The Underground City

The Underground City by Jules Verne centers around one of the most important natural resources that was behind the Industrial Revolution: Coal. The events of the story take place among the mining community of Aberfoyle, near Stirling, Scotland. All starts when a superior named Simon Ford asks Engineer James Starr to resume the exploitation of the area which has always been believed to be mined out. They soon discover a considerable, unexplored deposit of coal, which allows them to build a whole city under the earth's surface. Numerous unexplainable phenomena follow and multiply until they discover, amid a coal vein, a dying young girl who has never had any contact with daylight before. Verne's engaged story-telling and detailed descriptions reveal his accurate knowledge of coal mining techniques as well as his profound readings in local folklore. His factual references are almost always combined with pure imagination, which often leads to such scientific inexactitudes that can only be detected by modern readers. Nonetheless, Verne's eccentric wanderings of the imagination have predicted many technological inventions and scientific discovery of the twentieth century.