From The Earth To The Sun

Jules Verne's Moon novels are two volumes that should have been one whereas his Hector Servadac is one volume that has been split into two. Human beings would not be able to survive either in a projectile fired from a cannon or on a part of the Earth struck by a comet.

The two Parts of Hector Servadac could appropriately have been entitled From The Earth To The Sun and Around The Solar System. The characters seem to spend nearly all of Part One thinking that they are still on Earth. Until it is explained, the change to their environment is uniquely strange.

The Moon novels spend too much time stating, in a documentary style, what was already known about the Moon and far too little time describing any new discoveries made by the astronauts. They seem to glimpse seas and clouds on the Far Side but do not discuss this before concluding that the Moon was, but no longer is, habitable.

Hector Servadac

Hector Servadac, one of Jules Verne's fifty four Extraordinary Voyages, was translated into English and published in two volumes as To The Sun and Off On A Comet but is now referred to as Off On A Comet. Thus, when I ordered Off On A Comet from the public library and received To The Sun and Off On A Comet in one volume entitled The Space Novels of Jules Verne, I thought that I was getting the novel that I had requested and another that I had not heard of whereas the one that I had not heard of is simply the first part of the work that I did want and Off On A Comet in a volume to itself would have been only the second half.

While agreeing that Hector Servadac is a deplorable title, I suggest that the original subtitle, "Voyages And Adventures Across The Solar World," might instead serve as an overall title that would both express the contents and convey the scope of this single novel.

Moon, Sun, Comet

I said before that Jules Verne wrote three interplanetary novels but this was wrong. Off On A Comet has come to me from the public library in a double volume with its prequel, starring the same central character, To The Sun? -of which I had never heard.

Thus, it would be possible to publish in uniform editions six classic volumes of interplanetary fiction:

From The Earth To The Moon, Verne
Around The Moon, Verne

To The Sun?, Verne
Off On A Comet, Verne

The First Men In The Moon, Wells
The War Of The Worlds, Wells

I now have three by Verne to read with interest.