Journey to the Center of the Earth

Journey to the Center of the Earth is an 1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne (published in the original French as Voyage au centre de la Terre.) The story involves a professor who leads a group of explorers and scientists down a volcano in Iceland to the "center of the Earth". They encounter many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy. From a scientific point of view, this story has not aged quite as well as other Verne stories, since most of his ideas about what the interior of the Earth is like have since been proven wrong. However, a redeeming point to the story is Verne's own belief, told within the novel from the viewpoint of a character, that the inside of the Earth does indeed differ from that which the characters encounter.

Synopsis

The story is narrated by Axel Lidenbrock, nephew of an eminent German geologist and naturalist, Professor Otto Lidenbrock. The story begins in the Lidenbrock house in Hamburg, with Professor Lidenbrock having bought an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga written by Snorri Sturluson. Inside the manuscript, they find a coded note written in runic script, which is eventually deciphered as a note written backwards, by Arne Saknussemm, an alchemist of three centuries earlier, who claims to have discovered a passage to the centre of the earth, via Snæfell in Iceland.

Related Topics:
Geologist - Naturalist - Hamburg - Runic - Manuscript - Icelandic - Saga - Snorri Sturluson - Alchemist - Snæfell

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Professor Lidenbrock is a man of astonishing impatience, and departs for Iceland immediately, taking his reluctant nephew with him. Before long they have arrived in Reykjavík, procured the services of a guide named Hans, and travelled to the base of the volcano. They ascend to the crater, in which there are three smaller craters, and wait for the shadow of the tallest peak to touch a particular crater at noon on a particular day, which Saknussemm's note says contains the passage.

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After descending into this crater, the party of three travel into the bowels of the earth, encountering many strange phenomena and great dangers, including a chamber filled with combustible gas, and steep sided wells around the "path". They reach a subterranean ocean lit by gasses on the ceiling and sail across it, but are intercepted by a cyclonic lightning storm. After this they found a passageway marked by Saknussem as the way ahead. However, it is blocked by a rockfall. The adventurers dynamite the fallen rocks, but the explosion is unexpectedly large and they are swept away by the sea rushing into the gap. Eventually they find themselves inside an erupting volcano on their raft, and are transported rapidly back to the surface of the earth by the magma, where they find that they have emerged from Stromboli.

Related Topics:
Dynamite - Volcano - Stromboli

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