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At the end of the American Civil War a group of artillery-men find themselves somewhat at a loss. Now that the war is over there is no need for their particular skills and they can't see any chance of another war to relieve the tedium. They therefore turn their attention to the task of sending a projectile to land on the moon whereby they might start a correspondence with the moon-dwellers and, possibly, make the moon the 37th State. In the, then, wilds of Tampa, Florida an enormous cannon is built to very, very particular specifications in order to send a projectile, also of very particular specifications, to meet the moon at the most opportune point of its cycle. It is decided that three men will go in the projectile to effect a landing on the moon where, it is felt, there will be ample oxygen, water, food etc.

This is a current reading choice for another group and I thought, Aha! Action-adventure! Jules Verne - what could be more action-adventure than a Jules Verne?

I freely confess that I do not have an engineering mind. After the first couple of chapters the endless numbers, formulae, measurements and other technical details just floated in one eye and out somewhere else. If you paid attention you would learn how much and what kind of metal was required for the cannon, how far exactly the moon is from the earth and in what direction, what heat would be produced by the firing of the cannon and the speed with which the projectile must be expelled in order to meet the moon at the right point etc etc etc.....on and on and on...... Unfortunately, I have no idea, and could not care less, whether these details are technically accurate, for the time or for now, or whether they were just conjured up out of Verne's imagination.

Unlike Around the World in Eighty Days, which is my favourite Jules Verne, or any others of his that I've read, these books have almost no characterization. Of the three men who travel to the moon you only learn snippets about them. There are some amusing passages, particularly at the beginning such as little comments about other countries while the engineers are raising funds for the project but, again, nothing like the humour of some of his other books. It almost seems that Verne might have started this with the intention of it being a scientific treatise which he then hurriedly converted to a novel as an afterthought.

I've read From the Earth to the Moon but not the sequel. I rated it 3***

I was surprised by how much Verne got right (including the "fight" over whether Florida or Texas would be the prime launch site), especially given that he's writing this about 100 years before NASA actually succeeded in putting a man on the moon.

That said, I did skim over much of the eye-glazing "science" in the book.

I have never heard of either of these! Now I’m intrigued