Journey to the Moon by Jules Verne
Raymond N. Mackenzie reviews a new translation of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Moon," examining the novel's scientific influences, literary techniques, and the cultural context of Verne's speculative space travel narrative.
Background
- This is a review of the new Penguin Classics edition of Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Around the Moon" (1865/1870), translated by Charlotte Mandell. The reviewer examines how Verne's often-praised "predictions" (rockets, Florida launch sites, weightlessness) are both less and more accurate than commonly claimed.
- The article situates Verne within 19th-century French debates about scientific positivism, militarism, and colonialism — his moon-gun is a repurposed American Civil War cannon, funded by a jingoistic gun club.
- Key context: Verne was writing in the aftermath of the US Civil War and the expansion of European colonial artillery. The "platinum noses" of the title refer to the prosthetic noses worn by the Baltimore Gun Club's disfigured veteran members, literalizing the link between industrial war, metal, and the conquest of space.
- The reviewer also discusses the overlooked comic-satirical dimension of Verne's work, which is often flattened by Anglo-American readings that treat him as a straightforward technological prophet.