{"id":400,"date":"2018-03-14T15:19:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T15:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/?p=400"},"modified":"2018-03-14T15:19:42","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T15:19:42","slug":"the-science-behind-jules-vernes-moon-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/the-science-behind-jules-vernes-moon-novels\/","title":{"rendered":"The Science behind Jules Verne’s Moon Novels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Science<\/a><\/p>\n

When I wrote The Telescopic Tourist\u2019s Guide to the Moon<\/em><\/a> last year, I wanted to refer, amongst other things, to descriptions of real lunar features in works of science fiction. Surprisingly, I found that many of the most famous Moon stories don\u2019t actually refer to specific locations. Even more surprisingly, one of the few novels that does contain realistic descriptions of lunar geography is one of the earliest \u2013 Jules Verne\u2019s Around the Moon<\/em>, dating from 1870.<\/p>\n

The surprise comes because Around the Moon<\/em> \u2013 and its predecessor, From the Earth to the Moon<\/em> (1865) \u2013 are probably best known for the completely unrealistic<\/em> mode of travel, i.e. by means of a projectile launched from a giant cannon. But when I reread the novels, I was struck by just how scientifically knowledgeable they were \u2013 by the standards of their time, at any rate. As well as the physical descriptions of the Moon, Verne gets other subtleties right, too \u2013 such as the way things move once they get outside the Earth\u2019s atmosphere (something Hollywood barely understands to this day).<\/p>\n

So I thought I\u2019d write another little book describing all the science Verne got right \u2013 and of course the science he got wrong, too. Here\u2019s the blurb:<\/p>\n

The idea of using a large gun to send humans into space is as impossible today as it was a century and a half ago, when Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. Yet he went to great lengths to persuade readers it wasn\u2019t impossible \u2013 not through arm-waving and made-up technobabble, but using real physics and astronomy. No one had done anything like that in fiction before \u2013 and even today it\u2019s unusual to see so much \u201creal science\u201d discussed in a work of science fiction. But just how much did Verne get right, and what did he get wrong? This book takes a closer look at the science content of his two great Moon novels \u2013 from Newton\u2019s laws of motion and the conservation of energy to CO2 scrubbing, retro-rockets and the lifeless grey landscape of the Moon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Science behind Jules Verne\u2019s Moon Novels<\/em> is available as a paperback or Kindle ebook from Amazon.com<\/a>, Amazon UK<\/a> and all other Amazon sites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I wrote The Telescopic Tourist\u2019s Guide to the Moon last year, I wanted to refer, amongst other things, to descriptions of real lunar features in works of science fiction. Surprisingly, I found that many of the most famous Moon stories don\u2019t actually refer to specific locations. Even more surprisingly, one of the few novels … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Science behind Jules Verne’s Moon Novels”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25,21,39,7],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-moon","tag-my-books","tag-popular-science","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}