conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled Five Weeks in a Balloon about Jules, Gabriel, February with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Action & Adventure
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conversations.value: Jules Gabriel the author (February 8, 1828 March 24, 1905) was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). the author wrote about space, air, and underwater travels before air travel and practical submarines were invented, and before practical means of space travel had been devised.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a plot for a book titled Five Weeks in a Balloon about Jules, Gabriel, February with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Action & Adventure
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Five Weeks in a Balloon: A scholar and explorer, dr Samuel Ferguson, accompanied by his manservant Joe and his friend professional hunter Richard "Dick" Kennedy, sets out to travel across the African continent\xa0— still not fully explored\xa0— with the help of a balloon filled with hydrogen.\nHe has invented a mechanism that, by eliminating the need to release gas or throw ballast overboard to control his altitude, allows very long trips to be taken.\nThis voyage is meant to link together the voyages of Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke in East Africa with those of Heinrich Barth in the regions of the Sahara and Chad.\nThe trip begins in Zanzibar on the east coast, and passes across Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Agadez, Timbuktu, Djenné and Ségou to St Louis in modern-day Senegal on the west coast.\nThe book describes the unknown interior of Africa near modern-day Central African Republic as a desert, when it is actually savanna.\nA good deal of the initial exploration is to focus on the finding of the source of the Nile, an event that occurs in chapter 18 (out of 43).\nThe second leg is to link up the other explorers.\nThere are numerous scenes of adventure, composed of either a conflict with a native or a conflict with the environment.\nSome examples include: In all these adventures, the protagonists overcome by continued perseverance more than anything else.\nThe novel is filled with coincidental moments where trouble is avoided because wind catches up at just the right time, or the characters look in just the right direction.\nThere are frequent references to a higher power watching out for them.\nThe balloon itself ultimately fails before the end, but makes it far enough across to get the protagonists to friendly lands, and eventually back to England, therefore succeeding in the expedition.\nThe story abruptly ends after the African trip, with only a brief synopsis of what follows.
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conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
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conversations.value: Five Weeks in a Balloon
  Following Verne's historic meeting with Hetzel, the remainder of his life and works can be divided into three distinct periods: 1862–1886, 1886–1905, and 1905–1925.
  In 1882, his move to a new, larger home at 2 rue Charles-Dubois, Amiens—the famous house with the circular tower, which for many years served as the headquarters of the Centre International Jules Verne, Amiens.
  Continual problems with his rebellious son Michel (e.g., repeated bankruptcies, costly amorous escapades, divorce from his first wife, difficulties with the law, etc.)
  An attack at gunpoint on March 9, 1886, by his mentally disturbed nephew Gaston, who shot Verne in the lower leg, leaving him partially crippled for the rest of his life.
  In recent years, these posthumous works have become the topic of heated controversy among Verne scholars: how much and in what ways did Michel alter these texts prior to their publication? After a close examination of the available manuscripts (now housed in the Centre d'études verniennes in Nantes) by Piero Gondolo della Riva, Olivier Dumas, and other respected Verne scholars, it is now indisputable that Michel had a much greater hand in the composition of Jules Verne's posthumous works than had ever been suspected:
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conversations.value: another paragraph
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conversations.value: An attack at gunpoint on March 9, 1886, by his mentally disturbed nephew Gaston, who shot Verne in the lower leg, leaving him partially crippled for the rest of his life.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In 1882, his move to a new, larger home at 2 rue Charles-Dubois, Amiens—the famous house with the circular tower, which for many years served as the headquarters of the Centre International Jules Verne, Amiens.
  Continual problems with his rebellious son Michel (e.g., repeated bankruptcies, costly amorous escapades, divorce from his first wife, difficulties with the law, etc.)
  An attack at gunpoint on March 9, 1886, by his mentally disturbed nephew Gaston, who shot Verne in the lower leg, leaving him partially crippled for the rest of his life.
  In recent years, these posthumous works have become the topic of heated controversy among Verne scholars: how much and in what ways did Michel alter these texts prior to their publication? After a close examination of the available manuscripts (now housed in the Centre d'études verniennes in Nantes) by Piero Gondolo della Riva, Olivier Dumas, and other respected Verne scholars, it is now indisputable that Michel had a much greater hand in the composition of Jules Verne's posthumous works than had ever been suspected:
  Scholarly reaction to Michel's rewrites of his father's manuscripts has tended to be very polarized. Some have called Michel's intervention in Verne's posthumous works an inexcusable betrayal of trust and a financially motivated scam that severely compromised the integrity of Verne's entire oeuvre. In an attempt to set the record straight, from 1985 through the 1990s, the Société Jules Verne in France arranged for the publication of Verne's original manuscripts of most of these works; English translations of them have been appearing with regularity since 2002. But other scholars strongly disagree with this assessment. They point out that Jules Verne encouraged Michel to publish stories under his father's illustrious name; that during the final decade of his life when his eyesight was rapidly failing, Jules often asked Michel to "collaborate" with him to help bring several of his later novels to publication; and that Michel's sometimes radical modifications of Verne's posthumous works often improved their readability—an enhancement that surely would have received his father's wholehearted approval. The debate continues to this day.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In 1882, his move to a new, larger home at 2 rue Charles-Dubois, Amiens—the famous house with the circular tower, which for many years served as the headquarters of the Centre International Jules Verne, Amiens.
  Continual problems with his rebellious son Michel (e.g., repeated bankruptcies, costly amorous escapades, divorce from his first wife, difficulties with the law, etc.)
  An attack at gunpoint on March 9, 1886, by his mentally disturbed nephew Gaston, who shot Verne in the lower leg, leaving him partially crippled for the rest of his life.
  In recent years, these posthumous works have become the topic of heated controversy among Verne scholars: how much and in what ways did Michel alter these texts prior to their publication? After a close examination of the available manuscripts (now housed in the Centre d'études verniennes in Nantes) by Piero Gondolo della Riva, Olivier Dumas, and other respected Verne scholars, it is now indisputable that Michel had a much greater hand in the composition of Jules Verne's posthumous works than had ever been suspected:
  Scholarly reaction to Michel's rewrites of his father's manuscripts has tended to be very polarized. Some have called Michel's intervention in Verne's posthumous works an inexcusable betrayal of trust and a financially motivated scam that severely compromised the integrity of Verne's entire oeuvre. In an attempt to set the record straight, from 1985 through the 1990s, the Société Jules Verne in France arranged for the publication of Verne's original manuscripts of most of these works; English translations of them have been appearing with regularity since 2002. But other scholars strongly disagree with this assessment. They point out that Jules Verne encouraged Michel to publish stories under his father's illustrious name; that during the final decade of his life when his eyesight was rapidly failing, Jules often asked Michel to "collaborate" with him to help bring several of his later novels to publication; and that Michel's sometimes radical modifications of Verne's posthumous works often improved their readability—an enhancement that surely would have received his father's wholehearted approval.