Jules Verne · 1886 · global

Verne's answer to the balloon enthusiasts: a flying machine held up by seventy-four propellers, and an engineer who kidnaps two members of a Philadelphia aeronautical club and takes them round the world in it to settle an argument. The prequel to Master of the World.

1. 1
   Philadelphia

   The Weldon Institute, a balloonists' club arguing about steering airships - and a stranger called Robur walks in, tells them lighter-than-air is a dead end, is howled down, and kidnaps the two loudest of them that night.

2. 2
   The Pacific

   They wake aboard the Albatross, a flying machine held up by seventy-four screw propellers, already over the sea - and Robur takes them round the world at a hundred and twenty miles an hour to prove a point about engineering.

3. 3
   Japan

   West across the Pacific and over the Japanese islands, then China and India - a nineteenth-century circumnavigation done in weeks rather than months, with the passengers plotting escape the whole way.

4. 4
   Timbuktu

   Over the Sahara and the city that was still half-legend to European readers, seen from above at night - Verne showing his audience the interior of Africa from an altitude no one had yet reached.

5. 5
   Lake Chad

   Central Africa, and the captives blow a hole in the Albatross and get away - which is the point at which the novel stops being a lecture and becomes a chase.

6. 6
   The Antarctic

   South over the pole in the machine's last great flight, through a hurricane - and Verne, who had already sent men to the North Pole and the Moon, adds the bottom of the world to the list.

7. 7
   Philadelphia

   Robur returns to the Institute, tells them the world is not ready for him and that he will come back when it is - and flies off into the clouds, which is the setup for Master of the World eighteen years later.