a journey to the center of the earth book

The travelers build a raft out of semipetrified wood and set sail. Édouard Riou's illustration of an ichthyosaurus battling a plesiosaurus.įollowing the course of the Hansbach, the explorers descend many miles and reach an underground world, with an ocean and a vast ceiling with clouds, as well as a permanent Aurora giving light. Go down into the crater of Snaefells Jökull, which Scartaris's shadow caresses just before the calends of July, O daring traveler, and you'll make it to the center of the earth. When translated into English, the note reads: While leafing through an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga, Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a coded note written in runic script along with the name of a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist, Arne Saknussemm. The story begins in May 1863, at the home of Professor Otto Lidenbrock in Hamburg, Germany. Journey inspired many later authors, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his novel The Lost World, Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Pellucidar series, and J. However his novel's distinction lay in its well-researched Victorian science and its inventive contribution to the science-fiction subgenre of time travel-Verne's innovation was the concept of a prehistoric realm still existing in the present-day world. The category of subterranean fiction existed well before Verne. Eventually the three explorers are spewed back to the surface by an active volcano, Stromboli, located in southern Italy.

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 (the 1867 revised edition inserted additional prehistoric material in Chaps. 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. It was first published in French in 1864, then reissued in 1867 in a revised and expanded edition. Journey to the Center of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre), also translated with the variant titles A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and A Journey into the Interior of the Earth, is a classic science fiction novel by Jules Verne.

A journey to the center of the earth book