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By Janne Wass on February 21, 2018 • ( 19 Comments )

A Trip to the Moon

This 1902 film about a trip to the moon and an encounter with aliens is in many senses the first of its kind, notable for its large budget, entertaining and fantastical story, state of the art special effects and lavish, moving sets. A true benchmark not only for sci-fi films, but for the medium of film as a whole.

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20000 Leagues Under the Sea A.E. Coleby Albert Robida Andre Deed Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur Edeson Ashley Miller August Blom Bernhard Kellermann Bleuette Bernon Burton L. King Camille Flammarion Charlotte Perkins Gilman Conrad Veidt David Aylott Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde E.T.A. Hoffmann Eadeard Muybridge Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Rice Burroughs Edwin S. Porter Enrico Novelli Ferdinand Zecca First Men in the Moon Frankenstein Franklyn Barrett Gaston Velle Georges Melies H.G. Wells Hans Werckmeister Harry Grossman Harry Houdini Herbert Brenon Herbert M. Dawley Holger-Madsen Hugo Gernsback J.-H. Rosny aine J. Ernest Williamson J. Searle Dawley J. Stuart Blackton Jack London Jane Gail Jehanne d'Alcy Johannes Kepler John Barrymore John S. Robertson Joseph W. Smiley Jules Verne Louis Lumière Lucian Luciano Albertini Lucius Henderson Luigi Maggi Marcel Perez Martin Scorsese Mary Shelley Otis Turner Otto Rippert Richard Ganthony Richard Oswald Robert Louis Stevenson Robert W. Paul Robur the Conqueror Segundo de Chomon Stuart Paton The Invisible Man The Mysterious Island Theodor Loos Thomas Edison Wallace McCutcheon Wallett Waller Walter R. Booth William K. Dickson Willis O'Brien

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Scifist Reading Tip 025: The Unparallelled Adventure of one Hans Pfaall, by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1835. . . A master of gothic horror, Edgar Allan Poe is, as I pointed out in my previous post, often overlooked today as a pioneer of science fiction. Hans Pfaall may be his most traditional SF tale, in that it concerns a trip to the moon, thus following in the long line of proto-SF writers like Lucian, Kepler, Godwin and Bergerac. It is also an example of one of his favourite genres: the hoax. The first half of the 19th century was a golden age for fake news, as magazines and newspapers tried to increase their circulation with wild stories. Poe's Hans Pfaall was published in the June issue of Southern Literary Messenger in 1835, and probably wasn't meant to be taken too seriously, as it was written in a broadly humorous style. However, the story served as an inspiration for one of the most successful newspaper hoaxes of the era, namely the New York Sun's so-called Great Moon Hoax, which ran for six articles in August 1835. . . Poe's wonderfully funny tale is told within a frame story, and begins with Poe's (anonymous) retelling of the great tumult caused in Rotterdam when a two feet tall, strange munchkin-like lunarian descends upon the city in a strange ballon, with a hat as a basket. He is greeted with much surprise and consternation by officials with names like "Professor Rubadub" and "Mynheer Superbus von Underduk". Without landing, the lunarian throws down a letter written by the bellows-mender Hans Pfaall, who recounts the story of how he had built a new kind of balloon in order to escape his creditors, whom he accidentally also happened to kill upon take-off. He describes his how the balloon works in some detail, as well as his voyage to the moon promises to tell more if only both his debts and crimes be forgiven, so that he can return to Rotterdam. The ending of the story, however, has a funny twist which, in fact, lends some realism to the fantastical tale, and is the actual intended hoax. . . Not Poe's best story, nor his most creative, but certainly one of his funniest. . . #scifi #sciencefiction #edgarallanpoe #scifistreadingtips #bookstagram

