I am currently reading "Around the World in 80 Days" in my email subscription. How wonderful to be able to read this classic again, straight from my inbox. Verne would have been amazed. I first started reading Verne when I was a lad of 8 or 9, some 55 years ago or more. Some of his books I haven't read for decades now, and I am excited to be able to read them again as an old man.

We might find it hard these days to think of "Around the World" as science fiction, but in Verne's lifetime, to travel around the world so swiftly was the stuff of fantasy. In showing how it might be done using only reason and careful planning, Jules Verne was clearly in the science fiction field'; he refused to introduce the legendary Seven-League boots into his fiction. He used entirely rational means to achieve his effects. Today of course, we could fly around the world in a couple of days or less. But imagine the excitement of a reader in the 19th century, following the surprising twists and turns of the plot, being along on an amazing journey, with the penultimate disappointment of failing the challenge and then discovering the bet was won by a simple miscalculation on the part of our hero.

There are no spaceships or lasers in the novel, but there is the essence of the sciences in its rational approach to a seemingly-impossible task. This will always be a novel that I think of with a contented smile on my face.

With love under will,

Bob, aka Printaddict,
The Wizzard of Jacksonville

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