This adventure novel follows a gun club's plan to send travelers to the Moon. Three men volunteer to ride inside a giant cannon shell, turning a weapons project into a journey through space.
137 pages 2h 39m reading time
One of the founding works of science fiction, and among the first serious novels about space travel.
Imagines a trip to the Moon worked out with real numbers, using the math and science of its day to plan the launch speed, the path, and the shell itself.
Inspired space pioneers such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth, who said reading it as young men led them to study rocketry.
Is often noted for details that the real Apollo missions later echoed, including a launch from Florida and a crew of three.
Answered the Civil War
Its gun club is made of American cannon makers left with nothing to do when the Civil War ended.
Readers left hanging
The novel ends with the travelers' fate unknown, and the sequel, Round the Moon, took four years to arrive.
A cousin checked the math
Verne's cousin Henri Garcet, a math teacher, helped him work out the numbers behind the launch.
First printed in a newspaper
It first came out in parts in the Paris newspaper Journal des débats.
Jules Verne 1865