His books are crowded with hunting and fishing expeditions, but Jules went hunting only once. Then he raised his gun and—poof!—shot the red ribbon off the hat of a game warden. The only fish he ever caught was on a plate at the end of a fork.
他的書中描寫了很多打獵和捕魚方面的活動,但儒勒只打過一次獵。那次,他舉起槍,“砰” 的一聲打中了獵場看守人帽子上的紅絲帶。他只在餐盤中用叉抓住過魚。
Though he never held a test tube in his hand, Jules Verne became a stimulus and inspiration to the scientist in the laboratory. He had TV working before simple radio had been invented. He had helicopters a half century before the Wright brothers. There were, in fact, few twentieth-century wonders that this man did not foresee: neon lights, air conditioning, skyscrapers, guided missiles, tanks, submarines, airplanes.
盡管儒勒·凡爾納從未碰過試管,他卻給實驗室里的科學家們帶來了鼓勵和靈感。簡易收音機發明之前,他的書中電視機已經能用了;他比萊特兄弟早半個世紀發明了直升機。實際上,他幾乎預見了20世紀所有的驚人成就:霓虹燈、空調設備、摩天大樓、導彈、坦克、潛水艇和飛機。
Beyond any doubt, Verne was the father of science fiction; he was years ahead of H. G. Wells, Conan Doyle, and the other great visualizers of things to come.
毋庸置疑,儒勒是科幻小說之父,他的預見比韋爾斯、柯南·道爾及其他偉大的幻想家們早很多年。
Nor was he simply an entertainer. He wrote about the marvels of tomorrow with such precise, indisputable detail that he was taken seriously. Learned societies argued with him. Mathematicians spent weeks checking his figures. When his book about going to the moon was published, 500 people volunteered for the next expedition. France's famous Marshall Lyautey once said that modern science was simply a process of working out in practice what Jules Verne had envisioned in words.
他給人們帶來的不僅僅是快樂。他對未來那些奇妙事物的描寫詳細確切,無可爭辯,因此, 很多人都很認真地看待他的想法。學術界和他展開爭論,數學家們花幾周時間去驗證他列出的數字。當他那本關于登月旅行的書出版時,500個人自告奮勇要參加下次探險。法國著名的馬歇爾·利奧泰曾經說過,現代科學不過是把儒勒·凡爾納書中想象的東西變為現實的過程。
Verne, who lived to see many of his fancies come true, was matter-of-fact about it all. "What one man can imagine," he said, "another man can do."
凡爾納有生之年目睹了他的很多想象變為現實,他認為這不足為奇。他說:“只要有人能想出來,就有人能把它變為現實。”