Reprints of Historic Space Books
Ron Miller
things occurred: I amassed a very large collection of early books
about space travel and I came to realize just very how difficult it
was to find such books. Some are simply just too obscure to show up in
book dealers' lists and when others do they are exorbitantly
expensive. I know that I was frustrated time and again when I wanted a
book solely for research but was foiled by a price driven by the
book's collectability. More than once I wished someone would create
reprints of these books for those people who were more interested in a
book's content than its value as a collector's item.
Others had attempted this sort of thing in the past. Frederick I.
Ordway's Arfor Press, for instance, reprinted several classic books,
including little-known Russian space fiction. Hyperion Press published
a long series of classic science fiction novels that included many
early space stories. And a few universities took advantage of special
Xerox technology to create facsimile reprints of long out-of-print
books. The first two efforts were hampered by the fact that the only
way to publish a book at the time was through traditional printing and
binding techniques, which made their books very expensive to produce.
The unit cost was not much different to the book buyer than any other
comparable bookstore volume but the initial investment for the
publisher was high. The photocopied facsimiles could be produced in
much smaller quantities, but they were extremely expensive to the
buyer and were not very attractive aesthetically.
POD technology neatly steps around these difficulties. Since the
books are produced one at a time as they are ordered, there is no
large initial investment by the publisher---in fact, there may be no
initial investment at all---nor is there the problem of warehousing
and storing an entire print run. One book is as easy to print as one
hundred. Most POD suppliers will also take care of handling orders and
shipping. POD books can also be of very high quality and are often
indistinguishable from ordinary traditionally published books.
So it dawned on me that I could use this technology to make available
books that would be of interest to space historians but which might
ordinarily be too expensive or too difficult to obtain otherwise. The
only investment on my part would be the time it would take to prepare
the book for reprinting. The end result would be a shelf of classic
space books, reprinted in a consistent size, handsomely designed and
well-printed on good paper.
My criteria in selecting books was a combination of the desirable and
the practical---the latter because by and large I would be limited to
texts that I already had in my collection. To fulfill the former
criteria, I tried to choose titles that are very difficult to find, or
very expensive when they are found. I also tried to choose titles that
might be relatively unknown but deserved to be brought to the
attention of modern space historians. I also wanted, whenever
possible, to include a book's original illustrations, if any.
Among the first reprints was Edwin Northrup's "Zero to
Eighty" (1937). Northrup was a noted engineer, inventor and physicist
who had experimented with electromagnetic rail guns in the late 1920s
and early 1930s. This book was the first to put electromagnetic
launching on a solid theoretical and experimental basis. In addition
to a fictional account of a trip to the moon in a liquid-fuel rocket
boosted into space by means of an electromagnetic gun, Northrup
included photos and diagrams of his guns and a detailed Technical
Supplement in which he outlined the math, physics and experimental
data behind his work. What makes "Zero to Eighty" peculiar is that
Northrup chose for some reason to write it in the form of the
fictional autobiography of "Akkad Pseudoman".
One of the first novels I reprinted was "The Moon-Maker" by Arthur
Train and Robert Williams Wood. The story concerns the discovery of an
asteroid on a collision course with Earth. A nuclear-powered
spacecraft (it's propelled by a beam of alpha particles created by the
artificial disintegration of uranium) is sent on a mission to
intercept the asteroid. By setting up a small nuclear reaction on one
face of the asteroid, enough thrust is developed to nudge the asteroid
just enough so that it eventually misses our planet. What makes this
novel particularly impressive is that it had been originally published
in 1916! The scientific accuracy---which is exemplary even by today's
standards---of the novel is probably due to the fact that Train, a
best-selling mystery author, chose to team up with renowned Johns
Hopkins physicist Robert Wood. To round the volume out, I also
included the novel's "prequel", "The Man Who Shook the Earth", one of
the earliest books to accurately describe a nuclear explosion
(including a graphic description of the lingering effects of radiation
poisoning).
I wanted to include Jules Verne's space novels on my list, but I
wanted something to set them apart since these books are very easy to
come by, having never gone out of print since they were first
published 140 years ago. So I created entirely new, unabridged
translations of "From the Earth to the Moon" and "Around the Moon".
Other late Victorian space novels include Andre Laurie's "Conquest of
the Moon" (1887). Laurie, a contemporary of and sometime collaborator
with Verne, invented one of the most remarkable space travel devices
in all literature. His heroes turned an entire iron-bearing mountain
into a vast electromagnet and drew the Moon down to the Earth's
surface. The result however, is that the mountain, along with the
observatory on it, is torn bodily from our planet and the inhabitants
now have to deal with survival on the lunar surface as well as the
problem of how to return to Earth.
H.G. Wells needed to be included on the list but, like Verne, his
books are readily available in many forms. To give something extra to
my reprint of "War of the Worlds" in addition to the seldom-reproduced
illustrations by Alvim Correa (which Wells preferred) I included the
little-known "prequel", "The Crystal Egg", as well as Wells' long
essay, "The Things That Live On Mars" (1907), including the charming
illustrations by W.R. Leigh.
