''The Chase of the Golden Meteor'' () is a novel by

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

. It was one of the last novels written by the prolific French

hard science fiction Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's ''Islands of Space'' in the Novemb ...

pioneer. The book, however, is seen as less an early example of hard science fiction than a social satire lampooning greed, monomania and vanity. Verne first wrote ''La Chasse au météore'' in 1901 and then rewrote it before his death, but it was only published in 1908, three years after the author's death, one of seven such posthumous novels. It concerns the rivalry between two amateur astronomers in the same small American town who spot a new meteor and attempt to claim the credit for themselves. The

meteor A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star, is a glowing streak of a small body (usually meteoroid) going through Earth's atmosphere, after being heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in the upper atmosphere, creating a ...

turns out to be made of gold and thus extremely valuable. Another eccentric amateur scientist, this time an inventor, creates a device which will cause it to fall where he chooses. The book was extensively edited by Verne's son,

Michel Verne Michel Jean Pierre Verne (3 August 1861 – 5 March 1925) was a French novelist and editor, who was the son of Jules Verne. He was best known for his adventure novels, which included '' The Lighthouse at the End of the World'' (1905), ''The ...

, who is known to have introduced the character of the inventor, emphasised the romantic sub plot of this novel and expanded it from 17 to 21 chapters, among other changes. The future world depicted in the book includes two political predictions which failed to materialise in the century since its publication: firstly, the United States comes to be composed of 51 states and accordingly, its flag has 51 stars, as opposed to the 45 states that existed in 1905 when Verne died; secondly,

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

becomes an independent, fully sovereign nation state.

Publication history

In November, 1908 Grant Richards (London) published the first English translation as ''The Chase of the Golden Meteor'' from the version of Michel Verne, in a fully illustrated edition. In 1965 I.O. Evans published a condensed version in the Fitzroy Edition as ''The Hunt for the Meteor''. In 1986 the Société Jules Verne published the original French version. In 1998 Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, republished ''The Chase of the Golden Meteor'' in a fully illustrated replica version of the Grant Richards version with an introduction by Gregory A. Benford. In 2006 ''The Meteor Hunt'' was published by Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press translated by F. P. Walter and Walter James Miller from the original text by Jules Verne.

References

1908 French novels 1908 science fiction novels Fiction about meteoroids Novels by Jules Verne Novels set in the future French science fiction novels {{1900s-sf-novel-stub