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Audiobook edition · 11 h 24 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a comet brushes Earth and carries you away from everything you know?
In Jules Verne’s Off on a Comet! A Journey Through Planetary Space, a strange night in French Algeria changes Captain Hector Servadac’s world. A comet carries a small group of people away from Earth. Brave, cheerful and a little vain, Servadac faces a task no soldier expects: helping a scattered band of survivors make sense of their new surroundings.
His loyal orderly Ben Zoof brings talk and good humor, while Count Timascheff and Lieutenant Procope help lead the group. Astronomer Palmyrin Rosette understands the comet Gallia, but cares more for it than for his companions. Survival demands more than courage. The people aboard this strange world must learn how it works before they can decide what to do.
What you’ll discover
- A world turned strange Follow familiar people into unfamiliar surroundings, where every strange fact raises a practical question.
- A cheerful unlikely leader Meet Hector Servadac, whose courage and good humor help him face an extraordinary crisis.
- A difficult brilliant astronomer Discover Rosette’s consuming interest in Gallia, and the friction his sharp tongue brings.
- Science with a purpose Explore explanations that matter because the survivors need knowledge before they can plan.
- Courage through cooperation Watch a loose community confront shared danger through reason, leadership and the work of surviving.
Who will love it
Readers who love old-fashioned adventure, playful science and comic odd couples will enjoy this book. It suits anyone curious about the planets or fond of warm-hearted mysteries.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- An ordinary quarrel meets sudden danger
- The familiar world stops making sense
- Careful observation reveals an isolated island
- Shared danger brings rivals together
- National pride survives a changed world
- Scattered clues offer hope and direction
- Survivors begin building a shared home
- Kindness and invention drive a rescue
- Humor keeps company with real danger
Who’s who
- Captain Hector ServadacA cheerful, brave staff officer and amateur poet who becomes governor of the strange new colony and wants to understand what has happened.
- Ben ZoofThe captain's loyal orderly from Montmartre, always joking, who defends his home hill against every comparison and stays at his master's side.
- Count Wassili TimascheffA calm Russian nobleman and the captain's rival in love, who becomes his friend and leads with faith and good manners.
- Lieutenant ProcopeThe skilled young commander of the count's yacht, who solves navigation puzzles and proposes bold plans for survival.
- Professor Palmyrin RosetteServadac's old science teacher, a vain and irritable astronomer who holds the key to the mystery and guards it fiercely.
- NinaA small Italian girl found alone on an islet with her goat, who brings warmth and courage to the whole community.
- Isaac HakkabutA German merchant and miser who cares only for his cargo and his gold, and who is mocked by almost everyone.
- Colonel Murphy and Major OliphantTwo British officers on a rock who play chess, keep proper manners, and wait for England to send a ship.
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Off on a Comet! A Journey Through Planetary Space in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Off on a Comet! A Journey Through Planetary Space
by Jules Verne · 1877
A French captain and a Russian count arrange a duel, then the sun begins to rise in the west.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
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“We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne.”
In short
Two men agree to fight a sword duel at nine o'clock on New Year's morning, and they even agree on a false reason: a quarrel about music. Then the ground heaves, the sun rises in the wrong place, and a jackal clears thirty feet in a single bound.
Off on a Comet! A Journey Through Planetary Space at a glance
- Reading time
- About 6 h 15 min4 h 55 min fast, 7 h 25 min slow
- Length
- 88,800 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1877by Jules Verne
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A duel and a poem open the story
The book opens on December 31 on the Algerian coast. Captain Hector Servadac and Count Wassili Timascheff, a Russian aide to the Czar, agree to settle a quarrel with swords the next morning. Both admire the same young widow. They decide to tell everyone the cause is music, with the count defending Wagner and the captain defending Rossini.
Servadac is brave, generous and a little scatterbrained. He has hardly opened his cosmography book since school. That matters later, because he will soon need science and have very little of it. His companion is Ben Zoof, a Parisian who insists that his home hill of Montmartre is a mountain fifteen thousand feet high.
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Details
- First published
- 1877
- Language
- English
- Level
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Cite this edition
Verne, Jules. Off on a Comet! A Journey Through Planetary Space. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/off-on-a-comet-a-journey-through-planetary-space.
Verne, J. (2026). Off on a comet! A journey through planetary space. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/off-on-a-comet-a-journey-through-planetary-space (Original work published 1877)
Verne, Jules. Off on a Comet! A Journey Through Planetary Space. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/off-on-a-comet-a-journey-through-planetary-space.
@book{verne2026off,
author = {Verne, Jules},
title = {Off on a Comet! A Journey Through Planetary Space},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/off-on-a-comet-a-journey-through-planetary-space},
note = {First published 1877}
}
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What is Off on a Comet! about?
A French army captain in Algeria and his orderly find that a mysterious shock has changed the sun, gravity and the shape of the land. They join a Russian count on a voyage to learn what happened and find survivors.
Who wrote Off on a Comet! and when?
Jules Verne, the French author of many travel and science adventures, wrote it in the nineteenth century. It is one of his planetary stories and mixes comedy with real astronomy of its time.
Who is Ben Zoof?
Ben Zoof is Captain Servadac's orderly and devoted friend. He comes from Montmartre in Paris, which he believes is the greatest place on earth. His jokes and loyalty give the book much of its humor and warmth.
The author
Jules Verne
1828–1905 · French adventure novelist
Jules Verne was a French writer born in Nantes in 1828. He lived in Paris and later in Amiens, where he died in 1905. His novels include Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).
“Never despair!”
More by Jules Verne
See all their booksMore like this
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