One of the earliest science fantasy stories ever written, From the Earth to the Moon follows three wealthy members of a post-Civil War gun club who design and build an enormous columbiad -- and ride a spaceship fired from it all the way to the moon!
Jules Verne was born in the seaport of Nantes. He was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).