A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
According to Adam Roberts, Jules Verne really needs the help of some good translators to enable monolingual clods like me to appreciate his works properly. I’m unable to comment on the accuracy of the translation of A Journey to the Center of the Earth that I just read, but even so, assuming that the plot is intact, I have to confess that I think this rather famous early work of Verne’s has not aged well at all. The introduction in this edition claims that the hollow-earth theory had some weight in the nineteenth century, and if that was the case then a contemporary reader may well have been entertained by the story, but for anyone aware of the most basic concepts of plate tectonics and planet formation the whole tale is completely preposterous, and I write that as a sincere fan of some fairly preposterous fiction.
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