[Because My Tears Are Delicious To You] Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss

[James Nicoll]

Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss

https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword

--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

[Quadibloc]

On Sunday, September 22, 2019 at 7:31:22 AM UTC-6, James Nicoll wrote:
> Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss

> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword

Never mind Stanley G. Weinbaum, what about Erich von Daniken?

Although, I suppose by the time we get to him, the idea of aliens building the
Pyramids would have been something he could have gotten at second-, third-,
fourth-, or un-decillionith- hand.

Oh, wait, there aren't that many people on Earth.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

Ah - checking out Wikipedia, a pathway becomes apparent.

Garret P. Serviss (1898)
Charles Fort (1919) _The Book of the Damned_
Desmond Leslie and George Adamski (1953) _Flying Saucers Have Landed_
Harold T. Wilkins (1954) _Flying Saucers from the Moon_
Morris K. Jessup (1956) _UFOs and the Bible_
George Hunt Williamson (1958) _Secret Places of the Lion_
Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels (1960) _The Morning of the Magicians_
Brinsley le Poer Trench (1960) _The Sky People_

...in short, all the usual suspects.

Even Brad Steiger manages to beat von Daniken by one year.

John Savard

[D B Davis]

James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss
>
> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword

... The War of the Worlds rewritten and dumbed down by persons
unknown in order to better suit Yankee sensibilities. ...

... Edison’s Conquest of Mars was rescued from well-deserved
obscurity in the 1970s by Forry Ackerman. He needed
inexpensive, sub-par material with which to pad out Ace's
dreadful translations of the Perry Rhodan space opera series. ...

Allow me to put a finer point on your first sentence. Yankee
/Frogpondian/ sensibilities, if you please.
Ace #50~#59 was initially acquired and read by me to determine PR's
suitable for me. Later issues contain the padding that you mention.
PR fits my tastes, so the earliest, non-padded, issues were
acquired. Forry does a fair job of addressing the remainder of your
comments.

_ace #11 PR The Planet of the Dying Sun_

"The Perryscope"

ROSS PAVLAC is 20, a junior at Ohio U., majoring in computer
science, president of the campus sf club and a reader of
science fiction since the 3rd grade. He has some harsh
criticisms:

PR is typical space opera, poorly written with
a minimum of of characterization and many plot
elements carried to idealistic extremes. A book
that is written with a mediocre style turns into
trash when translated by a mediocre translator
who has an interest in the material being
translated but no real writing talent. I
apologize for slinging names at Wendayne Ackerman
but feel you are guilty of nepotism in the first
degree in making Mrs. Ackerman the official
translator.

(Forrest Ackerman speaking. Let's interrupt right
here. In the first place, Wendayne was Donald Wollheim's
choice; one of the authors of the series tried his hand
at a translation but ACE's Editor-in-Chief preferred
Mrs. A. - and so, incidentally, did the originators of
PERRY RHODAN. Mr. Pavlac tells us he took 2 years of
German in high school, from which lofty level he
criticizes our translator, who was born to the German
tongue, received a magna cum laude Master's Degree in
German Lit. in America, has been using English for over
a quarter of a century, teaches German - and French -
at college level, and was reading Zukunftsromane -
future fiction - long before Mr Pavlac was born. The
Defense rests - except to quote the old but applicable
cliché that "you can't make a purse out of a sow's ear,"
so don't criticize the translator because Perry Rhodan
isn't Ensign Flandry or an Andre Norton astronaut or
written with the flair of A. Bertram Chandler or John
Rackham.)

☮

Thank you,

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``.
telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

The translations were certainly not "dreadful". The next try at English
distribution in the early 00s or late 90s *read* like it was translated
from German.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <2019...@crcomp.net>, D B Davis <g...@crcomp.net> wrote:

>James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>> Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss
>>
>> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword
>
> ... The War of the Worlds rewritten and dumbed down by persons
> unknown in order to better suit Yankee sensibilities. ...
>
>

>Allow me to put a finer point on your first sentence. Yankee
>/Frogpondian/ sensibilities, if you please.

