Where the ever-rolling waves of the ocean throw their white foam on to the coast of France and change colour as the weather changes, Jules Verne was born. Where sailors and fishermen returned with their merchandise and strange creatures of the sea, the boy grew up. Dreaming of strange and far-away countries, he spent his free hours at the harbour in his birthplace Nantes. Perhaps it was in these early days in the second quarter of the nineteenth century that the foundation was laid for the ideas realised in the numerous books he wrote later. Books which were called by many a biographist fantastic, or, what is more, prophetic. See, wrote some biographers, how Jules Verne saw things which did not exist in his day. The tendency to exaggerate the prophetic qualities of the well-known author is increasing in this day of spaceflight and atomic submarines.