el dang reviewed A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Mostly a great read, with some rough parts
4 stars
I had read this as a child, but evidently didn't remember much of it. I picked it up to re-read because while planning a visit to Snæfellsjökull I read that the place has significance in this story. I'm very glad I did, and that I did so while in Iceland, though there are some of the typical regrettable portions (ugh "Race Science" makes an appearance, though mercifully only for a few pages), and towards the end it jumps the shark a bit.
I think there's basically two things that make Verne still worth reading, when I mostly avoid white mens' SFF from before this century, never mind before the 20th:
One is that he was a very good observer of the things in his stories that were drawn from reality. I can't tell if he actually went to Iceland himself, but if not then he had good notes …
I had read this as a child, but evidently didn't remember much of it. I picked it up to re-read because while planning a visit to Snæfellsjökull I read that the place has significance in this story. I'm very glad I did, and that I did so while in Iceland, though there are some of the typical regrettable portions (ugh "Race Science" makes an appearance, though mercifully only for a few pages), and towards the end it jumps the shark a bit.
I think there's basically two things that make Verne still worth reading, when I mostly avoid white mens' SFF from before this century, never mind before the 20th:
One is that he was a very good observer of the things in his stories that were drawn from reality. I can't tell if he actually went to Iceland himself, but if not then he had good notes from someone who did. His rendering of Reykjavík fits with what I've read in museums in that city, and the descriptions of the landscape work very well, when it's one that would be pretty hard for someone who'd never left mainland Europe to imagine. There was a detail of the Icelanders' clothing that seemed off and stereotyped to me, until we happened to go to a museum with a reenactor who was clearly wearing what I'd misunderstood the description of a few days earlier.
The other is that he was an avid follower of the big scientific debates of the time. The central conceit of Journey is that the mad geologist is trying to prove a theory that sounds absolutely bonkers in hindsight. But it sent me down a wikihole, from which I learned that it was very much a live controversy in the mid-19th Century. Verne picked what ended up being the losing side of the argument, because it's the one that gave him a story to write, but somehow that feels much more credible knowing that he didn't make it up.
