From The Earth To The Moon
by Jules Verne
First published 1865 · French · 136 pages
- Novels
- Adventure
- Science fiction
- Fantasy
After the American Civil War, the members of the Baltimore Gun Club, a society of artillery enthusiasts, find themselves without any weapons to design. Their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes a bold project: to fire a projectile at the Moon with an enormous cannon. The novel follows the debates, calculations, public excitement and rivalries around the plan, and the arrival of a daring Frenchman who wishes to travel inside the shell. Witty and full of technical detail, it is an early and influential vision of space travel. The story continues in Round the Moon.
Quotes
The moon, by her comparative proximity, and the constantly varying appearances produced by her several phases, has always occupied a considerable share of the attention of the inhabitants of the earth.
There remains but the third class, the superstitious. These worthies were not content merely to rest in ignorance; they must know all about things which had no existence whatever,
they did to others that which they would not they should do to them—that grand principle of immortality upon which rests the whole art of war.
Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records, and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the club is fully constituted.