Garrett P. Serviss (1851–1929)

This is a delightful little golden age of sci-fi book, published the year my father was born, about a man who taps the secret of nuclear energy to power a ship to sail to Venus. He "kidnaps" his circle of fellow bachelors, and when they have discovered that he means to carry them away from the Earth, they are angry. He placates them by offering to return them to Earth, but they have by this time conceived an interest in appeasing their curiosity, and agree to the expedition. They visit the dark side first, and some crazy adventures await them there, but none so amazing as the ones they will experience when they travel to the light side. Serviss' imagination is in full flight as he entertains his readers with a space fairy tale.… (meer)

This was an American sequel to H G Wells' War of the Worlds, or to be more precise a sequel to an unauthorised American version of the novel, with the action transferred from suburban London to Boston, Massachusetts. This sequel was also published in 1898 soon after Wells' novel. In fear of a second Martian invasion, and having studied Martian technology from the wreckage of the first invasion, the nations of the world come together under US leadership (with scarcely any objections!) to send an expedition to Mars to stop a recurrence. The mission is led by none other than the inventor Thomas Edison, with participation of other scientists such as Lord Kelvin. So far, this description comes across as more Jules Verne than H G Wells. The author was a journalist with scientific training, so the science in it is, for the most part, very accurate, at least according to the state of knowledge of the time, and this is also apparently the first SF novel to depict men in space suits and an interplanetary battle between fleets of spaceships. Mars here, though, possesses the watery canals that it was believed to possess at the time, and the Martians themselves are giant humanoids whose appearance, according to the illustrations, owe more to fantasy than Wells' vision. Serviss is quite a good descriptive writer, though there is far too much showing rather than telling of the most potentially dramatic action. He is no H G Wells. So overall 3/5… (meer)

Red-blooded Victorian pulp sci-fi — that's how I would label this 1898 tale of interplanetary imperialism that sought to capitalize on the popularity of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds by imagining a Yankee-led counterstroke against the wicked Martians. Electricity is the do-it-all technology in this scenario, and Thomas Edison is the can-do wizard who dominates the story. In a matter of weeks Edison perfects electric spaceships and disintegrator guns that can outdo anything the Martians have, and soon the cream of the world's scientists are off on a combined scientific expedition and war to annihilate alien savages. (Edward Said fans, take note.) Serviss, an astronomer and science popularizer who came of age just after the American Civil War, combines his optimistic scientism with pseudo-science (alien pyramid builders, physiognomy as a guide to psychology), sentimentality (an earthling damsel in Martian distress), and white supremacy (inviting the reader to celebrate the "Aryan" racial qualities of a happy couple formed by the adventure). Since the author's death in 1929 the story has been anthologized and reprinted, usually after heavy abridgement of some of the more self-indulgent or embarrassingly racist passages.… (meer)