A Visit to Mars (concluded)

This, the third and last part of this strange account, is a follow up to an earlier jot.

January 15^th. For the sake of those who, in spite of my gloomy experience on the whole, wish to make this voyage too, I should like to make the following observations on the equipment required for the expedition. A large quantity of provisions, as for an Arctic or Antarctic expedition for many years is a first requirement. It is quite easy to keep the provisions here owing to the permanently low temperature in the ground. If economically used, sufficient water can be obtained by melting hoar-frost.

      As for clothes---summer clothes are needed, if the tropics are to be visited, for the few hot hours in the afternoon when the sun may really be very hot.

A Visit to Mars (part 2)

Map of Mars (1894)

More from  the Dutch astronomer, Professor G. Van den Bergh  ‘A Visit to Mars ‘ a chapter in his The Universe in Space and Time (1935). In this account, which has weird parallels with the adventures of the Matt Damon character in the recent movie The Martian ‘a man, an inhabitant of the earth, succeeded in reaching Mars by rocket. He remained there a few years and evidently managed to keep alive, thanks to his good equipment and a large stock of provisions’. After a while this man returned to Earth, but was killed when his rocket crashed. It transpired that the man had kept a diary, but only a few pages could be rescued from the crash site, some of which were reproduced in the chapter. This continues an earlier jot.

October 45. It was again very fine today. And from an astronomical view point of view it was a very remarkable day. It as amazing, I was dumfounded. I shall never forget the sensation.

But I must try to put things down in an orderly fashion as one should do in a proper diary. To continue, the sun was again shining brightly in the sky, as it nearly always does here. I happened to be watching it through my telescope. A fine group of sun-spots was visible.

A - Z of Science Fiction words

A useful guide to scientific words for the Science Fiction enthusiast. It first appeared as monthly instalments in Authentic Science Fiction and was printed and published as a booklet by Hamilton & co., in the Goldhawk Road, London W 12. It was compiled by H.J. Campbell. Being 1954 very little is related to computers. At C you will find Cybernetics and at B Betelgeuse...

Absolute. Not relative. Independent of all scale and comparisons. E.g., zero temperature, number, the speed of light.

Acceleration. Rate of change of velocity. Increasing velocity is positive acceleration; decreasing velocity is negative acceleration. The average acceleration of any body falling to Earth in a vacuum is 32 feet per second per second.

Achromatic. Applied to optical apparatus which gives images free from colored fringes. A. lenses have one sense of crown glass and one of flint glass. The flint lens corrects dispersion caused by the crown glass.

Aerolite. (Sometimes called ‘aerolith’). A stony meteorite, as distinct from a metallic one. A meteorite that is a mixture of stone and metal, but preponderantly stone would be called aerolithic.

Albedo. A measure of the brightness of celestial bodies that shine by reflected light. Technically, it is the amount of light a body reflects in proportion to the amount that falls on it. The Moon’s albedo is 7%; that of Venus 65%.

A flier for The War of the Worlds (1897/1898)

"...across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."

Found - a review slip or pre-publication publicity (a flier) in a first edition of H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds (Heinemann, London 1898) one of the greatest Science Fiction novels of all time.  The novel had previously appeared in serialized form in 1897, published simultaneously in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US. The reviews are from magazines and newspapers of the time including one from a French paper Mercure de France which says that Wells surpasses Jules Verne.

The scheme of the story is tremendous – no less than attack made upon our world by the dwellers on Mars grown desperate by the contemplation of the fate in store for them when the cooling of their own planet is complete.

The immediate pressure of necessity, says Mr Wells, has brightened the intellects of the dwellers on Mars, in large their powers, and hard and their hearts. "And looking across space, with instruments and intelligences such as we can only dream of vaguely, they see it at its nearest distance, only 35,000,000 miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green vegetation and grey with water, with the cloudy atmosphere elegant of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow navy-crowded seas."

The story must be read by everyone who esteems thrills. His calm, merciless method – too often a manifestation of the scientific mind – his convincing trick of verisimilitude, his dispassionate accumulation of terrifying evidence – these gifts, allied to a very remarkable imagination, make any work of Mr Wells notable and worthy of attention.(The Academy.)

