Thomas F. (hardtack) -
If you read H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," you know how close we came to being conquered by monsters from Mars. And, it they had won, only God knows how they would have made the Federal Tax Code even more difficult to understand. So though I battled acute bronchitis for most of December, I still thank God for giving us the microbes which defeated the Martians.
But just because we survived their invasion doesn't mean we were content to sit back and tell each other how bravely we fought and hand out medals to those with political influence. No! We decided we needed to take the battle to them. And this is where this book comes in, as it is a history of our invasion of Mars and how we conquered those rascals under the inspired leadership of Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of all kinds of stuff, even the Internet which he let Al Gore take credit for.
This is the 1898 sequel to Well's book which was out of print for a hundred years or more. It was written by that famous author Garrett P. Serviss. While I hadn't heard of him either, he was a well-known astronomer in the late 19th century. And he must have read somewhere that authors of fiction can take artistic license with their books, as he out did himself here. It's amazing how Edison, faced with a supposedly unsolvable problem, could just spend a day or two in his lab and come up with a solution to space travel, disintegrator rays, and whatever else was needed to travel to Mars and defeat the Martians. Sometimes he didn't even need a whole day. And he took a small laboratory with him to solve problems he hadn't thought of yet. Yep, Thomas Edison could have taught Tom Swift a thing or two.
You really have to forget most of what you didn't learn in science classes in school to enjoy this book. Seriously, this is really primitive sci-fi at its best, yet 20th century scientists are amazed at how many problems the author thought of as obstacles to our invasion of Mars and his solutions to them which NASA also had to come up with. And sci-fi authors eventually made great use of numerous plot devices which Serviss wrote into his story. Not bad for a guy who probably never even heard of the Science Fiction genre before writing this book.
Yet the characters are all two-dimensional, and even the thrown-in romance with the love triangle is difficult to accept. But I still enjoyed reading it as it let me know we did defeat the Martians and I won't lose any more sleep over the possibility of a re-invasion.
The only thing I found which I felt was historically correct was when delegates from all over the world met to decide how to send an invasion force to Mars. Obviously, this was going to cost a few dollars. Despite the fact the Martians had devastated the world, and everything was in ruins including the economies of every nation---if those economies even still existed---these delegates were all too happy to offer thousands of millions of dollars to help fund the project. And when the total fell a little short of what the delegates felt was needed, I felt a surge of pride when the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury stood up and promised another thousand million dollars. Just like they do today in Congress today. (Note: Apparently, no one had invented the term 'billion' back then.)
Finally, I wish I could thank Mr. Serviss for writing this book, giving me the pleasure of reading it and the fun of writing this review.
But just because we survived their invasion doesn't mean we were content to sit back and tell each other how bravely we fought and hand out medals to those with political influence. No! We decided we needed to take the battle to them. And this is where this book comes in, as it is a history of our invasion of Mars and how we conquered those rascals under the inspired leadership of Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of all kinds of stuff, even the Internet which he let Al Gore take credit for.
This is the 1898 sequel to Well's book which was out of print for a hundred years or more. It was written by that famous author Garrett P. Serviss. While I hadn't heard of him either, he was a well-known astronomer in the late 19th century. And he must have read somewhere that authors of fiction can take artistic license with their books, as he out did himself here. It's amazing how Edison, faced with a supposedly unsolvable problem, could just spend a day or two in his lab and come up with a solution to space travel, disintegrator rays, and whatever else was needed to travel to Mars and defeat the Martians. Sometimes he didn't even need a whole day. And he took a small laboratory with him to solve problems he hadn't thought of yet. Yep, Thomas Edison could have taught Tom Swift a thing or two.
You really have to forget most of what you didn't learn in science classes in school to enjoy this book. Seriously, this is really primitive sci-fi at its best, yet 20th century scientists are amazed at how many problems the author thought of as obstacles to our invasion of Mars and his solutions to them which NASA also had to come up with. And sci-fi authors eventually made great use of numerous plot devices which Serviss wrote into his story. Not bad for a guy who probably never even heard of the Science Fiction genre before writing this book.
Yet the characters are all two-dimensional, and even the thrown-in romance with the love triangle is difficult to accept. But I still enjoyed reading it as it let me know we did defeat the Martians and I won't lose any more sleep over the possibility of a re-invasion.
The only thing I found which I felt was historically correct was when delegates from all over the world met to decide how to send an invasion force to Mars. Obviously, this was going to cost a few dollars. Despite the fact the Martians had devastated the world, and everything was in ruins including the economies of every nation---if those economies even still existed---these delegates were all too happy to offer thousands of millions of dollars to help fund the project. And when the total fell a little short of what the delegates felt was needed, I felt a surge of pride when the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury stood up and promised another thousand million dollars. Just like they do today in Congress today. (Note: Apparently, no one had invented the term 'billion' back then.)
Finally, I wish I could thank Mr. Serviss for writing this book, giving me the pleasure of reading it and the fun of writing this review.
