A Journey In Other Worlds by John Jacob Astor

 

This cannot be a true book review, because I didn't bother to finish reading the book.  However, perhaps knowing why I didn't finish the book may help you decide whether or not you want to try to read it - and if so, whether you want to spend money buying it or just borrow it from the library / download it free.

 

The problems I had trying to read this fall into a couple of areas.

 

First, the scientific.  For instance, they land on Jupiter - a fairly earth-like planet with a solid surface at which gravity is twice that of the Earth's and breathable air at tolerable air pressures.  There are plants and animals, etc.  I suppose if it were not for other issues I could have ignored this, pretending it was some other planet elsewhere.

 

There is also talk of some additional force of nature.  Sometimes it seems like what we'd now refer to as a "fifth force", sometimes it's a part of the electromagnetic force, and other times it seems to be an arbitrarily adjustable effect in an arbitrarily selected area that sounds like some supernatural mumbo jumbo.  And there is some blabbering about the ancients having known of this to some degree.  This talk was presented in a way to try not to sound too mystical, but was not entirely successful (at least in my ears).

 

The second area that I had trouble with was the pompous, self-congratulatory, know-it-all Victorian attitude.  This was especially pronounced in a rather lengthy monologue on how they were going to eliminate the extremes of seasonal changes on Earth by pumping large amounts of water to the north or south poles at different times to use the water's weight to straighten out the planet's tilt.  The pumping is to be powered by wind turbines.  Etc.  On the one hand, the technology sounds so backwards today (and its ability to accomplish the task rather questionable), but the book brags on so extensively about it.

 

I suppose one could find other old SF that was even less plausible or more offensive, but I decided I had enough other reading options that I'd forego this book.  The book is in the public domain, so the etext is available free from Gutenberg.  If I ever change my mind and want to finish the book, it's waiting there.