Journey to the Sun

In 1839, 25 years before Jules Verne, French botanist and geologist Pierre Boitard (1789-1859) published Journey to the Sun, the first story of adventure and scientific popularization for young people, depicting a voyage through the solar system, with the beings of each of the planets representing a different stage of Man's evolution. Two years earlier, Boitard had published Paris Before Humankind, well before, well before the emergence of palaeontology; it was the first Darwinian narrative, including pre-historical ape-men. Both of these ground-breaking novellas were at the time attempts to produce what would nowadays be called "hard science fiction": speculative fiction based on accurate scientific data.