The intrepid Professor Lindenbrock embarks upon the strangest expedition of the nineteenth century: a journey down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the Earthb2ss very core. In his quest to penetrate the planetb2ss primordial secrets, the geologistb7stogether with his quaking nephew Axel and their devoted guide, Hansb7sdiscovers an astonishing subterranean menagerie of prehistoric proportions. Verneb2ss imaginative tale is at once the ultimate science fiction adventure and a reflection on the perfectibility of human understanding and the psychology of the questor. As David Brin notes in his Introduction, though Verne never knew the term b3sscience fiction, b4s Journey to the Centre of the Earth is b3sinarguably one of the wellsprings from which it all began.