Journey to the Center of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre), also translated with the variant titles A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and A Journey into the Interior of the Earth, is a classic science fiction novel by Jules Verne. It was first published in French in 1864, then reissued in 1867 in a revised and expanded edition. Professor Otto Lidenbrock is the tale's central figure, an eccentric German scientist who believes there are volcanic tubes that reach to the very center of the earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their Icelandic guide Hans rappel into Iceland's celebrated inactive volcano Snæfellsjökull, then contend with many dangers, including cave-ins, subpolar tornadoes, an underground ocean, and living prehistoric creatures from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (the 1867 revised edition inserted additional prehistoric material in Chaps. 37–39). Eventually the three explorers are spewed back to the surface by an active volcano, Stromboli, located in southern Italy.
The category of subterranean fiction existed well before Verne. However his novel's distinction lay in its well-researched Victorian science and its inventive contribution to the science-fiction subgenre of time travel—Verne's innovation was the concept of a prehistoric realm still existing in the present-day world. Journey inspired many later authors, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his novel The Lost World, Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Pellucidar series,[citation needed] and J. R. R. Tolkien in The Hobbit.[1]
Plotedit
The story begins in May 1863, at the home of Professor Otto Lidenbrock in Hamburg, Germany. While leafing through an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga, Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a coded note written in runic script along with the name of a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist, Arne Saknussemm. When translated into English, the note reads:
Go down into the crater of Snaefells Jökull, which Scartaris's shadow caresses just before the calends of July, O daring traveler, and you'll make it to the center of the earth. I've done so. Arne Saknussemm
Lidenbrock departs for Iceland immediately, taking the reluctant Axel with him. After a swift trip via Kiel and Copenhagen, they arrive in Reykjavík. There they hire as their guide Icelander Hans Bjelke, a Danish-speaking eiderduck hunter, then travel overland to the base of Snæfellsjökull.
In late June they reach the volcano and set off into the bowels of the earth, encountering many dangers and strange phenomena. After taking a wrong turn, they run short of water and Axel nearly perishes, but Hans saves them all by tapping into a subterranean river, which shoots out a stream of water that Lidenbrock and Axel name the "Hansbach" in the guide's honor.
Following the course of the Hansbach, the explorers descend many miles and reach an underground world, with an ocean and a vast ceiling with clouds, as well as a permanent Aurora giving light. The travelers build a raft out of semipetrified wood and set sail. While at sea, they encounter prehistoric fish such as Pterichthyodes (here called "Pterichthys") Dipterus (referred to as "Dipterides") and giant marine reptiles from the Age of the Dinosaurs, namely an Ichthyosaurus and a Plesiosaurus. A lightning storm threatens to destroy the raft and its passengers, but instead throws them onto the site of an enormous fossil graveyard, including bones from the Pterodactylus, Megatherium, Deinotherium, Glyptodon, a mastodon and the preserved body of a prehistoric man.
Lidenbrock and Axel venture into a forest featuring primitive vegetation from the Tertiary Period; in its depths they are stunned to find a prehistoric humanoid more than twelve feet in height and watching over a herd of mastodons. Fearing they may be hostile, they leave the forest.
Continuing to explore the coastline, the travellers find a passageway marked by Saknussemm as the way ahead, but it has been blocked by a recent cave-in. The adventurers lay plans to blow the rock open with gun cotton, meanwhile paddling their raft out to sea to avoid the blast. On executing this scheme, they open a bottomless pit beyond the impeding rock and are swept into it as the sea rushes down the huge open gap. After spending hours descending at breakneck speed, their raft reverses direction and rises inside a volcanic chimney that ultimately spews them into the open air. When they regain consciousness, they learn that they have been ejected from Stromboli, a volcanic island located off Sicily.
The trio returns to Germany, where they enjoy great acclaim; Professor Lidenbrock is hailed as one of the great scientists of the day, Axel marries his sweetheart Gräuben, and Hans returns to his peaceful, eiderduck-hunting life in Iceland.
Main charactersedit
Professor Otto Lidenbrock: a hot-tempered geologist with radical ideas.
