From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon

Substitute for your spherical shell a cylindro-conical projectile. I shall go inside. Shall arrive by steamer Atlanta. MICHEL ARDAN.

Gun Club wager → Columbiad build → launch → (Round the Moon) projectile survival and lunar flyby; Ardan's telegram turns engineering spectacle into passenger adventure, so plot scores 87.

If ever two individuals offered a striking contrast to each other, these were certainly Michel Ardan and the Yankee Barbicane; both, moreover, being equally enterprising and daring, each in his own way.

Barbicane's imperturbable presidency, Nicholl's rivalry, Michel Ardan's comic audacity, J. T. Maston's one-armed devotion create a memorable quartet, so cast scores 88.

It was "that blackness" in which the lunar nights are insteeped, which last three hundred and fifty-four hours and a half at each point of the disc, a long night resulting from the equality of the translatory and rotary movements of the moon.

First volume races through club politics and casting; Round the Moon slows into orbital physics and lunar geography lectures, so pace scores 84.

but their cannon, howitzers, and mortars are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the American artillery.

Verne's satirical precision on American gunnery and Barbicane's deadpan lectures make speculative machinery legible, so prose scores 88.

Thus was formed the nucleus of the "Gun Club." In a single month after its formation it numbered 1,833 effective members and 30,565 corresponding members.

Baltimore Gun Club, Stones Hill Columbiad, Florida launch, Rocky Mountain telescope — industrial modernity turned cosmic, so world scores 94.

"This is horrible!" said Tom Hunter one evening, while rapidly carbonizing his wooden legs in the fireplace of the smoking-room; "nothing to do! nothing to look forward to! what a loathsome existence!"

Ch.I Gun Club amputees carbonizing wooden legs in peacetime boredom — immediately frames the absurd scale of what follows, so hook scores 94.

Substitute for your spherical shell a cylindro-conical projectile. I shall go inside. Shall arrive by steamer Atlanta.

Pre-Apollo moon-shot mechanics (cannon-launch, human passenger inside the shell) — foundational hard-SF adventure premise, so innov scores 96.

The elements of this new star we have as yet been unable to determine; we do not yet know the velocity of its passage. The distance which separates it from the surface of the moon may be estimated at about 2,833 miles.

'A New Star' leaves voyagers orbiting the moon indefinitely — formally complete yet deliberately open; Maston's faith at Long's Peak supplies emotional coda, so ending scores 85.