Jules Verne: From the Earth to the Moon & Around the Moon

Hi

Believe it or not, but this is my first experience with Jules Verne.
I chose this bind up of From the Earth to the Moon & Around the Moon to start with.
It has 418 pages and I got it at Standaard Boekhandel.

“Jules Verne (1828-1905) was internationally famous as the author of novels based on ‘extraordinary voyages.’ His visionary use of new travel technologies inspired his readers to look to the industrial future rather than the remote past for their dreams of adventure. The popularity of his novels led directly to modern science fiction. In "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Around the Moon," Jules Verne turned the ancient fantasy of space flight into a believable technological possibility – an engineering dream for the industrial age. Directly inspired by Verne’s story, enthusiasts worked successfully at overcoming the practical difficulties, and within a century, human beings did indeed fly to the Moon. Curiously, however, Verne is unlikely to have thought it possible that a manned projectile could actually be fired out of a giant cannon, rising higher than the Moon, swinging around it, and then landing safely back on Earth. He had used the science of the day to construct a literary conjuring trick, a hoax, one of the most successful in all history. By skilful misdirection he drew the attention of readers away from weaknesses in the project. Read the book and you, too, will be fooled into accepting the realistic possibility in Verne’s time of that dream of flying to the Moon.”

I really needed this after finishing Oorlog en Terpentijn.

Both stories are captivating, well thought out, very detailed and really entertaining.
The characters are all very distinct and funny, everyone certainly serves a certain purpose to the story. They are all there for a reason and they are a bit caricatured but it works that way.
Considering the age of these stories (over 150 years) the plots really stand up to time. I mean, they are obviously dated and wrong but it doesn’t read that way. The book reads like it really could be possible so you wonder whether it will all work out or not.

But the stories are rather boring in places because of all the science the characters tell us about. It’s just too much. I’m really not interested in the distance between the different planets and stuff like that.
Around the Moon especially suffered from this and I enjoyed that one less.

I do want to read more of his works because it was so relaxing and entertaining. 

4 STARS

Happy reading.
Helena

Enjoying a big mug of tea and a relaxing book.