Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett Putman Serviss (world best books to read .TXT) 📖

"Like men, and yet not like men...."

"... rising out of the shadow of the globe...."

"A consultation in Wizard Edison's laboratory...."

"Through this the meteor had passed...."

"... the ruins of ... an ancient watch tower."

"... another of our ships ... was destroyed."

"Two of the Martians were stretched dead upon the ground."

"He might have been a match for twenty of us."

"... he proceeded to teach us ... words of his language."

"... approaching from the eastward a large airship...."

"... a human being here on Mars!"

"The gigantic statue of their leader is THE GREAT SPHINX!"

"It was a panic of giants."

These illustrations are a selection of the best from the original newspaper installments and were redrawn for this volume by Bernard Manley, Jr., of Chicago, Illinois.

If you picked up a magazine and read in it a story mentioning a passenger-carrying rocket driven by atomic power furnished by a substance prepared from uranium, you probably would not be greatly surprised. After all, such an invention is today but a step or two ahead of cold fact. But you might be surprised to learn that if this story was A Columbus of Space, the one I happen to have in mind, your grand-parents may well have read it before you were born—for A Columbus of Space was published in All-Story magazine in 1909, thirty years before the potentialities of U235 were realized, and nearly forty before the atomic bomb became a problem for people to think about.

Did the author of this story simply make a lucky shot in the dark? Perhaps; but let me tell those who are inclined to think so that he was a Carnegie lecturer, a member of half-a-dozen learned societies, one of the first to write a book on Einstein's theory of relativity, and an internationally known figure in his specialty, astronomy. His name is Garrett Putman Serviss.

He was born on March 24, 1851, at Sharon Springs, New York, of native New England stock. His interest in astronomy began as a boy, and was greatly stimulated when he began to examine the beauties of the heavens through a small telescope, the gift of his older brother. This encouraged his enrolling in the course of science at Cornell University in 1868 (its opening year) from which he was graduated in 1872. There followed two years at the Columbia College Law School, which he left as an LL. B.; and in June, 1874 he was admitted to the bar. He did not practice law, however, but turned instead to newspaper reporting.

Whence came this interest in law and journalism? We can only guess, tracing its onset to the man's college days. As a Cornell sophomore, he was the class poet; as a senior, its historian; and on commencement day delivered an oration on "The Perpetuity of the Heroic Element." But whatever the origin of the interest, unquestioned ability supported it. From the position of reporter and correspondent with the New York Tribune he rose to the post of copy editor on the staff of the Sun. Finally he became night editor, a position which he held for a full decade.

During this period we can see the old interest in science gradually assert itself. At first it took the form of anonymous articles, mainly on matters astronomical. These usually appeared on the editorial page and, partly because they were then a novelty, partly because of a quirk of fate—editor-in-chief Charles Dana frequently had them set up in bold type, believing their logic was a fine counter-irritant for heated political campaigns of the day—the attention of subscribers was focused on them more sharply than usual. In fact, readers over the entire country were soon conjecturing about the identity of "the Sun's astronomer." Very few knew that it was Garrett Serviss, who successfully cloaked his identity for years.

Success in written popularizing of science led him to attempt its duplication on the lecture platform. There his triumphs were such as to lead him to resign as night editor of the Sun in 1892 and make astronomy his life work. Until 1894 he was occupied with "The Urania Lectures." These were sponsored by Andrew Carnegie, and dealt with geology, astronomy, archeology and similar scientific topics. With them Serviss successfully toured the country, and it was only because of the great difficulty in transporting the elaborate staging equipment they required that they were eventually discontinued. He continued to give popular lectures, however, and one of his few biographers has credited his greatness on the rostrum to "a pleasant voice, a charming personality, and a genuine enthusiasm for his subject."

One cannot doubt this enthusiasm; it shines forth unmistakably from all his writings. Probably, too, it played the major part in enabling him to reach a wider reading public than any other astronomer before or after him. For he never abandoned the pen. Up until his death, which occurred on May 25, 1929, he wrote continually, syndicated newspaper columns, magazine articles, books on astronomy, fiction.

His first book, Astronomy with an Opera Glass, appeared in 1888. He was responsible for several other scientific titles (the reader is referred to the bibliography at the end of this volume for a detailed listing); they include Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which is a companion work to the motion picture of the same name. He was also editor-in-chief of Collier's sixteen-volume Popular Science Library. It might be added that much of the editing and captioning of the Einstein film was his work, and that he collaborated with Leon Barritt in the invention of the Barritt-Serviss Star and Planet Finder, a device still in use.

