Voyage au Centre de la Terre

A super smart but grumpy professor named Otto Lidenbrock finds a secret old map hidden in a book that says you can travel to the very center of the Earth by going down inside a huge icy volcano in Iceland called Snæfellsjökull. He makes his scared nephew Axel and a strong quiet guide named Hans go with him on this crazy adventure in 1863—they climb down dark caves with special glowing lamps, find giant underground oceans full of swimming dinosaurs like ichthyosaurs fighting plesiosaurs, sparkly crystals, huge mushrooms, and scary storms that almost drown them. They get super lost, hungry, and think they're gonna die, but use clever tricks like blasting rocks and riding a big fish to escape blasting out of another volcano in Italy like a rocket—it's the wildest underground trip ever and proves science can do amazing things!

In Jules Verne's 1864 novel 'Voyage au Centre de la Terre,' Professor Otto Lidenbrock, a brilliant but irascible Hamburg volcanologist, deciphers a cryptic runic parchment from 16th-century Icelandic alchemist Arne Saknussemm, outlining a descent to the Earth's core through the crater of Snæfellsjökull volcano in Iceland. Compelled by insatiable scientific curiosity, Lidenbrock coerces his skeptical nephew and assistant Axel, along with the laconic eider-down hunter Hans Bjelke as guide, to embark on this perilous 1863 expedition. Equipped with innovative Ruhmkorff electric lamps, preserved provisions, and climbing gear, they plunge into the abyss, traversing labyrinthine galleries, encountering luminous fungi, petrified forests, and a vast subterranean ocean where they witness colossal combats between ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, all while grappling with starvation, disorientation, and seismic upheavals. As the journey intensifies, the trio navigates boiling geysers, fossil graveyards, and a central sea under an impossible sky illuminated by atmospheric refraction, pushing the boundaries of 19th-century geology and human endurance. Climaxing in a desperate ride atop a protopterus amid a volcanic eruption, they are expelled through Mount Etna in Sicily, emerging triumphant yet humbled. Verne masterfully intertwines pseudo-scientific plausibility with Jules Verne's fantastical spectacle, exploring themes of discovery and the sublime terror of nature's hidden realms, cementing the novel's status as a cornerstone of science fiction.