[LIVE]: Dubious Goals Committee with tob
Best–selling books written by very wealthy people are usually along the lines of “The Secrets of My Success” ― but this is a space–travel story!
This is regarded as the first “Gothic novel” of terror and suspense. I had trouble restraining my laughter all through.
Horace Walpole (1764)
For those who wish to follow along at home, the text is available on Project Gutenberg.
If you recall the Eames Office film “Powers of Ten” ― we humans are at the midpoint between the galaxies and the atomic nucleus. It’s a great place to be!
Why would I start a new show, when I have trouble keeping up with the one I already have?
This is a completely different concept, and will be a completely different format (whatever the format ends up being), from Hear Now the Words. About all they have in common is my speaking voice. HNtW is the show in which I read stories written by other people. ASFO is the show in which I talk about what I think are interesting and worthwhile things to know and think about. That is going to involve atomic energy and space travel a great deal. As I see it, those are two defining features of human existence in the present age, which is the age of transition from planetary to cosmic existence. If we fail to think about them, and get them in the correct perspective, we may not make that transition successfully. And that is a thought too hideous, too sorrowful, to bear examination.
This book, published in 1913 (but also dated 1989, in accord with the story) to benefit the International Institute of Shanghai, was the generous gift of well-known leading SDF member smj. The author, alias John Gilbert Reid, was only 14 at the time of publication, & one supposes much of the work was written at least a year or two before that.
My plan is to present one chapter per show of this intriguing work, with something closer to our usual theme rounding out the show.
Continue reading “Pickwickians Abroad”This further sequel to A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars has no preface to explain how the author came into possession of Captain Carter’s story. Rather, it picks up directly where the previous book left off.
The (pseudonymous) author, it appears, was responsible for a number of juvenile scientific-adventure novels. This is an installment in a series, and several of the other books in the series are available on Project Gutenberg, but not this one. Copyright is Cupples & Leon Co.
This is the immediate sequel to A Princess of Mars, relating the further adventures of John Carter after his death on Earth.
This work is pretty much contemporary in publication with The Moon Pool, and has some similarities, involving South Seas islands and lost races. It is, however, quite different in both tone and theme. The dedication to Lord Curzon is noteworthy (see below).
First half read 2019-02-03 ; about half of what remained, 2019-02-17, and finished 2019-03-03. (Video livestream recordings are available for two weeks.) This is a long one, for all that it represents an abridged edition. No unabridged version exists in English.
Willy Ley encountered this Mars story in a German translation, and, failing to find the English original (possibly hampered by looking for it under the title Beyond the Zodiac, but Percy Greg was apparently a well-known English author), considered that it might be actually German. The confusion was not helped by the fact that author Greg presents himself as translating a found manuscript. Sam Moskowitz considers it the genesis of the Mars romance so characteristic of the early period of modern science fiction.
Continue reading “Across the Zodiac : The Story of a Wrecked Record”