# From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne (1865)



## AE35Unit (Sep 17, 2011)

What a quirky little book! The synopsis sounds ridiculous by today's  standards; design a 900 foot cannon to shoot a huge ball to the moon  using cotton impreganted with some highly flammable substance as 'fuel'  (called Pyroxite)
And yet the book is laced with good sound science that one would expect  to find in a modern hard SF book! The distance to the moon is known as  is its orbital velocity and details such as the apogee and perigee of  the moon are figured into the itineray. Its all jolly good fun with a  mild poke at the Americans-even though the main characters are American  and it reads as if written by an American, at times one detects the odd  poke at the 'Yankees' as Verne's character refers to his colleagues.

A group called the Gun Club form with the intention of making bigger and  better arms, but when peace is declared its members feel somehow  deprived of an enemy to fight and so must look elsewhere. Then up pops  the idea of a huge gun, bigger than anything they have seen before, and  it will be used to fire a cannon at the moon to gain relations with the  selenites up there (i.e. colonise!) and plant the American flag  declaring the world theirs! But thats how people thought back in the  day, and bear in mind this was written over 100 years before the 1969  moon landing!

All in all quite incredible and great fun!


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## zray13fu (Oct 18, 2011)

This is useful


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## zray13fu (Oct 18, 2011)

Thank you


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## AE35Unit (Oct 18, 2011)

Glad you found it useful!


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