Jules Gabriel Verne (1828-1905) was a French novelist, poet, playwright and initiate.
His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well-researched according to the scientific knowledge then available, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.
He has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the "Father of Science Fiction", a title that has also been given to Herbert George Wells and Hugo Gernsback.
A Drama in the Air (Un drame dans les airs), the adventure story by Jules Verne which we propose to our readers today, was first published in August 1851 under the title La science en famille. Un voyage en ballon (Science for families. A Voyage in a Balloon) in the literary magazine Musée des familles with five illustrations by Alexandre de Bar. In 1874, with six illustrations by Émile-Antoine Bayard, it was included in Doctor Ox, the only collection of Jules Verne's short stories published during Verne's lifetime. An English translation by Anne T. Wilbur, published in May 1852 in Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature, marked the first time a work by Jules Verne was translated into the English language.
Just as the narrator starts the ascent of his balloon, a stranger jumps into its car. The unexpected passenger's only intent is to take the balloon as high as it will go, even at the cost of his and pilot's life. The intruder takes advantage of the long journey to recount the history of incidents related to the epic of lighter-than-air travel.
This story foreshadows Verne's first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon.