The play can be read in two ways. The first and easiest-well-received by Parisian spectators-focuses on the music, the colors, the journey through diamond caves, the Nautilus, and the colossal cannon (for travel from Earth to Altor). The more difficult reading gets at the philosophy and the message of the work: glorifying the triumphant inventions of science, but showing that science, badly used, can bring death and devastation.
