Members of the Baltimore Gun Club turn their attention from the Moon to the Earth's polar regions. They acquire rights in the Arctic with the intention of exploiting resources hidden beneath the ice. Their plan depends on a technological intervention so vast that its consequences would extend far beyond the investors who expect to profit from it.
Jules Verne follows the collision between commercial ambition, mathematical confidence and public alarm. What appears to its promoters to be a bold practical solution threatens the lives of people who have no part in choosing it. Scientific calculation becomes inseparable from questions about who is entitled to make decisions for the entire planet.
The novel uses exaggeration and satire to examine the assumption that an ability to attempt something makes it wise. It brings the adventure of invention into contact with responsibility, the pursuit of profit and the risks of treating the natural world as a problem to be rearranged.