Astonishing power of illusion. – Daily Chronicle

Mr H.G. Wells, the novelist has made such notable use of the scientific imagination as applied to fiction, is at the present moment enchanting the readers of Pearson's Magazine with an account of an invasion of the Earth by the inhabitants of Mars. – Spectator.

 'Curieux…et original: supérieur aux fantasies de Jules Verne: aver les qualités brilliants et les préoccupations sérieuses de R.L. Stevenson, avec dans le bizarre et terrible quelquefois des aspects d'Edgar Poe." (Mercure de France.)

Case Study on Arcturus IV (MIT 1950s) for the year 2951

A rare object, just catalogued...

Case Study on Arcturus IV (Product Design 2.734)

Massachustes Institute Of Technology ( Department Of Mechanical Engineering) Circa 1952-1955 First Edition. Wraps., 1955. 4to. About 100 pages printed recto only. A curious production with the printed monogram of M.I.T. on the cover and stapled at the spine like an official report or script. It is a collection of memos, missives and communication from the years 2951 and 2952, mostly about the Massachusets Intergalactic Traders and concerning opportunities for export business with the newly discovered planet Arcturus IV (in the Methania galaxy 36 light years away). There are diagrams, an illustration of an Arcturus native ('Sub Human type') and detailed plans for a food mixer suitable for 'Methanians' (also a carriage incubator and other machinery. ) 

America is no longer mentioned, addresses end 'Terran', presumably Earth was now one country.

The fantasy of the fantastic trade opportunity is sustained throughout. The cover reads 'Pre Publication Copy - Not to be Reproduced.' No copy located at WorldCat or any other world library database. There is precious little about this project on the web (an article by Katherine Pandora) but it was the SF brainchild of MIT professor John E Arnold to encourage design creativity among students. It had good coverage in LIFE magazine and prompted a 1952 article in Popular Science. It was also praised by SF supremo John W Campbell, Jnr of Astounding Science Fiction. A fascinating and very scarce item in very good shape. 

Ecological disaster in fiction

M. P. Shiel. The Purple Cloud (1901). Poisonous gas.
Arthur Conan Doyle. The Poison Belt (1913) The Earth passes
through a poisonous ether.
J. J. Connington. Nordenholt's Millions (1923) Agricultural disaster
S. Fowler Wright. Deluge (1928). Flood.
Philip Wylie. When Worlds Collide (1932). Dying sun on collision course with Earth. (Film: When Worlds Collide, 1951). Also a rock band...
John Wyndham. The Day of the Triffids (1951) Venomous Plants.
Isaac Asimov. Caves of Steel (1954) Overpopulation.


William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Logan's Run (1967). Overpopulation; destruction of those over 30.
Lee Tang. The Wind Obeys Lama Torus. (1967). From India. Overpopulation.
John Brunner. Stand on Zanzibar. (1968). Young adult novel on overpopulation.
James Blish. A Torrent of Faces (1968) World ravaged by over population.
Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle. The Inferno (1973). Cosmic radiation
David Brin. Earth. (1990). Black hole.
Margaret Atwood. Oryx and Crake. (2003) Genetically engineered virus.
Cormac McCarty. The Road. (2006) Unexplained devastating cataclysm.

John Christopher. The Death of Grass (1957). Ecological disaster due to a mutated virus killing cereal crops.
Robert Silverberg. Masters of Life and Death (1957). Overpopulation.
J. G. Ballard. Billennium (1962) population
J. G. Ballard. The Drowned World. (1962). Flood.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Cat's Cradle (1963) Ice-9
J. G. Ballard, The Drought (aka The Burning World) 1965.
Harry Harrison. Make Room! Make Room! (1966). (Film: Soylent Green, 1973). Overcrowding, dystopia -set in 1999.

The Time Machine seen in 1964

The Time Machine by HG Wells.

Airmont Classics series paperback N Y 1964.

Interesting cover art by an anonymous artist envisaging a time machine as a type of flying oven. From the portentous introduction by Donald Wollheim:

 '..if you have never read The Time Machine before I envy you the experience. It is a fascinating story you have awaiting you, one that spans all time until the last red rays of a dying sun shine down on a bleak and used up landscape. A story that will linger in your imagination…

Is it to be this way? you will ask. This is a vision of a future, but is it to be the future? We live in a pivotal century which may well decide what will happen to our children's children for a hundred generations. So, reader, the decision may well be up to you.'