Voyages Extraordinaires
Verne began playing with the idea of bringing a mixed selection of "Voyages Extraordinaires" characters together on a new adventure in early 1875, when he considered writing a novel in which Samuel Fergusson from "Five Weeks in a Balloon", Pierre Aronnax from "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", Phileas Fogg from "Around the World in Eighty Days", Dr. Clawbonny from "The Adventures of Captain Hatteras", and other characters would go around the world together in a heavier-than-air flying machine. Another novel featuring a similar trip around the world in a flying machine, Alphonse Brown's "La Conquête de l'air", was published later that year, causing Verne to put the idea on hold. The idea, in highly modified form, finally reemerged five years later as "Journey Through the Impossible".