From the Earth to the Moon
Baltimore Gun Club • Book 1
by Walter James Miller, Walter James Miller
Narrated by Bernard Mayes
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
A 19th-century gun club decides the obvious solution to postwar boredom is shooting humans at the moon — and somehow Verne makes it feel plausible.
- Great if you want: vintage sci-fi that treats engineering ambition as high comedy
- Listening experience: brisk and wry — feels more like a satirical lecture than adventure
- Narration: Mayes delivers the Victorian pomposity with dry, measured wit
- Skip if: you want action over debate and calculation
About This Audiobook
In the aftermath of the American Civil War, the members of Baltimore's Gun Club find their skills and ambitions suddenly without a battlefield — and so they undertake the most audacious engineering project in history: building a cannon powerful enough to fire a manned projectile to the moon. Jules Verne's 1865 novel applies Victorian technological optimism and satirical wit to the question of what passionate, purposeful men might accomplish when released from the constraints of mere common sense. This annotated edition adds scholarly context to one of science fiction's foundational texts.
Bernard Mayes narrates the annotated Verne with a classical storytelling authority that suits the novel's nineteenth-century ambitions, his voice capturing the comedic self-seriousness of the Gun Club members without undercutting the genuine wonder in Verne's imagination. At just over five hours, the production is compact for the era-defining scope of the premise — a brisk, illuminating listen for science fiction enthusiasts curious about the genre's origins.