Jules Verne

There ought to be a law stipulating that well-meaning relatives may not touch the manuscripts left by their loved ones. It traumatizes a book to have its ending Disneyfied, its time period altered by 100 years, its nouns and adjectives translated back and forth across time and languages. This was the circuitous journey that Jules Verne's last great opus, "The Secret of Wilhem Storitz," took before landing on our shores, where it has been revived and returned to its authentic form by Peter Schulman and the University of Nebraska Press.

In its own sweetly bombastic way the 2008 remake of "Journey to the Center of the Earth" did the job, the job being a 21st century 3-D bash starring Brendan Fraser - an actor who gives his all to the green screen, every time - and loosely based on the 19th century Jules Verne adventure, a natural for the movies. Its script proceeded from the idea that Verne, science fiction visionary, was in reality writing about real places and genuine fantastic phenomena only disguised as fiction.

A new European cargo ship flew up to the International Space Station and docked Thursday, delivering food, water and clothes in its orbital debut. The unmanned cargo ship, called Jules Verne, was operated by flight controllers at a European Space Agency center in Toulouse, France. NASA's Mission Control in Houston and Russia's control center outside Moscow kept close tabs on the operation, which culminated in the morning linkup more than 200 miles above the Atlantic.

The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz A Novel Jules Verne, translated from the French by Peter Schulman University of Nebraska Press: 215 pp., $15.95 paper

Shortly before he died, Jules Verne (1828-1905) boasted that he was working on his hundredth book. If that's how many he wrote, and it all depends on how you count, I must have devoured at least a third of them before my 15th birthday. So had Theodore Roosevelt, Kaiser William II and millions the world over. School libraries in France and elsewhere stored scores of the writer's books; so did the memory of adults like Andre Gide and H.G. Wells.

Just about everyone knows Jules Verne, if not through his novels then from the movies made from them: "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (1954) and "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1956). There were also movies made of "From the Earth to the Moon" (1958), "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1959) and "The Mysterious Island" (1961), but these were considerably less popular, and Verne was lucky that his reputation did not have to depend on them.

Horse-drawn carriages clattered on the streets outside Jules Verne's Paris apartment, but it was quiet inside. There was no telephone, no phonograph and no radio--they had yet to be invented. The year was 1863. Soldiers armed with muskets were fighting the Civil War across the Atlantic. Workers were digging London's first subway line.

Jules Verne had been knocking on the wrong doors for a dozen years when at last he found the optimal direction for his talents. A reluctant student of the law up from maritime Brittany, an overanxious author of instantly forgettable musical playlets for the Parisian boulevard theater, he invented his genre with a single novel, "Five Weeks in a Balloon."

The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz A Novel Jules Verne, translated from the French by Peter Schulman University of Nebraska Press: 215 pp., $15.95 paper

Regarding Robert Hilburn's "Prince Takes Beatles' Path 'Around the World' " (April 21), he states Prince's "Around the World in a Day" is a play on Mike Todd's 1956 movie "Around the World in 80 Days." How about a play on Jules Verne's 1896 "Around the World in 80 Days"? JOHN A. STRONG Hollywood

There ought to be a law stipulating that well-meaning relatives may not touch the manuscripts left by their loved ones. It traumatizes a book to have its ending Disneyfied, its time period altered by 100 years, its nouns and adjectives translated back and forth across time and languages. This was the circuitous journey that Jules Verne's last great opus, "The Secret of Wilhem Storitz," took before landing on our shores, where it has been revived and returned to its authentic form by Peter Schulman and the University of Nebraska Press.

Tony Curtis, the 1950s matinee idol who developed into an acclaimed actor in such classics as "Some Like It Hot," "Sweet Smell of Success" and "The Defiant Ones," was in a reflective mood recently. "I'm just a lucky guy," said Curtis over the phone from his home in Las Vegas. "I am having such a wonderful life." Perhaps it was his birthday on June 3 that sparked this mellow feeling. "I'm 84 years old and still kicking sand," he said with a laugh in his still-hearty Bronx-tinged accent.

Sunday afternoon, with 48 hours until the first-ever Top 13 sing here, the cavernous "American Idol" soundstage more closely resembled a demolition zone than the glitzy home of the nation's leading entertainment powerhouse. Next to the half-finished judges' table, a Hertz rental crane hoisted a cherry picker basket above the set for a technician to adjust some lights. Some 60 crew members moved about with unhurried focus, installing video monitors, placing a drum kit on the set's second-floor bandstand, testing the sound system and setting up platforms.

If anyone doubts the difficulty of creating a play with beyond-stratospheric ambitions, consider this: It took the U.S. space program a bit more than eight years to send a crew to the moon after President John F. Kennedy's 1961 challenge to achieve that feat -- and it has taken nearly as long for L.A. director and playwright Nancy Keystone to bring "Apollo," her epic about spaceflight, to the launching pad for its first complete staging. The countdown ends Friday at Portland Center Stage in Oregon, when the fully realized "Apollo" will have its premiere.

"Journey to the Center of the Earth" Jules Verne This wonderful adventure is filled with eye-opening experiences. A great professor finds a book by an author whose books were supposedly all burned. It takes the professor and his nephew days to decode the ancient writings. The writings state that there is a way to journey to the center of the earth. The determined professor wants to go there in spite of his nephew's pleadings not to go. When they are underneath the ground they encounter many dangers.

A new European cargo ship flew up to the International Space Station and docked Thursday, delivering food, water and clothes in its orbital debut. The unmanned cargo ship, called Jules Verne, was operated by flight controllers at a European Space Agency center in Toulouse, France. NASA's Mission Control in Houston and Russia's control center outside Moscow kept close tabs on the operation, which culminated in the morning linkup more than 200 miles above the Atlantic.

Some broadcast and cable programs contain material included in the public school curriculum and on standardized examinations. Here are home-viewing tips: Today-- "Weight Watchers" (A&E 8-9 p.m.) Traces the beginning of a weight loss program started 30 years ago when Jean Nidetch brought together six overweight friends for group therapy and calorie-counting sessions in the Bronx. Also, "David's Journey" (KCBS 10-11 p.m.) Describes the symptoms of an obsessive-compulsive disorder experienced by a gifted young California scholar and other patients being helped by a medical specialist in Boston, Dr. Michael Jenike.

Lighthouse at the End of the World A Novel Jules Verne Translated from the French and edited by William Butcher University of Nebraska Press: 164 pp., $15.95 paper THIS is the first translation into English of the original manuscript of Jules Verne's 1905 novel, "Le Phare du bout du monde." The book, which was made into a film in 1971 starring Yul Brynner and Kirk Douglas, is set on Staten Island, 39 miles long, the last of the Magallanes Islands at the end of the Andes mountain range.

EVERYONE told me the world is round. But last month I had to find out for myself. I started in Paris and flew east to Nepal by way of Bahrain on Gulf Air. From Katmandu, Nepal's capital, I took Royal Nepal Airlines to Bangkok, Thailand, then Thai Airways to Chiang Mai in the northern part of the country and back. In Bangkok, I caught a Cathay Pacific flight to Los Angeles, changing planes in Hong Kong. Then I flew Alaska to Washington, D.C., and United back to Paris.