Jules Verne et l'avenir
The future does not appear in Jules Verne's novels only under the aspect of anticipation. It is often more immediate, reflecting the hopes and fears of the characters, and may extend from the next season to the year 2082. In this article, we consider particular aspects of Futurism, the future included in other times and hypothetical futures. After defining the concept of time in Verne's works, three faces of the future are presented. First is the real, true future, defined as the most obvious: we see what happens later in a future that is a logical continuation of the past. Then there is the future "swallowed" by another time: it is either taken by a kind of "eternal present" or timelessness, or it participates in a circular time development, so that the future is also the past. Finally, there is the hypothetical or conditional future: a product of dialogs between characters that is sometimes realized in later Vernian works.
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