Up in the clouds

Celebrations. Transport. Science lessons. Today, balloons are a casual part of everyday life, noticed but not really considered. Can you imagine a world in which balloons are the newest, most exciting development in technology? RM Ballantyne explores the earliest attempts to fly using balloons in his short story 'Up in the Clouds', and his lively prose makes this adventure just as exciting to read as it would be to experience. Robert Michael Ballantyne (1825 - 1894) was a Scottish author. Born into a family of famous printers and publishers, his expertise was juvenile fiction, and he wrote over 100 hugely successful books in this genre. The most notable of these include 'The Coral Island', 'The Eagle Cliff', and 'The Gorilla Hunters'. Famed for his tendency to fully immerse himself into the environment of whichever story he was working on, his lively prose is unmissable for those who enjoyed Matt Haig's 'The Midnight Library'.