Garrett Putman Serviss 1 hr 37 min read

When gold is discovered at the South Pole, it wrecks the world's economy, until the mysterious Dr. Syx offers a strange new metal, artemisium, whose source is a secret worth killing for.

Garrett P. Serviss's 1900 novel is a clever early hard-SF and detective tale by a noted science popularizer. Inventive, prophetic, engaging. Read it for a founding scientific mystery, a magician-scientist, a wondrous new element, and a 'detective of science' who traces its impossible origin, in a landmark of early American SF.

In its time

Published in 1900, during the 1900s, the scientific romance.

Reading it

1 hr 37 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).