While the title might sound provocative and controversial, I do seriously think that the writing skills of Jules Verne have always been greatly exaggerated. (Or, perhaps more precisely, not his skills in expressing himself in textual form, but his skills as a storyteller, as a writer.)
For about a century Jules Verne has always been hailed as one of the greatest authors of fiction in human history, even going so far as being sometimes called "the father of science fiction", among other fancy accolades. At least in past decades his books were a staple reading of school children and adults alike, and he has always been praised for his imagination, inventiveness and great science fiction writing.
Imaginative and inventive he might have been, but I would posit that he wasn't really all that good of a writer. Most of his stories are full of silly details that are illogical or nonsensical. Not only are his books full of scientific inaccuracies (even taking into account the time they were written, as any person of the time even slightly educated in science and physics could have attested), but there are also many weak plot points and illogical details.
The list of scientific inaccuracies (even by the knowledge of the time) and illogical or weak plot points from all of his books would be quite extensive, but let me present one particular example that struck me as odd even back when I first read the book as a child.
The protagonist and narrator of the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (one of the most famous of Verne's books) is one Professor Pierre Aronnax, a marine biologist and journalist, who accidentally ends up captured into the Nautilus, the submarine of Captain Nemo, among a couple of other crew members of the ship that he was traveling on.
At one point, well into the story, while these outsiders have been drugged to sleep and later wake up, Captain Nemo is very distressed and outright desperate, and he asks Aronnax if he might perhaps be a doctor. It is implied later that the Nautilus had sunk yet another ship by ramming into it, and a crew member had suffered a bad head injury because of the collision.
Completely out of the blue Aronnax confirms that yes, he's a Doctor of Medicine.
At no point prior to this point was it established that this marine biologist and journalist was also a Doctor of Medicine, or any kind of medical practitioner. Nor is it ever mentioned again after this small segment of the book. It comes up completely out of the blue and is never mentioned again.
It makes little sense. While of course it's not impossible, it's unlikely that someone would go through the 6+ years of medical school, plus all the extra years of training needed to get a doctorate in medicine, and then also become a marine biologist. It especially makes very little sense because this quite important aspect of his career was never mentioned nor alluded to in any way prior to this (and is completely forgotten after this).
It also makes very little sense that Nemo would have a submarine with a crew of dozens of people, and no doctor aboard. (It is never established in the book that there was a doctor but he eg. died or something along those lines. No mention of any kind is made about why there is no doctor among the crew of the Nautilus. It's left completely unexplained and unmentioned.)
The impetus for writing this in the book, completely out of the blue, is so that Aronnax would be taken to parts of the ship that he was normally completely banned from entering, so that he could get a look at more of the ship and get an estimate of the crew size (this is specifically alluded to in the subsequent narrative).
And this is precisely why I consider this a clear example of bad writing: This "I'm a Doctor of Medicine" is pretty much a Deus ex Machina, a completely illogical out-of-the-blue plot point that was not established and is never used again, just for such a small thing as the protagonist being taken to parts of the ship that were off bounds for him before.
There would be a million ways to achieve the same thing in a more logical manner, without resorting to such a stretch and illogical detail.
And this is not an isolated case of such bad writing. Verne's books are full of such examples. This is just one of them.
