It's difficult to get further into detail about the plot without revealing its most deliciously dark plot point. Some reviewers, however, seem to have no qualms discussing it, having missed the humor in this particular twist and choosing, instead, to cite it as an example of the postmodern society's moral quandaries.

I am here to say Fuck that with a brick. When you reach the point in the story when it's revealed why the teams are trekking to the Agreed Furthest Point, you either laugh out loud in shock, or you take a moment to lament the human condition. I did the former, and I guarantee you I'm more fun at parties than the folks who did the latter.

In this passage, one team debates what to name a newly discovered cliff.

'What about "Observation Point"?' offered Guthrum.

'But we hardly observed a thing,' said Tostig. 'The horizon was obscured.'

'All right then: "Obscurity Point".'

'Too vague.'

Tostig then suggests that they name the cliff after the first man to have seen it. When all the team members demur, he announces that this is obviously a sign of the "comradeship" that has developed between the men, and designates it "Modesty Bluff."

You'd be hard pressed to find darker humor--sans snark--than Explorers of the New Century. Imagine an amalgam between Breugel's Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Laconic yet imaginative, in many respects Mills' writing reminds me of Jim Crace's. It's not only the otherworldiness of the setting, it's also the difficult-to-pinpoint time and place of it all. But in Mills' world, it doesn't matter if you're a cartographer hiking across the tundra or an assistant marketing manager in Ohio--idiocy is not only the norm; it's rewarded. Mills eschews adjectives and adverbs, which gives the dialog a certain comedic banality. However, the physical comedy should make it patently clear: Explorers is very much an absurdist farce, and an immensely enjoyable one at that.