Journey to the Center of the Earth

This story is a classic, so I won't delve deeply into it (pun intended). What I liked about this version of the tale was the exquisite translation of Verne's text and the translator's commentary. Writing in Verne's day - the good stuff, that is - was so much richer than the diluted, profanity-filled fluff we see too often in modern fiction. How far we've descended (yes, that was intended too)!

Yea, yea, I know this one is a "classic". But sheesh, it's just not a good story imho. So much of it spent in the bickering between the professor and his nephew, and the "science" part of the science fiction really seems to be missing in most places. And I just flat out didn't like the reader for the audiobook. I go through a lot of audiobooks, and I consider this to be one of the worst I've listened to.

I'm so thankful for the recording of this book. Reading it might be a bit tedious, but being able to listen to it while driving in the car or working around the house was perfect. There are certain parts of the book which drag, but there are other parts where I was thankful that I could rewind the story and listen to it again. At times I couldn't help laughing out loud though I was alone in the car. I'm not sure what people in the cars around me thought. This is an excellent way to profit from this classic.

If you want a great book that is well read, you won't be disappointed. Excellent for a road trip or a daily commute.

When I was in the third grade, they used to pass out these little flyers or pamphlets from our Scholastic Reader service. Once a month or so, we could order paperbacks at a discounted price. From one of these, I ordered a copy of a book called Journey to the Center of the Earth. It was love at first sight, and I have been a science fiction fan ever since. Granted, my third grade brain probably didn't understand half of what Jules Verne said, he is well known for his long technical descriptions of flora and fauna, or in this case mineral, but the very idea of following a tunnel to the center of the earth thrilled me. And finding dinosaurs in there? Fuhgeddaboutit! Needless to say, I was pretty happy to find this audiobook in Blackstone's catalog.

The first thing that jumped out at me as I began the audiobook, was that some of the names were wrong. Yeah, instead of Professor Hardwigg, his nephew Harry, and Harry's true-love Gretchen, this copy had Professor Lidenbrock, Axel, and Grauben. I was flabbergasted! Then I looked up the book in Wikipedia and discovered that these names are correct. Apparently there was one edition published that changed the names, and that happened to be the one I got in the third grade. It took a little getting used to, but I was glad to finally hear the story as Verne intended it. I noticed a few other very minor changes in wording, but really nothing worth mentioning.

It's easy to see why Jules Verne is considered one of the founding fathers of science fiction. It's not just his nearly limitless imagination, most writers have good imaginations, it's that the ideas he dreamed up always seem so plausible. If you followed a tunnel into the earth, what else would you expect to find but a world forever locked in the prehistoric past? From the bowels of the earth, to the deepest depths of the ocean, to outer space itself, Jules Verne helped to usher us into an age of the fantastic, inspiring generations of writers to follow in his footsteps.

There's one thing in particular that I would like to note about Journey to the Center of the Earth. Verne wrote this novel in 1864, and even at that early date, he was already admonishing that our fossil fuels were not inexhaustible. His Professor Lidenbrock predicted that we would run out of coal within three centuries. Talk about a man who was ahead of his time! According to his estimate, we have already used up half of that time. Can we turn things around within the next 150 years? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

You would be hard pressed to find a more capable narrator than Simon Prebble. That said, I think it was a little odd for the German characters of this audiobook to be speaking in British accents. On the other hand, I listened to another recording of this book a while back, and the narrator sounded so much like Colonol Klink that I couldn't stop laughing until I finally turned it off. I kept waiting for Professor Hardwigg/Lidenbrock to say "Hoga-a-a-an!" So maybe the British wasn't so bad. Simon Prebble sounds good when he reads, and overall I liked his voices for the characters.

I have always considered Journey to the Center of the Earth to be my first science fiction novel, and it remains one of my very favorites. If you happen to find a tunnel that leads down into the earth, promise you'll take me with you, okay?