Axel: Lidenbrock's nephew, a young student whose ideas are more cautious.
Hans Bjelke: Icelandic eiderduck hunter who hires on as their guide; resourceful and imperturbable.
Gräuben: Lidenbrock's goddaughter, with whom Axel is in love; from Vierlande (region southeast of Hamburg).
Martha: Lidenbrock's housekeeper and cook.
Publication notesedit
The original French editions of 1864 and 1868 were issued by J. Hetzel et Cie, a major Paris publishing house owned by Pierre-Jules Hetzel.
The novel's first English edition, translated by an unknown hand and published in 1871 by the London house Griffith & Farran, appeared under the title A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and is now available at Project Gutenberg.[2] A drastically rewritten version of the story, it adds chapter titles where Verne gives none, meanwhile changing the professor's surname to Hardwigg, Axel's name to Harry, and Gräuben's to Gretchen. In addition, many paragraphs and details are completely recomposed.[citation needed]
An 1877 London edition from Ward, Lock, & Co. appeared under the title A Journey into the Interior of the Earth. Its translation, credited to Frederick Amadeus Malleson, is more faithful than the Griffith & Farran version, though it, too, concocts chapter titles and modifies details. Its text is likewise available at Project Gutenberg.[3]
Adaptationsedit
Filmedit
1959: Journey to the Center of the Earth, USA, directed by Henry Levin, starring James Mason and Pat Boone, distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film transfers Verne's beginning locale from Hamburg to Edinburgh, "Professor Otto Lidenbrock" becomes "Professor Oliver Lindenbrook", and Axel becomes earth-sciences student Alec McEwan. Special effects are sometimes perfunctory, modern lizards being used to portray Verne's prehistoric creatures — Rhinoceros iguanas, for instance, are decked out in a paste-on Sail-like dorsal fin to represent Dimetrodons. The film also introduces a new subplot and two additional main characters: a female explorer (Arlene Dahl) and a villainous antagonist (Thayer David).
The surname of Kathy Ireland's character in Alien from L.A. (1988), a film about a girl who falls through the Earth and discovers a repressive subterranean society, is Saknussemm.
2008: Journey to the Center of the Earth is a 3-D film by Eric Brevig. Cast members include Brendan Fraser, Anita Briem and Josh Hutcherson. The film is a modern-day paraphrase of the 1860s original — it uses Verne's book as its inciting incident instead of Saknussemm's message, then follows the novel's overall structure with fidelity: a geology professor, his nephew, and an Icelandic guide (now a woman named "Hannah") penetrate Snaefells, discover a seashore with giant mushrooms, sail across an underground ocean inhabited by a pod of Elasmosaurus, a relative of the plesiosaurus, and reach the other side where they encounter a terrestrial animal from prehistory, in this case a Tyrannosaurus, a predatory theropod dinosaur rather than a mastodon. Ultimately the three explorers exit the underworld via an erupting volcano, find themselves in present-day Italy, and return to their starting point in academia.
2008: Journey to the Center of the Earth was a direct-to-DVD release by The Asylum, also released as Journey to Middle Earth in the United Kingdom. Starring Greg Evigan as Joseph Harnet and Dedee Pfeiffer as Emily Radford, it's a low-budget adaptation, which, as with most Asylum films, was apparently released to draft off of the Eric Brevig film.
In 1993, NBC aired a made-for-TV film version with a cast including John Neville, F. Murray Abraham and Kim Miyori. The film used the title and general premise of Verne's novel, but had its heroes carry out the journey in an earth-penetrating machine borrowed from Burroughs.[5]
The Wishbone 1996 episode "Hot Diggety Dawg" followed the novel and featured several major scenes identifying the central character as Professor Lidenbrock.
The 37th episode of The Triplets, called Journey to the Center of the Earth, makes reference to this novel.
The 2001 animated television series Ultimate Book of Spells references the novel, as the main protagonists are sent on adventures through the centre of the earth with the titular object. It was originally planned to be named after the book in general, but was changed.[6]
The 2012 episode Journey to the Center of the Earth, from Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom, makes reference to the novel. In it, the naughty twins Daisy and Poppy magically send Mrs. Fotheringill to the center of the earth, and it's up to Grandpapa Thistle to guide Ben, Holly and their family there on a rescue mission.
