
caves to farms,
farms to cities,
cities to cyberspace.”
Jules Verne, “Paris in the Twentieth Century”, 1863 was the topic of an earlier blog post.
Here I present: Jules Verne, “The Begum’s ( बेगम )Fortune”, 1879 which was a dystopian SciFi novel of city-planning. The science of this SciFi novel is architecture. The “table of contents” of the book is shown BELOW.
“Two men inherited a vast fortune as descendants of a French soldier who settled in India and married the immensely rich widow of a native prince – the begum of the title. The inheritance of the Begum Gokool of Ragginahra forms the plot storyline.
“A competition by the protagonist & antagonist (using inheritance) in building a city is the story.
The protagonist is French physician, Doctor Francois Sarrasin. The antagonist character is German, militant technocrat Professor Herr Schultz of the University of Jena.
They both get the United States to cede its sovereignty over two cities for the creation of their utopian city-states. One is Ville-France (French: France-Ville, also translated as “Frankville”) on the western side of the Cascades, and the other is Stahlstadt (“steel city”), on the east side.
On many fronts Jules Verne foresaw the advancement of future scientific and technological inventions. Christian J. Thomsen, coined the terms: Stone Age, Bronze Age & Iron Age. The Ages of Glass & Steel are part of the present day. Jules Verne was keen to recognize the Steel Age which began in 1855. “Steel Cities” using vertical construction are the urban-setting of modern SciFi. 
Here I presented: Jules Verne, “The Begum’s ( बेगम ) Fortune”, 1879 which was a SciFi novel of urban-planning of two contrasting cities. The science of this SciFi novel is architecture.; and, Jules Verne was keen to recognize the arrival of the Steel Age of architecture and urban-planning.
“Trees to caves,
caves to farms,
farms to cities,
cities to cyberspace.”
I began this blog post with this Michael Crichton quote; and, cities of Stahlstadt are where cyberspace is located.
