The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1)

The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System is an ambitious Vernian cosmic saga written between 1888 and 1896 by Georges Le Faure and Henri de Graffigny. Where Verne had limited his hero Hector Servadac to traveling on a comet, Le Faure and de Graffigny tell the detailed story of the exploration of the Solar System -- and beyond. In this first volume, the amazing Professor Mikhail Ossipoff of the Scientific Institute of St. Petersburg launches a spaceship from a canon built inside a volcano. The crew, consisting of Ossipoff, his daughter Selena, her fiancé Gontran de Flammermont, French polymath Alcide Fricoulet and American tycoon Jonathan Farenheit, travel to the Moon where they encounter an amazing ancient civilization. When Selena is taken prisoner by the evil Fedor Sharp, who has stolen Ossipoff's secrets and reached the Moon before they did, the heroes pursue him in a jet-propelled craft to Venus, then in a solar-powered ship to Mercury. After many adventures on the Inner Planets, they embark on a comet and reach Mars, where new dangers threaten… "The historical importance of The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist is derived from the fact that it was a highly ambitious attempt to hybridize action-adventure fiction and the popularization of science to produce a new kind of science fiction, one that has much in common with hard science fiction." Brian Stableford.