Summary
Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds is an 1883 science fiction novel by Wladislaw Somerville Lach-Szyrma, a Polish-English curate, author, and historian.
| Author | W. S. Lach-Szyrma |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Wyman and Sons, Jurassic London |
Publication date | 1883 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 220 |
| OCLC | 7261871 |
The book is an expanded version of Lach-Szyrma's earlier work A Voice from Another World, published in 1874. A sequel series, "Letters from the Planets", was published in nine parts between 1887 and 1893 in Cassell's Family Magazine.[1][2]
Published in 1883, Aleriel is a Victorian novel, which was previously thought to be the first published work to apply the word Martian as a noun (it is now known that the word had been so used as early as 1869[3][4]): After the protagonist, Aleriel, lands on Mars, he buries his spacecraft in snow, "so that it might not be disturbed by any Martian who might come across it".[5] The novel portrays Venus and Mars as utopias, Jupiter and Saturn as primitive, and the Moon as desolate.[6]
A new edition was published in 2015. It includes the same text and a new introduction by Richard Dunn (Royal Museums Greenwich) and Marek Kukula (Royal Observatory Greenwich).[7]
See also edit
References edit
- ^ Bleiler, Everett Franklin (1990). "Lach-Szyrma, W[ladislaw] S[omerville] (1841–1915)". Science-fiction, the Early Years: A Full Description of More Than 3,000 Science-fiction Stories from Earliest Times to the Appearance of the Genre Magazines in 1930 : with Author, Title, and Motif Indexes. Kent State University Press. pp. 416–418. ISBN 978-0-87338-416-2.
- ^ "Lach-Szyrma, W S". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
- ^ "Martian". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ^ "Martian". Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
- ^ Forsyth, Mark H. (16 September 2010). "Wladyslaw Lach-Szyrma and the First Martian". The Inky Fool. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
- ^ Crossley, Robert (2011-01-03). Imagining Mars: A Literary History. Wesleyan University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-8195-7105-2.
- ^ W.S. Lach-Szyrma; Molly Tanzer (2015). Aleriel, A Voyage to Other Worlds. Jurassic London. ISBN 978-0-9928435-7-1.
External links edit
- Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds at the Internet Archive
Aleriel; or A Voyage to Other Worlds public domain audiobook at LibriVox
