Jules VERNE, De la Terre à la Lune, Autour de la Lune et Sans dessus dessous

Jules Verne wrote the three works of the Baltimore Gun Club Series between 1864 and 1889. To be more precise, he wrote "From the Earth to the Moon" between 1864 and the following year, "Around the Moon" between 1868 and the following year, and "The Purchase of the North Pole" between 1888 and the following year respectively. These three novels reflect the three important periods in Verne's writing career. 　Verne, who had just finished writing the Voyages Extraordinaires series set in inland Africa, the North Pole, and the center of the earth, released his unique imagination in the first in the series of works in journeying to the moon. In reality, even if hiding behind scientific reasoning and launching the cannon towards the moon is acceptable, at that moment in time it was unknown to him how the return to earth would work out. 　Verne discovered the solution three years later in the middle of writing "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" three years later. Reaching his mature period as a novelist, Verne succeeded in keeping the balance between the restrictions imposed by scientific knowledge and his characters' foolhardiness (we would not do what the lead characters did in Verne's work if we were in their shoes). 　Finally, in "The Purchase of the North Pole", Verne's imagination came to terms with the strictest form of restrictions of scientific knowledge and he tries to release himself from them. In "From the Earth to the Moon", the plan considered to be the most extraordinary idea born from human imagination ultimately — and for the moment, at least — turned out to be impossible and man escapes from a giant catastrophe. However, if we were to heed the quote, "things that are within the realms of possibility should be realized, and will be realized" (The Steam House), even if it is not possible now, it allows readers to ponder about its possibility in the future. 　The three works above can be said to comprise a small series within a massive series of "Voyages Extraordinaires", but each of them has a distinctive tone. The biggest difficulty in translating these works is to express this duality while paying attention to precisely translate technical details that previous translators often tended to neglect.