Edison's Conquest of Mars
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edison's Conquest of Mars, by Garrett P. Serviss, is one of the many science fiction novels published in the nineteenth century. Although science fiction was not at the time thought of as a distict literary genre, it was a very popular literary form, with almost every fiction magazine regularly publishing science fiction stories and novels. Published in 1898 as a sequel to H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, "Edison's Conquest of Mars" did not achieve the fame of its predecessor.
The book was endorsed by Thomas Edison, the hero of the book. In the book, he travels to Mars, and with his inventions, including the disintegrator ray, an Earth spacefleet after severe battles destroys the Martians' ability to make war. There are battles between ships and ships, and between Earth ships and Martian ground forts. This was perhaps the first space opera, although the term did not yet exist.
Earth technology in the story includes spacesuits (called "air-tight suits"), but communication between spacemen in space needs a wire to be passed between them: there is no concept of radio. Communication between spaceships uses flags or lights.
Edison's Conquest of Mars was published first as a serial in the Journal American from 12 January to 10 February 1898. It was published in book form in 1947.
- An abridged version appeared in 1954 in The Treasury of Science Fiction Classics.
- In 1969, Forrest J Ackerman published an edited version, called Invasion of Mars.
- In 2005, Apogee Books published an unedited unabridged version with the original newspaper illustrations (ISBN 0-9738203-0-6).
