Page 44 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

1.3 The Purchase of the North Pole: (left) building the cannon at Mount Kilimanjaro;
(center) inside the cannon; (right) Fire! (Illustration by George Roux, in
the illustrated Jules Verne)

sion will kill millions of people. In secrecy and haste, the protagonists proceed
with their plan, building the huge cannon in the side of Mount Kilimanjaro (fig-
ure 1.3). The scheme fails only when an error in calculation renders the massive
shot ineffective. Verne concludes, “The world’s inhabitants could thus sleep in
peace. To modify the conditions of the Earth’s movement is beyond the power of
man.” or is it? Perhaps he spoke too soon.
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mark twain: Controlling the Climate and Selling it

The American humorist Mark Twain opens his book The American Claimant
(1892) with an outrageous claim: “No weather will be found in this book. This
is an attempt to pull a book through without weather. It being the first attempt
of the kind in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the
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while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the mood.”
In an opening section called “The Weather in This Book,” Twain cites the unde-
sirable and “persistent intrusions of weather” that delay both the reader and the
author: “Nothing breaks up an author’s progress like having to stop every few
pages to fuss-up the weather.” After conceding the obvious—“Weather is neces-
sary to a narrative of human experience”—Twain seeks to keep it in its place, out
of the way, “where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative.” So he promises
to relegate weather to the end of his book—indeed, to its “climatic” conclusion

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