Topsy-Turvy by Jules Verne — Read

According to a former story a gun was to be employed to throw the projectile from the earth to the moon; now the gun was to be employed to change the earth's axis. The cannon, always the cannon; these gunners of the Gun Club had nothing else in their heads but the cannon. They had a real craze for the cannon. Was this brutal engine again threatening the universe? Yes, we are sorry to confess it, it was a cannon which was uppermost in the mind of President Barbicane and his associates. After the Columbiad of Florida, they had gone on to the monster cannon of the place "x. " We may almost hear them shout with a loud voice: "Take aim at the moon. " First act, "Fire. " "Change the axis of the earth. " Second act, "Fire. " And the wish which the whole world had for them was, "To hell. " Third act, "Fire. " And really their scheme justified the popular opinion.

As it was, the publication of this last report of the Committee in the newspapers produced an effect of which one can scarcely form an ideal. The operation to be tried by President Barbicane and Capt. Nicholl, it was very clear, was going to bring about one of the most disastrous interruptions in the daily routine of the earth. Everybody understood what the consequences of it would be. Therefore the experiment of Barbicane & Co. was generally cursed, denounced, etc. In the Old as well as in the New World the members of the N. P. P. A. had at the time only enemies. If there were indeed a few friends left to them among their cranky American admirers, they were very few.