Critical Reception and Significance
Poe himself describes the enthusiasm his story had aroused: he claims that the Sun building was "besieged" by people wanting copies of the newspaper. "I never witnessed more intense excitement to get possession of a newspaper," he wrote. The story's impact reflects on the period's infatuation with progress. Poe added realistic elements, discussing at length the balloon's design and propulsion system in believable detail. His use of real people, including William Harrison Ainsworth, also lent credence to the story. The character of Monck Mason was not a real person, though he was based heavily on Thomas Monck Mason; the story borrowed heavily from Mason's 1836 book Account of the Late Aeronautical Expedition from London to Weilburg.
"The Balloon-Hoax" is like one of Poe's "tales of ratiocination" (such as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue") in reverse: rather than taking things apart to solve a problem, Poe builds up fiction to make it seem true. The story is also an early form of science fiction, specifically responding to the emerging technology of hot air balloons.
The story may have later been an inspiration for Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. As Verne scholar William Butcher pointed out, Verne was an early admirer of Poe and his novel Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon) was published within a year of his nonfiction book Edgar Poe et ses oeuvres (Edgar Allan Poe and his Works). Verne even has a character mention Poe's story in From the Earth to the Moon. It is not difficult to see Poe's works, published in France as Histoires extraordinaires (Extraordinary Stories), as one of the influences on Verne's Voyages extraordinaires (Extraordinary Journeys).
Read more about this topic: The Balloon-Hoax
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