From the Earth to the Moon

From the Earth to the Moon & Around the Moon

Jules Verne

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.