Kurd Lasswitz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kurd Lasswitz (de: Kurd Laßwitz) (April 20, 1848 – October 17, 1910) was a German author, scientist, and philosopher. He has been called the father of German science fiction^{[citation needed]} He sometimes used the pseudonym Velatus.

Lasswitz studied mathematics and physics at the University of Breslau and the University of Berlin, and earned his doctorate in 1873. He spent most of his career as a teacher at the Gymnasium Ernestinsium in Gotha.

His first published science fiction story was "Bis zum Nullpunkt des Seins" ("To the Zero Point of Existence", 1871), depicting life in 2371, but he earned his reputation with his 1897 novel Two Planets, which describes an encounter between humans and a Martian civilization that is older and more advanced. The book has the Martian race running out of water, eating synthetic foods, travelling by rolling roads, and utilizing space stations. His spaceships use anti-gravity, but travel realistic orbital trajectories, and use occasional mid-course corrections in travelling between Mars and the Earth; the book depicted the technically correct transit between the orbits of two planets, something poorly understood by other early science fiction writers. It influenced Walter Hohmann and Wernher von Braun.^{[citation needed]} The book was not translated into English until 1971 (as Two Planets, and the translation is incomplete).

His last book was Sternentau: die Pflanze vom Neptunsmond ("Star Dew: the Plants of Neptune's Moon", 1909). He is also known for his 1896 biography of Gustav Fechner.

A crater on Mars was named in his honor, as was the asteroid 46514 Lasswitz.

There also is a Kurd Laßwitz Preis, which has been awarded to German-speaking authors of science fiction since 1981.