Classic Adventure and Sci Fi novels in the public domain, free to read on NovelCult.
A celebrated naturalist joins an expedition to hunt a sea monster and discovers a captain, a crew, and a machine beyond anything he imagined. An undersea voyage through wonders, wrecks, and the limits of freedom.
Jules Verne · Sci Fi · 46 ch
A classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne, this work is one of the most well-known subterranean fictions to this day. It inspired many similar works and adaptations. First published in 1864 in French as Voyage au centre de la Terre, it was quickly translated to English by several different publishers in the 1870s.
Jules Verne · Sci Fi · 45 ch
In A Princess of Mars, John Carter is transported to a Mars inhabited by strange civilizations and embarks on various adventures on his quest home. Often held up as a seminal example of pulp science fiction, A Princess of Mars is the first entry in Burroughs’ epic Martian series, and the first to feature the character of John Carter. Though often categorized as just a pulp adventure tale, A Princess of Mars was hugely influential on many budding science fiction writers, professional scientists, and explorers of the day.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 29 ch
Robur the Conqueror, also published as The Clipper of the Clouds, opens in Philadelphia at a meeting of the Weldon Institute, a club of balloon enthusiasts. A stranger named Robur asks to address the members, then tells them that the future belongs to heavier-than-air machines. He mocks the club’s giant balloon, the Go-Ahead, and insults its members until the meeting erupts in chaos.
Jules Verne · Sci Fi · 23 ch
The Mysterious Island tells the tale of five Americans who, in an attempt to escape the Civil War, pilot a hot-air balloon and find themselves crashed on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. Verne had been greatly influenced by works like Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, and that influence shines brightly in this novel of engineering ingenuity and adventure. Verne imparts the escapees with such over-the-top cleverness and so many luckily placed resources that modern readers might find the extent to which they tame the island comical.
Jules Verne · Sci Fi · 62 ch
While investigating the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean, a team led by Dr. Maracot is cut off from their ship and hurled to the bottom of the ocean. There, they find themselves in the remnants of the ancient civilization of Atlantis. Like some other later works by Arthur Conan Doyle, this novel shows elements of spiritualism and the supernatural, themes and ideas that interested him later in life.
Arthur Conan Doyle · Sci Fi · 7 ch
The Land That Time Forgot opens with the discovery near Greenland of a floating thermos flask containing a manuscript by castaway Tyler Bowen, Jr. The document recounts a series of adventures that starts with a sea battle against a German U-boat and ends on a mysterious island populated by hostile prehistoric animals and people. The second part of the book, “The People That Time Forgot,” continues the story with the tale of Tom Billings, who has been sent on a mission to rescue Bowen after his manuscript was discovered.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Sci Fi · 23 ch