Topsy-Turvy

The gunners of the Baltimore Gun Club, last seen firing men at the Moon, return with a scheme far more dangerous. Having bought the unexplored region around the North Pole at auction, Barbicane and his colleagues plan to reach its buried coal by straightening the tilt of the Earth itself, using a colossal cannon to nudge the axis and melt the polar ice. The trouble is that shifting the planet would drown coastlines and redraw the map, and only a slip in the arithmetic keeps catastrophe at bay. Verne wrote it in 1889 as both an adventure and a sly warning about engineers who trust their own sums too much. This free PDF and EPUB edition includes the complete English translation.