Please define Frogpondian. I know what a Yankee is in various
contexts (ending with "to a Vermonter, a Yankee is someone who
eats pie for breakfast); but "Frogpondian" is new to me.



--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

[Kevrob]

On Sunday, September 22, 2019 at 5:35:02 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <2019...@crcomp.net>, D B Davis <g...@crcomp.net> wrote:
> >James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> >> Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss
> >>
> >> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword
> >
> > ... The War of the Worlds rewritten and dumbed down by persons
> > unknown in order to better suit Yankee sensibilities. ...
> >
> >
> >Allow me to put a finer point on your first sentence. Yankee
> >/Frogpondian/ sensibilities, if you please.
>
> Please define Frogpondian. I know what a Yankee is in various
> contexts (ending with "to a Vermonter, a Yankee is someone who
> eats pie for breakfast); but "Frogpondian" is new to me.

It's Poe's nickname for Boston, and New England, in general.

https://preview.tinyurl.com/Frogpondia-EAP OR

https://tinyurl.com/Frogpondia-EAP

which resolves to:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ktiaB4scFCwC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=frogpondia+poe&source=bl&ots=92SVJ3o9c3&sig=ACfU3U3igrb8cXu7khbktv9KRZcdwQROKw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiy-efpseXkAhUtT98KHUJLDy0Q6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=frogpondia%20poe&f=false

I'd never heard of it, either.

Kevin R

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <00a83c77-d150-463f...@googlegroups.com>,

Thanks! I learn something new every day.

[Jack Bohn]

James Nicoll wrote:
> Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss
>
> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword

I had the standalone paperback, _Invasion of Mars_. In an introduction, Ackerman tells his experience with the Welles broadcast, and mentions that he edited the work to simplify the sentence structure, and at least one other stricture he had learned: not to have two characters with the same name. Edison was given a young assistant named Tom -- I should say, "also named Tom," if it's not evident, and I don't think the great inventor is ever referred to that way. Ackerman substituted the name Ray, after sf author Ray Cummings, who was an assistant to Edison in his youth.

One thing that struck me was that areography was advanced enough back then that his terminology was familiar. I've thought about rereading it "in the original," and trying to follow the action on a map, but life is short.

--
-Jack

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <89596b2a-bad8-45cd...@googlegroups.com>,

There were a number of (much later) follow-ups to WOTW. George H. Smith
had one in his alternate magical Ireland setting, and somebody put, of
course, Holmes against a Martian reprise. (This last being a double-whammy
argument for fairly speedy public domain entrances).

[Robert Carnegie]

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarlet_Traces>
is effectively ongoing: arguably parochially British
since it supposes that Britain took over the Martian
weapons instead of Thomas Edison.

In the latest episode - not described - the Martians
have taken over the sun...

[Default User]

On Sunday, September 22, 2019 at 8:31:22 AM UTC-5, James Nicoll wrote:
> Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss
>
> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword

> Service’s fault may . . .

"Serviss" of course.


Brian

[Robert Carnegie]

Garrit! :-)

[peterw...@hotmail.com]

A nitpick: That should be, "The next try at English distribution in the
early 00s or late 90s *read* like it translated from German was."

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

[D B Davis]

In my parlance "Yankee" denotes people in concordance with the
neo-Puritanical narrative. You don't need to be an American to be a
Yankee and not all Americans are Yankees.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

Well, the joke to which I alluded upthread goes something like
this:

To Europeans, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is an easterner.
To easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And to a Vermonter, a Yankee is someone who eats pie for
breakfast.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <py9Jo...@kithrup.com>,

I question step two. Certainly no Americans classify Sandlappers
as Yankees.

[Dimensional Traveler]

'The Massacre of Mankind', Stephen Baxter, 2017. Supposedly written
with the permission of the Wells Estate as an authorized sequel to 'The
War of the Worlds'. I felt Baxter caught the style of the original well.

--
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"

[Dimensional Traveler]

I certainly don't, mostly because I have no idea what a "Sandlapper" is.

