Sans Dessus Dessous (Topsy Turvy)

Known variously as San Dessus Dessous, Topsy Turvy and The Purchase of the North Pole, this is Verne's sequel to From The Earth to The Moon. Like many of his works it points out some of the follies of man in an almost satyrical way. It is the 1890s and man has not yet reached the actual North Pole, but an auction is won by a representative from an anonymous United States buyer. After the auction closes, the mysterious buyer is revealed to be Barbicane and Co., a company founded by Impey Barbicane, J.T. Maston and Captain Nicholl - the same members of the Baltimore Gun Club who, twenty years earlier, had traveled around the Moon inside a large cannon shell. They have left the comfort of retirement with an audacious plan to un-tilt the Earth's axis thus eliminating the seasons and tempering the Earth's atmosphere. But more importantly to those who would exploit the new positioning, it would bring an untold wealth of coal down from the frozen north and make mining it easy. But, what else might it do?