The Centre Of The Earth

 

Jules Verne's Journey To The Centre Of The Earth is one big disappointment. The explorers do not get anywhere near the Earth's centre. Instead, they are diverted into a vast electrically albeit naturally lit cavern with a sea, dinosaurs, piles of bones and a twelve-foot man although the narrator later doubts his perception of the man! And they exit impossibly via a volcano. 

A 20th or 21st century sf writer of the caliber of Poul Anderson or SM Stirling would be able to write a retro-novel set in the 19th century with a plausible scientific rationale for no molten core and a route via passageways to the centre and back.

Verne could have written such a book but preferred to remain neutral or ambiguous on issues like a molten core or not. Much of his text is dramatized documentary.

The copy that I read has already been returned to the Public Library. I am unlikely to read any more Verne.