Jules Verne
The deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us, admits Professor Aronnax early in this novel. What goes on in those distant depths? What creatures inhabit, or could inhabit, those regions twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water? It's almost beyond conjecture.
Geologist Otto Lidenbrock is perusing an ancient Icelandic manuscript when he discovers a mysterious encrypted note. The message reveals the account of a sixteenth-century explorer who claims to have found a passageway to the center of the earth.
In his quest to penetrate the planet's primordial secrets, the impetuous professor, together with his quaking nephew, Axel, and their devoted guide, Hans, sets off immediately for Iceland. Descending
...In The Moon Voyage, famed author Jules Verne, best known for works such as A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days, sets his sights on the prospect of interstellar travel. Adeptly combining humor and science fiction, Verne's fictional account of the journey to the moon presciently presages many aspects of the trip that the Apollo astronauts took
...A Journey to the Center of the Earth, also translated as A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, follows a man, his nephew and their guide down an Icelandic volcano into the center of the earth. There they encounter an ancient landscape filled with prehistoric animals and natural dangers. There is some discussion as to whether Verne really believed that such things might be found in the center, or whether he shared the alternate view,
...Written more than a century before man landed on the moon, this classic adventure tale has proved to be one of Jules Verne's most prophetic. It is also a forerunner of today's science fiction.
At the close of the Civil War, the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club find themselves unemployed and bored. Finally, their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes a new project: build a gun big enough to launch a rocket to the moon. But when a daring
...