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Loading... Topsy-Turvy (original 1901; edition 2009)by Jules Verne, J. G. Ogilvie (Translator)
Work InformationThe Purchase of the North Pole by Jules Verne (Author) (1901)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I found this book to be lacking in effort and determination. Although the idea is not bad in itself, its execution is dubious and the characters felt more like cutouts rather than fully fledged ones. Overall, I do not recommend this book. Even Verne enthusiasts would be hard pressed to really enjoy this one. 2 stars. The cover design of this book snagged me as I was browsing at the Strand. It's practically everything I want in a book -- striking cover, small format, French flaps! I mean, it is Jules Verne, who I always feel I should like, but still I'd never managed to successfully finish reading one of his books. But I'd never heard of this one. Then I looked at the synopsis, and it sounded like polar fiction to me! Of course I had to buy it. As the main characters of the story are the Gun Club of Baltimore, who, when we last saw them, managed to send men to the moon and back using a giant cannon, it seemed at first that we should be rooting for them. But also, from the very beginning, the story felt like a cautionary tale against unrestrained capitalism. The Gun Club buys the North Pole, which they expect to be a treasure trove of coal, if only one could mine it. But, of course, they have a plan -- to use even large cannons this time, to turn the entire Earth and give it a new axis of rotation. Other than one section where I gave myself a headache trying to envision the result of their little adjustment (picturing 3D rotations not being my strong suit), for a good portion of the book what I most wanted was to hunt down all the members of the Gun Club and shake them within an inch of their lives. Because they can do this thing, and it will benefit them, there's never any question of whether they should do it, even when they predict that large inhabited areas of the earth will then be underwater. That's somebody else's problem. Especially since this whole thing is a scheme to get more coal, it's easy to image this all as a modern climate change allegory. There, to, there's a few people I'd like to see rounded up and put in jail. Anyway, for all that, the book was surprisingly enjoyable. Pushed through the dry parts (Oh, Verne has some dry parts!) just fine. Maybe now it's time to retry some of the more classic Verne stories? One of his more ridiculous and just not very interesting stories. It involves the same protagonists who in Voyage to the Moon fired the cannon that launched the projectile to the Moon; here they are proposing to fire a mighty cannon downwards into the surface of the Earth so as to cause a mighty explosion and displacement of land and sea that will change the planet's polar axis and thereby cause the sun to melt the North polar icecap so they can discover and lay claim to the land they think is beneath it. But they get their calculations wrong! Full of dry technical babble about the mechanics of it and the usual ridiculous 19th century racial stereotypes, which seem even more evident than usual in the absence of any kind of decent story. no reviews | add a review
A story of a world in which energy shortages lead a group of Americans to devise a radical solution, for their own gain, which puts the whole earth at risk. The Gun Club of Baltimore once used a giant cannon to send a spacecraft to the moon. Now, the gun is brought into use again to achieve an equally ambitious aim-- to tilt the earth's axis so that the North Pole is displaced to the tropics. The plotters believe there are limitless resources of coal at the North Pole and their cunning plan will allow them to exploit these resources to become rich. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.8Literature French French fiction Later 19th century 1848–1900LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I enjoyed how every one is in a panicky about the plan to change the earth's rotation.
I loved how it ended. It made me laugh. ( )