You have three characters in this novel: Professor Lidenbrock, his nephew Axel, and their trusty Icelandic guide, Hans. Hans is like Andre the Giant's character in The Princess Bride--strong, capable, there for the heavy lifting, but doesn't really drive the plot. Admiring his single-minded devotion and cool head, we can put him aside. Professor Lidenbrock is the unhinged scientist willing, at the drop of a hat, to believe some coded marginalia about the attainability of the center (or "centre," if you will) of the earth. Axel is his beleaguered nephew and assistant, reluctantly along for the ride, which takes them to a volcano in Iceland.

Axel is like Scully in early X-Files episodes: he constantly doubts his uncle, always reciting the party line about physics and geology, how none of this is possible, even when he sees it with his own eyes. You want to smack him for his constant interruptions and return to your wistful adoration of the unshackled genius of Lidenbrock/Mulder. Thinking more on it, though, a writer needs an Axel/Scully whipping boy character in any story that features a Lidenbrock/Mulder type for the purposes of triangulation: s/he voices--even preempts--the readers' own skepticism. The author then gets to contradict, and sometimes even shame, the character within the framework of the narrative--without ever having directly to engage or convince the reader. Let's face it: who wouldn't, in reality, react as Axel does to Lidenbrock's crazy talk? But who are you going to identify with: whiny Axel, who passes out and gets himself lost and is, in general, pretty useless, or the fearless, mad genius Lidenbrock? Axel is Verne's get-out-of-jail-free card. (Scully's not nearly as bad as Axel, not only because of Gillian Anderson's ethereal loveliness and the makeup artist's demonstrated ability with her lipstick.)

Anyway, the writing remains remarkably vivid and fresh: it's easy to see why this story remains popular in its original form. Verne's imaginative creations even overshadow his unfortunate tendency to obsessively catalog the group's scientific equipment and how each piece works, and what befalls each piece along the way, etc.