The second edition was published in 1891 with a preface attributed to the French science fiction author Jules Verne; modern scholars have concluded that it was likely written by somebody else.
[1]: 169 [3]: 166/218 They assemble a team with five additional members: financier George Sterling, author Walter Durand, artist Victor Graves, Irish politician Charles Blake, and journalist Frederick Gordon.
[6]: 55–56 Upon arrival, they find themselves in a vast desert; Barnett concludes that the purported Martian canals that astronomers had reported seeing in their telescopes are in fact simooms.
[7]: 336–337 [8]: 117 Socially, they have eliminated poverty, reduced the work day to two hours, dispensed with central government and currency, and achieved gender equality.
[1]: 169 Once they arrive back on Earth, a broken-hearted Durand blows up the spaceship with himself and Barnett inside, and the secret of space travel is forever lost.
[10]: 44–45 In December 1901 and January 1902, Cromie wrote a series of letters to the editor to the weekly magazine The Academy, accusing fellow writer H. G. Wells of plagiarism.
[9]: 372 [14]: 40, 46 On the merits of the dispute, David Lake comments that many of the aspects that Cromie laid claim to were not original to him but already established tropes of the genre, and concludes that it is likely that Wells was truthful in denying familiarity with A Plunge into Space.
[20] On the negative side, a review in the September 13, 1890, number of The Academy said that the book had great potential but poor execution, with the writing quality fluctuating considerably throughout.
The reviewer highlighted the character writing in particular as lacking, commenting that everyone but Mignonette seemed lifeless, and compared the book unfavourably to the works of Jules Verne and Edward Bellamy.
Green also comments that Cromie lacks the imagination necessary to make the utopia seem realistic, comparing the book unfavourably to Percy Greg's 1880 novel Across the Zodiac.
[24]: 121 E. F. Bleiler, in the 1990 reference work Science-Fiction: The Early Years, comments on what he perceives as a peculiar mix of hard science fiction, satire, and fairy tale elements, among others, concluding that the book was likely intended for a young audience.
In particular, Foster finds Wells's Eloi to closely resemble Cromie's Martians in many ways,[7]: 336–337 something also noted by Robert Crossley [Wikidata] in the 2011 non-fiction book Imagining Mars: A Literary History.
[9]: 375 [14]: 45–46 Crossley writes that the comments made in the book about the purported Martian canals are an unusually early example thereof, and notes that the story involves the largest fictional interplanetary crew up to that point at seven people.
[6]: 56 On the climax, Moskowitz writes that it prefigures Tom Godwin's 1954 short story "The Cold Equations";[22]: 46 others who have drawn the same parallel include Lupoff and Clute.
[26] Crossley comments that Cromie's utopia is defined to an unusual degree by the things that are absent,[6]: 57 while Green finds the description of the Martians given by Barnett in the story—"They are at the pinnacle of their perfection.
[6]: 57 Stableford writes that the device of having the characters reject the utopian society is an uncommon one in the genre, noting that the author appears to take the position that they are wrong to do so.
"[7]: 337 Foster and Chamberlain-King both highlight Mignonette surmising that Ireland must be a powerful and important country on the basis that it is mentioned so much in the travellers' newspapers (at the time, there was significant political unrest related to the Irish Home Rule movement).
Murphy describes the mission to Mars as "almost shockingly linked with imperialistic and capitalistic designs", using the high-tech killing of the indigenous leader in Alaska as an example.
[10]: 41 Fennell uses as his principal example the Martian society's backstory: it is mentioned in the text that it emerged from a polity whose geographical location on Mars corresponds to that of Britain on Earth, and which conquered the other regions of the planet by military might.