In them, he wrote about the future. He asked,” What will life be like at the end of the 20 th century – one hundred years from now?”. In one of his adventure novels (From the Earth to the Moon ), his characters traveled to the moon in a rocket. In another novel (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), his characters dove through the depths of the ocean in a submarine in the shape of a whale. In a novel titled Paris in the Twentieth Century, Verne described a city with skyscrapers of glass and steel, high-speed trains, gas-powered automobiles, and a global communications network.