Autour de la Lune Reading Order

Autour de la Lune (Around the Moon, 1870) by Jules Verne is the direct sequel to De la Terre à la Lune — the same three passengers (Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan) are now inside the projectile as it circles the Moon and eventually returns to Earth. Where the first novel was primarily concerned with the building and launching of the Columbiad and with comic scenes at the Gun Club, this sequel is an adventure and a science lesson: the three men observe the lunar surface through a porthole, debate whether the Moon is inhabited, experience weightlessness, discover a second small satellite of Earth, and eventually understand that they will not land on the Moon but will return in an arc to splash down in the Pacific. The novel is remarkable for the accuracy of several of its observations: the weightlessness at the Earth-Moon gravitational midpoint, the appearance of the lunar surface through the porthole, the Pacific splashdown, and the recovery by the American Navy all correspond closely to what actually happened with Apollo 8 in 1968. Verne and his collaborator Gabriel Marcel did the calculations, and while the cannon-propulsion is engineering nonsense, the orbital mechanics and the recovery are substantially correct.