Jules Verne regarding H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon
(From a 1903 interview by Robert Sherad)
"Je pensais bein que vous alliez me demader cela. His books were sent to me, and I have read them. It is very curious, and, I will add, very English. But I do not see the possibility of comparison between his work and mine. We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on very scientific basis. No, there is no rapport between his work and mine. I make use of physics. He invents. I go to the moon in a cannon-ball, discharged from a cannon. There is no invention. He goes ... in an airship, which he constructs of a metal which does away with the law of gravitation. Ca c'est tres joli but show me this metal. Let him produce it."
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(From a 1904 interview by Gordon Jones)
"The creations of Mr. Wells, on the other hand, belong unreservedly to an age and degree of scientific knowledge far removed from the present, though I will not say entirely beyond the limits of the possible. Not only does he evolve his constructions entirely from the realm of the imagination, but he also evolves the materials of which he builds them. See, for example, his story "The First Men in the Moon". You will remember that here he introduces an entirely new antigravitational substance, to whose mode of preparation or actual chemical compostion we are not given the slightest clue, nor does a reference to our present scientific knowledge enable us for a moment to predict a method by which such a result might be achieved."
