Off on a Comet!

On New Year's night, Captain Hector Servadac, a French officer stationed on the coast of Algeria, and his orderly Ben Zoof are thrown to the ground by a terrible shock. When they recover, the sun rises in the west, the days are shorter, the sea has changed and the Earth seems to have vanished: a comet has grazed the planet and carried away fragments of the Mediterranean region, with a handful of people, including British officers from Gibraltar, Spanish peasants and a Russian count with his yacht. Together they travel through the solar system on the comet Gallia, hoping to return.

Jules Verne published the novel, Hector Servadac, in 1877. It mixes astronomy with comedy, although its portrait of a Jewish merchant reflects the prejudices of the time. This English version is titled Off on a Comet! Verne's more famous voyage into space is From the Earth to the Moon.

Jules Verne (1828–1905) grew up in the port city of Nantes, watching ships leave for distant lands. Sent to Paris to study law, he wrote for the theatre instead, until the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel accepted Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1863 and signed him for a series of 'extraordinary voyages' that lasted the rest of his life.

In more than sixty novels he took readers under the sea, to the Moon and around the world, mixing adventure with real science and geography. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days made him one of the most translated authors in history and inspired generations of scientists and explorers.