Far more obscure titles include "Gulliver Joi" (1851) by Elbert
Perce, which contains the first accurate description in all literature
of a rocket-propelled spacecraft; "A Daring Trip to Mars" (1928), one
of the rare attempts at fiction by rocketry pioneer Max Valier;
"Distant Worlds" (1911) by Friedrich Mader; "Adrift in the
Stratosphere", a 1937 space adventure written for young people by the
notorious "Professor" A.M. Low, then-president of the British
Interplanetary Society; and "The Moon Colony" (1937) by William Dixon
Bell, one of the first books to realistically discuss the possibility
of terraforming another world and the methods by which this might be
accomplished.
Among the most recent additions to the list is "To the Moon
and Back in Ninety Days" by "John Young Brown". This 1922 novel is one
of the rarest and most unusual of all the early spaceflight stories.
Told in a documentary style, it is profusely illustrated with photos
and diagrams, including photos of the spacecraft and space-suited
astronauts. Indeed, the book contains a remarkably detailed
description of a working space suit!
To date there have been something like forty titles published. Among
those I'm in the process of preparing are Eugen Sänger's and Irene
Bredt's "A Rocket Drive for Long Range Bombers" and "Astronautics" by
Alexandre Ananoff.
I have high hopes that this series will eventually serve its dual
purpose of making important books readily and inexpensively available
to space historians and making people aware of long-overlooked
pioneers in the history of astronautics.
Jim Davis
> Among
> those I'm in the process of preparing are Eugen S�nger's and
> Irene Bredt's "A Rocket Drive for Long Range Bombers" and
> "Astronautics" by Alexandre Ananoff.
I look forward to these, Ron.
Any prospects for the works of Oberth and Esnault-Pelterie?
Thanks,
Jim Davis
Pat Flannery
Ron Miller wrote:
> While conducting research for my book, "The Dream Machines",
Wonderful book, one of my most treasured possessions.
And a really decent binding on it also, in this day of bindings that
start falling apart around a week after you get them.
> To date there have been something like forty titles published. Among
> those I'm in the process of preparing are Eugen S�nger's and Irene
> Bredt's "A Rocket Drive for Long Range Bombers" and "Astronautics" by
> Alexandre Ananoff.
> I have high hopes that this series will eventually serve its dual
> purpose of making important books readily and inexpensively available
> to space historians and making people aware of long-overlooked
> pioneers in the history of astronautics.
>
> http://black-cat-studios.com/black-cat-press/space.html
>
Two books that keep coming up in discussions on sci.space.history
(neither of which I've ever seen) are "Thrust Into Space" by Maxwell W.
Hunter II:
http://cgi.ebay.com/THRUST-INTO-SPACE-Maxwell-Hunter-II-Rockets-Spaceships_W0QQitemZ260394956722QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090417?IMSfp=TL090417154004r26952
...and "You Will Go To The Moon":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will_Go_to_the_Moon_(book),
by Mae and Ira Freeman and illustrated by Robert Patterson, which was
apparently a favorite of a lot of the regulars (few that are left) when
they were kids.
Pat
Ron Miller
Yes on both!
R
Ron Miller
> Ron Miller wrote:
> > While conducting research for my book, "The Dream Machines",
>
> Wonderful book, one of my most treasured possessions.
> And a really decent binding on it also, in this day of bindings that
> start falling apart around a week after you get them.
Thanks for the nice words!
By the way, I have an updated and expanded version of the book up to
1961 on CD available on the book site.
> Two books that keep coming up in discussions on sci.space.history
> (neither of which I've ever seen) are "Thrust Into Space" by Maxwell W.
> Hunter II:http://cgi.ebay.com/THRUST-INTO-SPACE-Maxwell-Hunter-II-Rockets-Space...
> ...and "You Will Go To The Moon":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will_Go_to_the_Moon_(book),
> by Mae and Ira Freeman and illustrated by Robert Patterson, which was
> apparently a favorite of a lot of the regulars (few that are left) when
> they were kids.
>
> Pat
I own a copy of the "You Will Go to the Moon" but unfortunately can't
add it to my list since it's still under copyright.
R
Ron Miller
> On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:38:43 -0500, Pat Flannery <flan...@daktel.com>
> wrote:
>
> >...and "You Will Go To The Moon":
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will_Go_to_the_Moon_(book),
> >by Mae and Ira Freeman and illustrated by Robert Patterson, which was
> >apparently a favorite of a lot of the regulars (few that are left) when
> >they were kids.
>
> Go To The Moon" was the *true* "dream deferred".
I couldn't agree with you more!
> ...And if you can reprint this one, go for the 1958 version, using the
> Von Braun concepts. That one was far more entertaining than the 1971
> remake.
I would love to, but the book is still under copyright so far as I've
been able to discover. But that doesn't mean it's impossible.
R