Writing with a philosophical eye worthy of the eighteenth century, and the subtle irony of Voltaire, Verne tells the tale of Dr Ox - one of his most inspired, and insane, visionaries. Something very strange is in the air of the harmonious town of Quiquendone. Unknown to the inhabitants, the mad genius Dr Ox has unleashed a veil of oxy-hydric gas over the town - his own living laboratory - in an attempt to spice things up...In his amusing portrait of an idyllic community suddenly overtaken by an appetite for aggression, Jules Verne points to the ease with which any society - and the modern resonance is unmissable - can be manipulated by its masters into hatred and war.