Jules Verne's third great 'science fiction' novel describes the discovery and exploration of a secret tunnel which leads through a volcano to the centre of the Earth. The leader of the expedition is an archetypal comic and eccentric boffin, and together with his ward. his nephew Axel (who is in love with the ward), and an estimable Icelandic guide, the journey is made.
Journey to the Centre o[ the Earth achieved instant and enduring popularity on publication in 1874. Together with Around the World in Eighty Days, Five Weeks in a Balloon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, (all available as Wordsworth Classics). it established Verne as an author of high adventure who filled his stories with a wealth of technical detail, and the energy and freshness of an extraordinary, inventive imagination.
THE TERM "SCIENCE FICTION" was not used until long after Jules Verne"s death in 1905, yet he is the undisputed founder of the genre.He produced fiction in many other forms, but in the novels of his famous series called Les Voyages Extraordinaires, (Strange Journeys), he invariably presents a credible scientific hypothesis and spins a tale of high adventure around an investigation of its possible consequences.Jules Verne was the first author to combine geological theory with scientific fact, accurate technical detail and fiction, and was a precursor, establishing a formula that was adopted by most subsequent writers of science fiction.
Published in 1864, Journey to the Centre of the Earth was the third of Verne"s Strange Journeys which had begun with the highly successful novel of 1862, Five Weeks in a Balloon. Based on the assumption that the Earth is hollow and that volcanoes are possibly linked by subterranian fissures (now known to be fallacious but seriously credited and a genuine scientific preoccupation at that time), it concerns the discovery and exploration of a secret tunnel leading through a volcano to the centre of the Earth. German professor, Otto Liedenbrock, his student nephew Axel, and an estimable Icelandic guide set out on an adventure from which return seems unlikely. The story is related by the student, Axel, who is not keen to undertake the expedition and only does so to gain the hand of his uncle"s ward, Grauben. Liedenbrook is portrayed as the archetypal eccentric boffin, undoubtedly brilliant but essentially a comic figure.Once underground, Axel catches his unde"s enthusiasm, and his narrative is fired with infectious wonder and a passionate interest in the technical aspects of the journey. He gives little more thought to romance, for in Jules Verne"s fundamentally male-dominated and hierarchical world, young men have to prove themselves, relationships with women are relatively insignificant, and man"s search for knowledge is of paramount importance.
