Robur the Conqueror

Jules Verne turns to the coming age of flight in this brisk adventure, written when balloons still ruled the sky. A mysterious engineer named Robur crashes a meeting of a Philadelphia ballooning club to argue that the future belongs not to lighter-than-air craft but to powered machines heavier than the air itself. To prove the point, he abducts two of the club’s loudest skeptics aboard the Albatross, an astonishing vessel lifted by dozens of spinning propellers, and carries them on a forced tour above the world’s oceans and continents. Part travelogue, part duel of stubborn inventors, the story captures Verne’s faith in machinery and his unease about the willful men who command it. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.