Scifist Reading Tip 024: MS. Found in a Bottle, by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1833. . . After a hair-raising adventure, a young protagonist finds himself on-board a gigantic, black ghost ship, piloted by a crew of immortal zombie pirates navigating toward some mysterious goal with a compass that doesn't point North. Stop me when this starts sounding like the plot of a well-known movie. . . Edgar Allan Poe is best known as a pioneer of gothic horror, but often overlooked as a pioneer of science fiction, perhaps because his SF elements tend to border on the metaphysical and are mostly subtler than the burlesque horror he brings to his tales. So many of his tales involve notions of a "beyond", a world behind the veil, so to speak, something we might call another dimension or an interdimensional space, a great mysterious and frightening void beyond our world into which a notion of our "self" passes in death. While Manuscript Found in a Bottle is not one of his stories that deals most glaringly with this topic, it is heavily alluded to. This short story was Poe's first science fiction tale, and one of his first published stories. The text won a story competition in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, where it was published in 1833. It has been described as the story that launched Poe's career. . . As the title suggests, the story is a manuscript found in a bottle, written by a sailor lost at sea. The unnamed narrator recounts how he sets off from the Philippines on a ship that gets caught in a terrible storm, that ravages the ship until none but the narrator and a hardy old Swede remain alive. Swept off toward the South Pole, their ship collides with the ominous afore-mentioned ghost ship, tossing the protagonist from ship to ship. The zombie pirates neither see nor take notice of the protagonist, but seem to be half-caught in some alternate dimension, steadily making their way toward some gruesome goal, finally reaching a gigantic vortex in the ocean ... . . #scifi #scifibooks #sciencefiction #horror #gothic #edgarallanpoe #bookstagram #piratesofthecaribbean #reading

Scifist Reading Tip 023: A Voyage to the Moon, by George Tucker, published in 1827. . . A minor entry into the canon of early science fiction, A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians (they loved long titles back in the day) is written by American politician George Tucker. Tucker's best known novel is The Valley of Shenandoah, the first fictionalised account of life in Virginia, which is acclaimed more for its novelty than for its literary merits. . . In the age of Mary Shelley, A Voyage to the Moon is a slightly archaic flashback to the satirical moon voyages of 17th century. Written under the pseudonym of Joseph Atterley, it describes how the narrator is shipwrecked off the coast of Burma, where he befriends a brahmin, who starts telling him of his trips to the moon using a space ship of his own invention. After a rather long-winded description of Atterley's captivity and discussions on life and human nature with the brahmin, they finally set off on their moon voyage. Life on the moon is very Earth-like and the lunarians are basically humans, but their society and luminaries are made up by Tucker so that he can satirise contemporary politicians and scientists. The book ends with a seemingly pointless retelling of the brahmin's life on Earth. . . What is novel about the book is that it holds the first account of a gravity-defying mineral, here called "lunarium", which propels the space ship. This predates H.G. Wells' famous "cavorite" from First Men in the Moon with over 70 years. Even the spaceship itself seems to be an inspiration for Wells' tale. While it received good reviews in local papers and was fairly successful at the time, the novel's satire is too constrained to specific issues and ideas of the time it was written to really be effective today, and the odd and long-winded frame story of the brahmin makes for a cumbersome story arc. There are some fun observations and novel ideas regarding life on the moon, but a modern reader should attack it as a curio. . . #moon #scifistreadingtips #georgetucker #scifi #sciencefiction #bookstagram #scifibooks

Scifist Reading Tip 022: Roger Dodsworth, the Reanimated Englishman, by Mary Shelley, written in 1826 and published in 1863. . . One of the Frankenstein authors lesser known works, this short story was written the same year as her daunting apocalyptic epic The Last Man was published (see my previous post). Again, as in so much of her work, Shelley examines themes of life, death, mortality and immortality. The story is written like a magazine article, and was submitted to Cyrus Redding, the editor of the English New Monthly Magazine in September 1826, three months after the first publication, in a French paper, of the astounding story of Roger Dodsworth, a British antiquarian who was supposedly resurrected after having been frozen in ice in the Swiss Alps for 170 years. The satirical hoax spread like wildfire in European papers during the summer of 1826, predating the famous "Moon Hoax", instigated by Edgar Allan Poe, by nine years. By the time Shelley chimed in, the story was blown up to such ridiculous proportions that it was clear to all that it was indeed a hoax. . . Shelley submitted at least two versions of her story to the magazine, but for one reason or the other, Redding chose not to publish any of them, and instead published it in 1863, after Shelley's death. . . Shelley writes her story as if it was an anonymously written (as newspaper stories tended to be) news item, but she shrewdly uses a speculative tone, noting that the public has not heard from Mr. Dodsworth since his return to England, "but one would love to hear about his discussions with his rescuer, that might go like this and this ..." In this way, Shelley uses the resurrected Dodsworth as a mouthpiece to satirize life in Britain under King George IV. The story ends with the revelation that Dodsworth is unable to cope with the hypocrisies of 19th century Britain, and has returned to Switzerland to die again. Not as poignant or eloquent as Shelley's novels, but nevertheless a light, fun read. . . Image at the top from the 1926 Houdini film The Man from Beyond. . . #scifistreadingtips #sciencefiction #scifi #maryshelley #bookstagram #scifibooks #cryogenics

