The Moon Voyage compiles From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon. From the Earth to the Moon is a humorous science fantasy novel that tells the story of the president of a post-American Civil War gun club in Baltimore, his rival, a Philadelphia maker of armor, and a Frenchman, who built an enormous sky-facing Columbiad space gun and launched themselves with intentions of a Moon landing. Around the Moon is Verne's sequel to From the Earth to the Moon in which a bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers, Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan, begin the five-day trip to the moon. Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. He was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.