Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

About the book

Hector Servadac and others around the Mediterranean confront changes in geography, gravity, daylight, and the apparent movement of the heavens. Understanding those observations becomes inseparable from the practical problem of survival, as they discover their connection with a comet travelling through space. People of different nationalities must negotiate shelter, provisions, authority, and cooperation within the strange conditions. Astronomical explanation shares the narrative with quarrels and comic contrasts among the passengers. Verne's premise is deliberately fantastic, even while measurements and calculations give its consequences a practical texture. The story also includes national and antisemitic caricatures that shape its social comedy. Its imaginative interest lies in treating a fragment of ordinary society as a travelling community whose familiar disputes persist despite an almost inconceivable change in its place in the universe.

• Survival and cooperation
• Scientific explanation
• Society in miniature

Why read it

For a fantastic space journey that turns astronomical displacement into the everyday problems of keeping a divided community alive.

Novel · English text in the Charles F. Horne edited series