First published 1976
Hans Pfall faces mounting debts and desperate circumstances in his small town. He constructs an elaborate balloon using the latest scientific principles, planning an unprecedented journey to the moon to escape his troubles. His voyage combines rigorous attention to atmospheric pressure, gravity, and celestial mechanics with extraordinary discoveries about lunar inhabitants and alien landscapes. Meanwhile, other characters encounter the boundaries between life and death through galvanism and mesmerism. M. Valdemar undergoes a terrifying experiment that suspends him between living and dying. Scientists and adventurers push against the limits of known reality, using emerging technologies to explore resurrection, time manipulation, and space travel. These sixteen tales capture an age when scientific progress opened new possibilities for both wonder and terror, where rational inquiry leads to discoveries that challenge human understanding of existence itself.
Genres: fiction, science-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, horror, astronomy, 19th-century, alternate-history
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: exploration, limits-of-reality, scientific-discovery
Setting: Lunar, Small Town
Period: 19th Century
464 pages · Paperback · Penguin Classics