Slim film+television and Federation Entertainment will produce an upcoming television series adaptation, developed by Ashley Pharoah.[7]
A 90-minute radio adaptation by Stephen Walker directed by Owen O'Callan was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 28 December 1995, and rebroadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 20 November 2011, on 11 and 12 November 2012, and on 20 and 21 December 2014. Nicholas Le Prevost stars as Professor Otto Lidenbrock, Nathaniel Parker as Axel, and Oliver Senton as Hans. Kristen Millwood plays Rosemary McNab, a new character who funds and accompanies the expedition.[9]
A two-part BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Journey to the Centre of the Earth broadcast on 19 and 26 March 2017. Featuring Stephen Critchlow as Professor Lidenbrock, Joel MacCormack as Axel, and Gudmundur Ingi Thorvaldsson as Hans, it was directed and produced by Tracey Neale and adapted by Moya O'Shea.[10]
Wakeman released a second concept album called Return to the Centre of the Earth in 1999. It tells the story of a later set of travelers attempting to repeat the original journey.
Alien Voices, an audio theater group led by Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie, released a dramatized version of Journey to the Center of the Earth through Simon and Schuster Audio in 1997.
Christopher Lloyd's character of Doctor Emmett Brown, one of the two main fictional characters of the Back to the Future film series, makes numerous references to the works of Jules Verne in general, and Journey to the Center of the Earth in particular.
The 1992 adventure/role-playing game Quest for Glory III by Sierra Entertainment used Arne Saknoosen the Aardvark as a bit character for exploration information, alluding to the explorer Arne Saknussemm.
The DC Comics comic book series Warlord takes place in Skartaris, a land supposed to exist within a hollow earth. Its creator, Mike Grell, has confirmed that "the name comes from the mountain peak Scartaris that points the way to the passage to the Earth's core in Journey to the Center of the Earth."[15]
Halldór Laxness, the only Icelandic author to be awarded the Nobel Prize, set his novel Under the Glacier in the area of Snæfellsjökull. The glacier has a mystic quality in the story and there are several references to A Journey to the Center of the Earth in connection with it.
Norihiko Kurazono's Chitei Ryokou (地底旅行) is a manga adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth that was serialized in Comic Beam from 2015 to 2017.
^Grater, Tom (29 November 2021). "'Around The World In 80 Days' Gets Second Season; Producers Also Developing 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' Series". Deadline.
^"A Journey to the Centre of the Earth". BBC Genome. BBC. June 1962. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
^"Jules Verne- Journey to the Centre of the Earth", BBC Radio 4 Extra, 20 November 2011.
^"Viaje al Centro de la Tierra - World of Spectrum". www.worldofspectrum.org.
^"Journey to the Center of the Earth for Windows (2003) - MobyGames". MobyGames.
^"CES '93 Report - Gaming On The Horizon: Genesis". GamePro. No. 45. IDG. April 1993. pp. 122–125.
^"Journey to the Center of the Earth". BoardGameGeek.
^Brian Cronin, 2006, "Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #54!" Archived 21 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine (archive)
Further readingedit
Debus, Allen (July 2007). "Re-Framing the Science in Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth". Science Fiction Studies. 33 (3): 405–20. JSTOR 4241461..
Journey into the Interior of the Earth (Malleson translation; Ward, Lock & Co., 1877) from JV.Gilead.org.il
A Journey into the Interior of the Earth at Project Gutenberg (Malleson; Ward, Lock)
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth at Project Gutenberg (Griffith and Farran, 1871) – "not a translation at all but a complete re-write of the novel"
Journey to the Centre of the Earth at Faded Page (Canada) (original French text, 1864)
Journey to the Interior of the Earth public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Journey to the Center of the Earth free audio book at TheDramaPod.com
1963 BBC Radio serial of Journey to the Center of the Earth (audio) at Internet Archive (archive.org)
1995 BBC Radio adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth (audio) at Archive.org
2017 BBC Radio Classic Serial: "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (audio) at Archive.org