Jules Verne (1828-1905) used a combination of scientific facts and his imagination to take readers on extraordinary imaginative journeys to fantastic places. In such books as " Around the World in Eighty Days, From the Earth to the Moon, " and " Journey to the Center of the Earth, " he predicted many technological advances of the twentieth century, including the invention of the automobile, telephone, and nuclear submarines, as well as atomic power and travel to the moon by rocket. Joris-Karl Huysmans (18481907) is recognized as one of the most challenging and innovative figures in European literature and acknowledged as principal architect of the fin-de-sicle imagination. He was a career civil servant who wrote ten novels, most notably <I>A Rebours</I> and <I>La-Bas</I>. <P> Robert Baldick translated many volumes from the French for Penguin Classics, including volumes by Diderot, Flaubert, and Verne, and wrote a biography of Huysmans. He died in 1972. <P> Patrick McGuinness is a fellow and tutor in French at St. Annes College, Oxford.