Reclaiming Earth from its frozen state then becomes the focus of Lien Rag's adventures, after his return to Earth, ten years after he left it. This is ultimately achieved when a band of Sun Reclaimers manage to break up the Moondust. The world suffers through a new economic collapse, as the ice companies are forced to evolve, or disappear. Old powers crumble, new alliances form, and various wars erupt around the globe. The Bulb eventually crashes down to Earth, triggering new cataclysmic changes.
Some old characters die, while new ones are introduced.
Finally, a temporary peace of sorts is reached in Volume 62, when the Northern and Southern hemispheres are cut off from the other by a fiery belt of unfiltered sunlight at the Equator. Publishing History For its sheer scope, complexity, ambition, and unrivalled craftmansip, writer G.-J. Arnaud 's The Ice Company ranks with such established masterpieces as Isaac Asimov 's Foundation and Frank Herbert 's Dune series. It quickly became a best-seller, and won the 1982 French Science Fiction Grand Prize. The Ice Company was awarded its own imprint in 1988, with blue-colored covers, sporting illustations by Demuth . Volumes 37 to 62 were originally published in that imprint, which also simultaneously reprinted Volumes 1 to 36, bringing the series to a temporary conclusion with Volume 62 in 1992.