Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)

I picked this up at a charity shop a few days ago and it may have sat on my TBR pile for a while if it wasnt for the wonderful cover you see above. The version I have was published in 1965 and its incredible to think that the book was originally written in 1864.

This is exactly the kind of story I would have loved to read as a child and I'm a little disapointed that I've only just got round to reading it. The desriptions of the places visited along with the mix of scientific theory works very well together. I think what makes it especially appealing to younger readers is the fact that the story is told from the point of view of the youngest character, Axel.

Jules Verne keeps the excitement ticking along as the story progresses with a few really nice twists along the way. The language used is both formal enough so as to not feel dumbed down and not rigid enough that it gets tiresome. I loved the book and picked up Around the World in Eighty Days on the strength of it. ( )

I greatly enjoyed the humor of the narrator, Axel. And some of the descriptions of what they see under the crust of the earth is wonderfully vivid and beautiful. I also enjoyed a lot of the feeling of adventure and occasional suspense of what would happen next.

There are some problematic ways in which certain characters or types of people are talked about, but, the book was written in the mid-1800s, so I was very much expecting that. Though, it wasn't to the extent I had assumed.

For anyone who understands geology, seismology, etc. will probably cringe if they think too hard about the 'facts' and 'discoveries' Axel and his uncle make on their journey. But, if you can put those things aside for a while, it's a fun read into someone's imagination of what it could be like to try and travel deep into the earth.

(For clarity, the English translation I read was done by Robert Baldick.) ( )

Professor Otto Lidenbrock is the tale's central figure, an eccentric German scientist who believes there are volcanic tubes that reach to the very center of the earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their Icelandic guide Hans rappel into Iceland's celebrated inactive volcano Snæfellsjökull, then contend with many dangers, including cave-ins, subpolar tornadoes, an underground ocean, and living prehistoric creatures from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Eventually the three explorers are spewed back to the surface by an active volcano, Stromboli, in southern Italy.

The novel's paleontology drew heavily on the descriptions of prehistory in Louis Figuier's 1863 popular-science work La Terre avant le déluge ("The Earth before the Flood"); Verne was personally acquainted with Figuier and a fellow member of Paris's Circle of the Scientific Press. ( )

This is somewhat interesting. It tries to stay scientific instead of totally going off some some tangent like sci-fi does these days. I'm sure in it's time, it would have been beyond amazing because so much of it could have been true for all people knew. ( )

I liked the beginning of the book with the trekking of the professor and Axel from Hamburg to Iceland. This was descriptive and realistic. The adventure of the three travelers into the passages of the earth were also interesting albeit it begins to be fanciful. The latter portions of the book are ridiculous and have no credible logic. I imagine the book was more interesting in the time in history at which it was written. I do not recommend this book as I believe that science fiction should have some logic which veers from the known to the unknown. Often it based on a supposition that is unfounded but examines the ramifications of this deviation. This book is counter to our knowledge and therefore is ridiculous. ( )