Off on a Comet
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| Author | Jules Verne |
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| Original title | Hector Servadac |
| Translator | unknown (1877), Ellen Frewer (1877), Edward Roth (1877-78), I. O. Evans (1965) |
| Illustrator | Paul Philippoteaux |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Series | The Extraordinary Voyages #15 |
| Genre | Science fiction, adventure novel |
| Publisher | Pierre-Jules Hetzel |
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Publication date
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1877 |
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Published in English
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1877 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Preceded by | Michael Strogoff |
| Followed by | The Child of the Cavern |
Off on a Comet (French: Hector Servadac) is an 1877 science fiction novel by Jules Verne.
The story starts with a comet called Gallia, that touches the Earth in its flight and collects a few small chunks of it. The disaster occurred on January 1 of the year 188x in the area around Gibraltar. On the territory that was carried away by the comet there remained a total of thirty-six people of French, English, Spanish and Russian nationality. These people did not realize at first what had happened, and considered the collision an earthquake.
They first noticed weight loss: Captain Servadac's adjutant Ben Zoof to his amazement, jumped twelve meters high. Zoof with Servadac also soon noticed that the alternation of day and night is shortened to six hours, that east and west changed sides, and that water begins to boil at 66 degrees Celsius, from which they rightly deduced that atmosphere became thinner and pressure dropped. At the beginning of their stay in Gallia they noticed the Earth with the Moon, but thought it was an unknown planet. Other important information was obtained through their research expedition with a ship, which the comet also took.
During the voyage they discovered a mountain chain blocking the sea, which they initially considered to be the Mediterranean Sea and then they found the island of Formentera (before the catastrophe a part of the Balearic Islands), where they found a French astronomer Palmyrin Rosette, who helped them to solve all the mysterious phenomena. They were all on the comet which was discovered by Rosette a year ago and predicted a collision course with Earth, but no one believed the astronomer, because a layer of thick fog at the time prevented astronomical observations in other places.
As found by a new research expedition, the circumference of Gallia was 2320 km. The mass of the comet was calculated by Rosette. He determined it at 209,346 billion tonnes. For the calculation he used spring scales and forty 5-franc silver coins, the weight of which on earth equaled exactly to one kilogram. However, the owner of the scales, Isaac Hakkabut, had rigged the instrument, so the results had to be cut by a quarter.
Involuntary travelers through the Solar system did not have any hope for long-term colonization of their new world, because they were lacking arable land. They ate mainly the animals that were left on the land carried away by Gallia. One strange phenomenon they met was that the sea on the comet did not freeze, even though the temperature dropped below the freezing point (theory that the stationary water level resists freezing level for longer than when a rippled by wind). Once a stone was thrown into the sea, the sea froze in a few moments. The ice was completely smooth and allowed skating and sleigh sailing.
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