In 1996 a science fiction story set in Paris, France, was – finally – published.   It predicted glass-walled skyscrapers, feminism, burglar alarms and email.  These were hardly novel ideas in 1996 or even in 1989 when the manuscript was first circulated.

But the publisher originally approached by the author had rejected the story as being too far-fetched to be believable.

The publisher, a businesslike fellow named Pierre-Jules Hetzel, could be excused for what might appear to us as narrow-mindedness because he’d read the manuscript shortly after it was written: in 1863—at the height of the US Civil War, six years before the golden spike was driven to complete the Transcontinental Railroad and forty years before the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight.  Following this rejection, the manuscript was locked away by its disappointed author. It wasn’t seen again until 1989, when the author’s great-grandson opened the safe.

The author of Paris in the Twentieth Century was Jules Verne.

None of us are immune from rejection letters from hoped-for publishers.  We’re not immune to rejections from friends, lovers, employers, colleges, colleagues, parents, or spouses either. May we be brave enough to write and love and hope again!

Eiffel Tower (c) Homemade – Preschool.com