<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

On The Sci Fi Channel's 2001 series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, the character Jules Verne was a fictionalization based upon the French writer Jules Verne. Played by American actor Chris Demetral, Jules Verne was portrayed as a budding writer in his mid-20s.

Jules was born in the provincial Atlantic Ocean port city of Nantes, the son of a well-to-do attorney. His father wanted him to join the family firm, and he went to Paris to study law.

However, he was determined to pursue a literary career as a playwright, and though he continued his law studies, he made as many contacts as he could in the world of the arts, including established writers like Alexandre Dumas.

At the beginning of the series, before he has found his true vocation as a novelist, Jules' plays were either not performed at all or only performed for a few nights, and as the series started, he found himself eking out the classic life of the starving artist in the poorer quarters of Paris.

As first portrayed in the series, Jules was committed to literature and to the creative life, but had not yet found his niche within it. Jules was part of the impoverished world of young artists which later became famous through La Bohème and Moulin Rouge, sitting with his friends in low bars and cheap cafes on the Left Bank trying to make cups of coffee and glasses of wine last as long as possible.

Always a compulsive note-taker, Jules was gathering facts the way a squirrel gathers nuts and scribbling them on file cards and in his journals. He was determined to take in as much information about the world as he possible could.

At the start of the first episode, In the Beginning, Jules was somewhat naive, and romantically inexperienced. As the series progressed, his experiences gradually changed him - not his youthful enthusiasm, but his ability to interact with the "real" world.

This was largely the result of his relationship with Phileas Fogg, who became his mentor.

Fogg was a man of the world, an experienced lover, a brilliant swordsman, a man who knew how to play a game of poker with the most dangerous opponents. A hopeless romantic, Jules had a particular crush on the daring Rebecca Fogg who insisted on regarding Jules as a good pal, or an amusing surrogate younger brother.

Jules relieved some of his frustrations about women - and about life in general - by drawing sketches of imaginary machines. These futuristic inventions poured out of his head almost without thought; and often, while talking about something else entirely, he'd dash one off, crumple a sketch up and throw it away. It was Jules' natural vision of the future which was sought after by the forces of good and evil.

In the series, Jules was neither a natural athlete nor swordsman; he did his best with what Phileas taught him of conventional weapons (sword, gun and fists) and what Rebecca showed him of more exotic weaponry and methodology.

Jules was a visionary, with all the weaknesses and strengths that implied. He had grand holistic visions of society and man's place in the world. These were based on his belief in the value of the individual and universal self-expression, but they made him vulnerable to seduction by other holistic visions—such as those of the League of Darkness.

Jules Verne was always battling to save the future through science, and in the process, inventing it.