Journey to the Center of the Earth

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre), also translated as A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, is a classic 1864 sf novel by Jules Verne. The story involves a German professor (Otto Lidenbrock in the original French, Professor Von Hardwigg in the common English translation) who believes there are volcanic tubes going toward the Earth's center. He, his nephew Axel & their guide Hans encounter many adventures, including prehistoric animals & natural hazards, eventually coming to the surface again in S. Italy. The living organisms they meet reflect geological time; just as the rock layers become older the deeper they travel, animals become more ancient the closer they approach the center. 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 contains have since been refuted. However, a redeeming point to the story is his 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 anticipate. One of his main ideas with his stories was also to educate the readers. By placing the different extinct creatures the characters meet in their correct geological era, he's able to show how the world looked a long time ago, stretching from the ice age to the dinosaurs. The book was inspired by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man of 1863 & probably also influenced by Lyell's earlier ground-breaking Principles of Geology, published 1830-33. By that time geologists had abandoned a literal biblical account of Earth's development & it was generally thought that the end of the last glacial period marked the 1st appearance of humanity, but Lyell drew on new findings to put the origin of human beings much further back in the deep geological past. Lyell's book also influenced Louis Figuier's 1867 2nd edition of La Terre avant le déluge which included dramatic illustrations of savages wearing animal skins & wielding stone axes, in place of the Garden of Eden. Ace published five editions of this "new, modern translation," of which this is the 2nd. It's very readable, more-or-less following the script of the '59 James Mason-Pat Boone movie.