Scifist Reading Tip 021: The Last Man by Mary Shelley, published in 1826. . . The British feminist and anarchist author Mary Shelley wrote the epic apocalyptic novel The Last Man, partly as an autobiographical account of her own life, strewn with tragedy, loss and lonelyness, and partly as a dissection of the Romantic ideals of the men closest around her, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. . . The novel follows the lives and exploits of three young noblemen as they cope, in different ways, with the fall of civilisation and the end of humanity. The end is brought on by a mysterious virus that baffles scientists, and one by one, nations fall, until at last a single surviving man remains, carrying the knowledge that he is the last man on Earth. . . Shelley seems to have been somewhat inspired by Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville's 1805 novel The Last Man, as it uses the same storytelling device: in both books the narrator claims to have been handed a prophecy about the end of the world by an oracle in a cave. (Grainville's novel is reviewed in my feed as well.) This period of Romanticism was fascinated with melodramatic doom and gloom. But Mary Shelley's book isn't just a Romantic lamentation over the end of the world, but just as Frankenstein, a furious attack on the patriarchy and the egocentric vanity of men, as well as an intelligent rumination on the ideals of Romanticism, and how their lofty morals would often ring false agains worldly realities. . . From a literary perspective The Last Man is remarkable inasmuch as it is quite possibly the first literary work to portray the end of the world not as an act of god or fate, nor as the result of natural disasters like the deluge, but from a strictly scientific point of view. It is the first work to introduce a viral disease as a word-threatening calamity. Like all of Shelley's works, it is beautifully and intelligently written, carrying all the same depths and philosophical poignancy that Frankenstein did. It is also a work of immense sadness, especially when one knows that it was autobiographical in nature. . . #scifistreadingtips #maryshelley #apocalypse #scifi #sciencefiction #bookstagram #thelastman

Scifist Reading Tip 020: INI. Roman aus dem ein und zwanzigsten Jahrhundert, by Julius von Voss, published in 1810. . . A rather obscure early futuristic novel. Freely translated, the English title of the book would be "INI. A Novel from the Twenty-First Century". However, it has never been translated from the original German. It is sometimes described as the first modern SF novel, as it predates Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by eight years. . . The protagonist Guido travels across a futuristic Europe in his airship, corresponding with his fiancée, the beautiful Ini of the title. From Moscow to St. Petersburg, Berlin and London goes his journey, as he describes to Ini the inventions, customs, societies and cultures of this future world. Anticipating the European Union, he writes of a unified European "monarchic republic", which was a curious idea held by many in the upper class of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, who recognized the problem with monarchies but weren't quite ready to let the "rabble" rule through democracy. War breaks out between Europe and an enemy, and Guido goes to war, and becomes a war hero as a brave commander and inventor of futuristic weapons. Weapons featured are, for example, cluster bombs, and a machine that creates an artificial storm cloud raining down lightning on the enemy. . . The former Prussian military officer von Voss lingers on matters of the military and politics, but also sort of predicts things like the telephone, TV, as well as the popularization of craniology and advances in chemistry, spectral analysis and medicine. As with most futuristic works, however, gender roles and morals don't seem to change no matter how many thousands of years one moves forward. . . I can't give definitive judgement about the literary quality of the book, as it was a chore for me to get through the book in German. However, the work has more in common with the polemical 17th and 18th century utopian tracts than with a modern novel, so Mary Shelley sits quite secure on her thrown as the author of the first modern SF novel. . . #scifistreadingtips #sciencefiction #scifibooks #bookstagram #utopia #futurism #scifi #reading #vintagebooks