Works of Jules Verne/Introduction to Volume 3
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE
HE Adventures of Captain Hatteras," made popular by the first half, or book, of the tale, were continued and concluded in the "Magazine of Adventure" by "The Desert of Ice." It is in this second book of Captain Hatteras that Verne struck again the bolder note of imagination and creation. Here the daring explorers are represented as actually attaining the pole; and the bold inventions of what they saw and did, rising to the startling climax of the volcano and the madman's climb, are led up to through such a well-managed, well-constructed and convincing story, that many critics have selected this in its turn as the most powerful of Verne's works.
It is notable that, with the exception of the open sea and the volcano, the world which our author here pentrates in imagination, coincides closely with that which Peary has discovered to exist in reality. Here are the same barren lands, the same weary sledge journey, the same locations of land and sea, the "red snow," the open leads in the ice. Verne's predictions, wild as they sometimes seem, were all so carefully studied that they shoot most close to truth.
"The Desert of Ice" was followed by the two other remarkable tales contained in the present volume, "A Trip from the Earth to the Moon," and "A Tour of the Moon." These, though published as separate volumes in 1865, really constitute a single story. They are thus like the two books of Captain Hatteras, examples of that peculiar system of nomenclature which makes the titles of our author's books so confusing and misleading. It became quite the publisher's custom, especially among Verne's earlier books, to issue a first volume, wholly incomplete, under one name, then a second section or volume of the tale under another name; and then to reissue the two, or maybe three, combined under a new and entirely different title.
"A Trip from the Earth to the Moon in 97 hours, 13 minutes and 20 seconds," to give the first book of the story its full length original name, plays even more boldly with science than did the "Journey to the Center of the Earth." Yet the theories back of the great gun which shoots the adventurers into space, are sound. And what a vivid realisation is given of the meaning of these vast astronomical distances and forces. Says one of our leading scientific periodicals, speaking of this book, "The time at which the projectile was to be shot out of the cannon is correctly fixed on true astronomical grounds, and the reader who follows its flight will have a more concrete idea of and interest in what gravitation is and does than from half a dozen text-books."
As to the discoveries made by the explorers in the second book of the tale, it is noteworthy that here Verne has again restrained himself, instead of plunging blindly into inventions as a less conscientious romancer might easily have done. His picture of the moon is hard and cold, confined to just what astronomers actually know or closely surmise. He brings the views and visions of the scientist into a field usually abandoned to the fooleries of extravaganza.