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Loading... From the Earth to the Moon (1865)by Jules Verne
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book is bizarre, but (mostly) in a good way. The plot is literally that a bunch of dudes are sad because they like to make guns (they're called The Gun Club), but there are no more wars so no one needs guns and now they are bored, so they decide to go to the moon instead. This might sound extreme but this is just how the average man thinks. There's a lot of tech babble in the book, which I'm assuming is like 56% inaccurate or so. It just seems that most of it cannot be true, even if it was back when it was written. BUt that's to be expected from something that was published well over a hundred years ago. What was more surprising were some of the assumptions in the book, such as people seriously debating whether or not the moon has inhabitants or that surely there was water there. Did people honestly belive that back then? Other things hold true to this day. My fave is the guy who just happens to do a production of Shakespeare's "Much ado about nothing", and large crowds assuming it's a jab at the main character and violently going to the theater to protest. It seems exactly like the kind of thing that could happen today, and the fact that Americans WERE the first to walk on the moon should prove that a lot of the hysteria from the book were true a hundred years later, and will probably still be true for many hundred years to come. I did want to know more about the trip in the spaceship, but there's nothing about that in the book. I guess I'll have to read the sequel for that ... Wow. I am in shock. It took me a little while to get into the flow of the book but when I did I really enjoyed it. It's written like a scientific history, with many calculation and numbers that could make anyone believe the book is real. For a second I forgot I was reading science fiction. Not only is expertly written scientifically, I found it quite funny. Wow I can't believe it took me this long to read Verne, will definitely read more! no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesGun Club trilogy (1) Belongs to Publisher SeriesBiblioteca [Selecta] (288) — 11 more El País. Aventuras (40) Elsevier pockets (JVW12) Fantasia [Bietti] (42) Tus Libros. Anaya (84) Vintage Scholastic (T0619) Is contained inThe Works of Jules Verne: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Round the Moon, Around the World in Eighty Days, Short Stories by Jules Verne Amazing Journeys: Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Circling the Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, and Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne JULES VERNE OMNIBUS Around the World in Eighty Days, from the Earth to the Moon, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, the Blockade Runners by Jules Verne Around the World in Eighty Days / From the Earth to the Moon / 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne Collected Novels: Around the World in 80 Days / The Clipper of the Clouds / Journey to the Centre of the Earth / From the Earth to the Moon / Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne Jules Verne - Romane (Vier Bände im Schuber): 20.000 Meilen unter den Meeren - In 80 Tagen um die Welt - Reise zum Mittelpunkt der Erde - Von der Erde zum Mond by Jules Verne International Collector's Library Classics 19 volumes: Crime & Punishment; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; Mysterious Island; Magic Mountain; Around the World in 80 Days; Count of Monte Cristo; Camille; Quo Vadis; Hunchback of Notre Dame; Nana; Scaramouche; Pinocchio; Fernande; War and Peace; The Egyptian; From the Earth to the Moon; Candide; Treasure of Sierra Madre; Siddhartha/Steppenwolf by Jules Verne Has the adaptation
Written almost a century before the daring flights of the astronauts, Jules Verne’s prophetic novel of man’s race to the stars is a classic adventure tale enlivened by broad satire and scientific acumen. When the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club find themselves lacking any urgent assignments at the close of the Civil War, their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes that they build a gun big enough to launch a rocket to the moon. But when Barbicane’s adversary places a huge wager that the project will fail and a daring volunteer elevates the mission to a “manned” flight, one man’s dream turns into an international space race. A story of rip-roaring action, humor, and wild imagination, From the Earth to the Moon is as uncanny in its accuracy and as filled with authentic detail and startling immediacy as Verne’s timeless masterpieces 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.8Literature French and related languages French fiction Later 19th century 1848–1900LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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What is it about? (from wikipedia): The Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, attempts to build an enormous Columbiad space gun and launch three people in a projectile with the goal of a Moon landing.
While this is an early classic of science fiction, one thing you need to know is that this is a very geeky kind of adventure novel. Basically, the story told here is not about traveling to the Moon, but about the planning and preparation stages. Because of that, there is not a lot of action. All Verne novels have some popular science info-dumps, but this one has more than its share of that. That is quite understandable, given the unprecedented difficulties of the task, but it can make for a less dynamic read. That's why I said this is a geeky kind of novel. A lot of the enjoyment comes not from actual adventure, but from the audacity of the project and from how reasonable and possible Verne makes it sound when he tackles the technical details. There are a lot of planning meetings where the characters discuss the details of the project, and a lot of building and testing.
Despite this lack of action, the novel has several things going for it. There is the already mentioned geeky enjoyment of the planning. Looking at it from a modern perspective, Verne's calculations and plans are surprisingly accurate. The main failing that would make the project impractical is that, in order for the passengers not to die due to the acceleration when the projectile was shot, the barrel of the cannon would have to be much longer, to allow the projectile to reach the same escape velocity with a smaller acceleration.
Another thing worth mentioning is the humor. This is the funniest among the Verne novels that I have read so far. The beginning is quite similar to Five Weeks in a Balloon, with a visionary character making a speech to a scientific society (if we can call the Baltimore Gun Club a scientific society) and describing a daring exploration project. However, the Gun Club plays a much greater role here than the Royal Geographical Society played in Five Weeks in a Balloon, and it allows Verne to use his satirical abilities to the maximum.
The Baltimore Gun Club's members are so absorbed in their hobby/profession that they consider the fact that the Civil War ended and the country is at peace as an outrage and personal insult against themselves and against the art of gunnery. Even their physical descriptions are funny, with the ridiculous amount of mutilations among their members becoming a running gag.
Verne certainly makes fun of Americans in this novel, but in my opinion is a fond kind of satire. He makes fun of Americans while at the same time admiring them for their daring, their can-do attitude, and the greatness of their enterprises. There is a moment in the novel mentioning their dream of planting the American flag on the Moon that would come true in an iconic moment a century after this novel was published.
Another thing Verne does to maintain the reader's interest is introduce some personal conflict among the characters, in this case mainly between Impey Barbicane, the president of the Gun Club and the driving force behind the project of reaching the Moon, and his long-time rival and nemesis, Captain Nicholl of Philadelphia, a designer of plate armor and thus the natural rival of cannon-designers. Their antics and bets, including even a duel, help a lot to advance the plot of the novel in an entertaining way.
This is also the first time Verne uses a Frenchman as one of his main characters, Michel Ardan, a French poet and adventurer who conceives the idea of a human crew inside the projectile. Verne tends to use a lot of Anglo-Saxon characters in his novels, probably out of admiration for the ambition of their exploration projects, as I have mentioned. However, from this novel on, often he includes a French character too.
Another big component of the novel is the public's reaction and enthusiasm for the project. There is a public subscription to finance it, and people from all over the world help, allowing Verne to have some satirical fun describing how much each country contributes and why. This is of course part of Verne's general optimism about science and the human spirit, which makes his work very appealing to me.
The novel ends shortly after the cannon is shot, leaving the story somewhat incomplete. A few years later, Verne would continue and finish the story with a sequel novel (Around The Moon), which I'll review in turn.
See all my Verne reviews here: https://www.sffworld.com/forum/threads/reading-vernes-voyages-extraordinaires.58... ( )