From the pages of Jules Verne...

[Ana Klimchynskaya]

For any of you that watched the Artemis II splashdown, did you notice that as the moment of splashdown, the announcer said "from the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of humanity's exploration of its celestial neighbor is complete"? 

Ha! 

Well, even before that happened, I wrote a brief piece on the connections between Artemis II and From the Earth to the Moon: https://theconversation.com/artemis-ii-moonshot-reflects-a-spacefaring-vision-present-in-jules-vernes-19th-century-novel-280252 Enjoy! 

This was inspired, in part, by all the work I've done for my forthcoming edition of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, Annotated for our Spacefaring Age, releasing from MIT Press on June 30. In addition to an English-language text and illustrations, this edition (about which I'll happy to share more closer to the release date) combines my annotations and introduction with essays and annotations by Verne and sci-fi scholars, space historians and curators, science fiction authors, ethicists, political scientists, and even offers a legal perspective.

Best,

Anastasia 

[John Lamb]

Hi Anna,

 many congratulations on your book, I look forward to getting a copy in the summer. Incidentally you may have noticed that within the Civil War background of the novel, while it is the northern columbiad technology of the Baltimore Gun Club that sends three astronauts in to space in From to the Earth to the Moon it is the southern technology in Around the Moon that  brings the astronaut back to earth safely again  in the splashdown. The 50:50 Unionist / Confederate split is important to Verne (who was fiercely pro northern) as it shows what a reunified America can achieve. 

The main links re the Confederates in the splashdown (Chapter XX The Susquehanna takes Soundings) are the named references to John Mercer Brooke, (the designer of the ironclad monitor CSS Virginia  as being pitched at a 38 degree angle to make it immune from northern columbiad cannon) the inferred reference to  Matthew Fontaine Maury (first identified the telegraphic plateau 'a level seabed' for Atlantic cables, and his first ship being the USS Brandywine / Susquehanna) and Admiral Raphael Semmes of the CSS Alabama (like Maury served on the USS Brandywine / Susquehanna hence the reference in the novel to both 'Susquehanna' and 'Brandygrog', and who has all the behavioural traits of Captain Blomsberry in the novel. 

Maury's business partner (before the Civil War) Cyrus Field is also mentioned in the same chapter, although Field as a northerner advised Abraham Lincoln on the importance of telegraphy in winning the Civil War. 

I hope to complete a short paper on the 50:50 Civil War political background of the splashdown in Verne's Around the Moon in the near future. 

Best John