moment’. ‘By tube or aero-train?’ ‘By tube’. ‘Then you’ll be here?’ ‘At eleven fifty-nine this evening’. ‘Paris time?’ ‘No, no!
… Centropolis time’. ‘Goodbye then, and above all don’t miss the tube!’ These submarine tubes, by which one travels from Paris in two hundred and ninety-five minutes, are certainly much preferable to the aero-trains, which only manage six hundred miles an hour. Francis Bennett, very tired after so very full a day, decided to take a bath before going to bed. There was always a bath already in the office.
He touched the button. A rumbling sound began, got louder, increased … Then one of the doors opened and the bath appeared, gliding along on its rails … Glossary phonotelephote(n): a means of transmitting and receiving both voice and picture for a personal conversation Champs-Elysees(n): a prestigious avenue in Paris, famous for the Cafes, cinemas and shops phototelegrams (n): a telegraphic transmission including images jovians(n): inhabitants of planet Jupiter inhabitants(n): a person or animal that lives in or occupies a place. Centropolis (n): (in this story) the new name of New York in valet(n): a man’s personal male attendant, who is responsible for his clothes and appearance About the author Jules Verne ( – ) was a French poet, playwright and novelist but he earns his place on this list of great writers because of his futuristic adventure novels. He has been called the father of science fiction and has had an incalculable influence on the development of science fiction writing.
More interesting, perhaps, is his place as a prophet or predictor of technology which wasn’t to be invented until long after his death. He put a man on the moon, including its launch from a Florida launchpad to its splashdown in the Pacific; in he predicted the internet: Paris in the th Century ( ) depicts the details of modern life: skyscrapers, television, Maglev trains, computers, and a culture preoccupied with the Internet. 10th - - A. Answer the following questions in two or three lines.
. Why did Francis Bennett wake up with a bad