From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and Louis Mercier

During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland. It is well known with what energy the taste for military matters became developed among that nation of ship-owners, shopkeepers, and mechanics. Simple tradesmen jumped their counters to become extemporized captains, colonels, and generals, without having ever passed the School of Instruction at West Point; nevertheless; they quickly rivaled their compeers of the old continent, and, like them, carried off victories by dint of lavish expenditure in ammunition, money, and men.

Oh, God... I don't know what to even say... First off I read other Jules Verne books like “20000 leagues under the sea”, “Around the world for 80 days” and “Five weeks in a balloon” and I liked them. I gave them like 4 stars... But this one, it's different. I, maybe it's that I was younger than or something, or this book is just made different. Basically, it's a sci-fi written in 1800s. It must have been wild back then when people thought space travel was impossible, now it's just “let's see if he predicted anything and if it will be hilarious how wrong he was”. I mean seriously I like reading old and classics... It was soooo slow and boring. I mean it took me months to read (obviously I didn't read this every day or often but it was that slow that I didn't want to even pick it up, I just pressured myself because I got it from the library and had to return it... don't worry the librarian won't kill me for it being late, lol) Nothing seemed to happen. It was too telling not showing. It got into bizarre technical details it was death... I mean it was even more deadly to see the wrong science... I mean sure I don't blame him, he was pretty creative in how he imagined it to be. There was some stuff that made sense or was funny. It seemed pretty nationalistic. It was racist, obvi. But other than that, it's OK for a classic. If you're such a diehard Jules Verne fan, sure read this. If you're interested in oldish sci-fi, OK. If you expect this to be a fun, short adventure... NO! That's all I gotta say. 2.5/5

A fun and hokey take on a moonshot. Verne ended up being right in some predictions about moon travel some 100 years prior to man landing on the moon. Just enjoy it for its allure and you'll have a fun time.

But, unfortunately I am neither theologian, nor chemist, nor naturalist, nor philosopher; therefore, in my absolute ignorance of the great laws which govern the universe, I confine myself to saying in reply, ‘I do not know whether the worlds are inhabited or not; and since I do not know, I am going to see!'

This book surprised me by reminding me very much of Terry Prachett. It alternated between the antics of the ridiculous Baltimore Gun Club (which, being devestated by not being allowed to shoot people now that the country was at peace, decide instead to shoot the moon), and amazingly accurate descriptions of how to go about sending a capsule to the moon. Ideas such as launching from Florida and building the capsule from aluminium were exactly as used 100 years later in the Apollo missions. Mr Verne was also aware of the dangers of acceleration and tried to compensate for this with an elaborate mechanisim - though I do believe that the daring travellers would have been transformed into something resembling a thin tomato carpet with bits in.