Throughout his entire writing career – and especially in his youthful and later phases – Jules Verne, the father of science fiction, occasionally broke free from the strict rationality of his visions and allowed his imagination to roam more freely into other literary genres.

With his well-known lightness, vividness, and humor, he wandered into areas he never attempted to explore more systematically.

The two short stories and the fairy tale in this book give a measure of the value of this "other" Verne.