In comparison with his other writings his output of fiction is small: five novels and a single short story. It is, however, characterized by the same logic and interest, this time tossed aloft to soar on the wings of romantic imagination. Two of these works deal in some detail with the world of the future as he thought it might be—prophetic fiction, if you will; another two give us a picture of life on neighboring planets; and the final couple, although they maintain a terrestrial locale, show as wide a scope of creative invention.

In only one of these does astronomy fail to play at least a supporting role. That is The Sky Pirate (1909), which is an adventure story laid in the year 1936. Its plot revolves around an abduction for ransom in a period which is visualized as rampant with piracy because of the general adoption of air transportation. As usual, fact has outmoded prophecy, for long before 1936 airplane speeds exceeded the 140 miles per hour Serviss predicted. We still need, though, his invention which enables badly damaged aircraft to drift slowly down to a safe landing.

The Moon Metal (1900) deals with the problem of a strange, lunar metal used as a monetary standard to replace gold when, in 1949, huge new deposits of that metal rendered it common as iron. This is of short story length, and amply demonstrates the author's mastery of that medium.

From the prophetic as well as the entertainment standpoint, one of Garrett Serviss' most interesting novels is A Columbus of Space. Here he visualizes atomic energy liberated and harnessed to drive a rocket to the planet Venus. His conception is uncannily close to truth; he names uranium as the raw material from which is extracted the vital substance, a "crystallized powder" which releases its energy on proper treatment. No less intriguing is the description of the intelligent civilizations on Venus which explorers from this world find.

Two later novels came from his pen: The Moon Maiden (1915) and The Second Deluge (1911). The former is a scientific mystery, and probably the least distinguished of his works. The latter, conversely, is probably his best. It tells of a watery nebula which collides with the earth, flooding it with a second deluge; and of how the human race is saved through the wisdom of one man who foresaw the coming disaster in time to build a second ark. A new civilization which has mastered the secret of atomic energy springs up on the planet as the waters recede. The canvas is a broad one, and the author does it full justice.

Serviss' outstanding stories have been published abroad and re-printed in this country several times, a deserved tribute to their quality and popularity. His very first work of fiction, however, has been shrouded in obscurity for nearly half a century. Indeed, among collectors and aficionados of the fantastic there was for a time debate as to its actual existence. This is hardly surprising, for until its reprinting in this book Edison's Conquest of Mars lay buried in the Congressional Library's file of the ephemeral New York Evening Journal, where it ran serially in early 1898.

This is a remarkable work. First of all, as many readers will quickly discern, it is in a sense a sequel to H. G. Wells' well known War of the Worlds. The latter novel was serialized by Cosmopolitan magazine in 1897; it caught the public's fickle fancy, and was widely commented upon. All evidence indicates that Serviss also read it: he was a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan. Yet I am inclined to doubt that mere reading of The War of the Worlds in itself prompted him to produce a work in the same vein. Wells' effort was not concluded until the December, 1897 number of the magazine, and Edison's Conquest of Mars began on the following January 12th—a scant six weeks later. For Serviss it was the initial excursion into the realm of fiction, and it is hard to conceive his so hastily adopting a new metier on personal impulse alone. These circumstances, in conjunction with the context of the novel itself, clearly stamp the entire business as clever capitalization on already existent publicity. Again, I doubt if he thought of it at first in that light; his name was well enough known so that he could live by his knowledge, not his wits. But to a newspaper editor the prospect of combining the authority of a nationally known and reputable astronomer with a work designed to satisfy a reading public's waiting appetite for the unusual—in short, presenting legitimatized sensationalism at the psychological moment—this must have had irresistible appeal. That Edison's Conquest of Mars was written on editorial commission, perhaps as fast as it appeared, seems, then, the most probable interpretation.

Historically, the work is one of the earliest to employ the interplanetary theme. It is the first to portray a battle fought by space craft in the airless void; and possibly the first also to propose the use of sealed suits that enable men to traverse a vacuum. Of the more minor twists of plot initially found here that have since become parts of the "pulp" science-fiction writers' standard stock-in-trade, there are literally too many to mention.

The novel opens with a description of the ruins of eastern America. Although the Martians who survived terrestrial bacteria have left the planet, astronomical observations show a recurrence on the red planet of the same lights that were a prelude to the first onslaught. The conclusion is inevitable: a second invasion is on the way. Serviss pictures the gathering together of the most famous scientists of the day—Edison, Roentgen, Lord Kelvin and others. The Martian machines and weapons left behind