[D B Davis]

The West Coast analog fits me better:

Americans are considered crazy anywhere in the world.

They will usually concede a basis for the accusation but
point to California as the focus of the infection.
Californians stoutly maintain that their bad reputation
is derived solely from the acts of the inhabitants of
Los Angeles County. Angelenos will, when pressed, admit
the charge but explain hastily, "It's Hollywood. It's
not our fault - we didn't ask for it; Hollywood just
grew."

The people in Hollywood don't care; they glory in it. If
you are interested, they will drive you up Laurel Canyon
"- where we keep the violent cases." The Canyonites - the
brown-legged women, the trunks-clad men constantly busy
building and rebuilding their slap-happy unfinished houses
- regard with faint contempt the dull creatures who live
down in the flats, and treasure in their hearts the secret
knowledge that they, and only they, know how to live.

Lookout Mountain Avenue is the name of a side canyon which
twists up from Laurel Canyon. The other Canyonites don't
like to have it mentioned; after all, one must draw the
line somewhere!

[Jay E. Morris]

I thought it was apple pie.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <qm9gci$baf$2...@dont-email.me>,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP-C9NDk7Uk

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <qm9gci$baf$2...@dont-email.me>,
Dimensional Traveler <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:

/sigh

/google

"one living in a lowland area especially in the southeastern
U.S. Note: This term is most common in South Carolina, where it
is used in the names of businesses, organizations, and public
facilities as well as a term for South Carolinians in general."

There's that. Perhaps the term should be modified to
"northeasterner." I wonder where the northeasterners leave off
and the southeasterners begin? Mason-Dixon Line, perhaps?

[Dorothy J Heydt]

You really should have credited it. Heinlein, "And He Built a
Crooked House."

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <py9pF...@kithrup.com>,

About Richmond nowdays.

[Quadibloc]

On Sunday, September 22, 2019 at 11:10:02 PM UTC-6, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <2019...@crcomp.net>, D B Davis <g...@crcomp.net> wrote:

> > Lookout Mountain Avenue is the name of a side canyon which
> > twists up from Laurel Canyon. The other Canyonites don't
> > like to have it mentioned; after all, one must draw the
> > line somewhere!

> You really should have credited it. Heinlein, "And He Built a
> Crooked House."

I thought it sounded familiar.

Originally, Heinlein had wanted to make the house an unfolded 120-cell, but the editor required him to simplify it to a hypercube.

http://www.quadibloc.com/math/fdiint.htm

John Savard

[Peter Trei]

Heinlein had the house at 8777 Lookout Mountain Avenue.

Pt

[Joe Pfeiffer]

Ambrose Bierce's variation on this ended with "in the South, the term is
unknown. See damnyankee"

[peterw...@hotmail.com]

There's an old southern joke: I was fourteen years old before
I learned that "damn Yankee" was two words.

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

[Don]

A couple of earlier threads are resurrected herein due to renewed
interest in _Edison's Conquest of Mars_.

Ted wrote:
>Don wrote:

>>James wrote:
>>> Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss
>>>
>>> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword
>>
>> ... The War of the Worlds rewritten and dumbed down by persons
>> unknown in order to better suit Yankee sensibilities. ...
>>
>> ... Edison’s Conquest of Mars was rescued from well-deserved
>> obscurity in the 1970s by Forry Ackerman. He needed
>> inexpensive, sub-par material with which to pad out Ace's
>> dreadful translations of the Perry Rhodan space opera series. ...
>>
>>Allow me to put a finer point on your first sentence. Yankee

>>[redacted] [9] sensibilities, if you please.

> The translations were certainly not "dreadful". The next try at English
> distribution in the early 00s or late 90s *read* like it was translated
> from German.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Edison's Conquest of Mars_ (Serviss) was first serialized 1898. [1][2]
It's now available both as an e-book [3] and as an audio book [4].
(Presumably the e-book and audio book deliver the story as originally
written, prior to Ackerman's 1969 edit.)
After an initial battle on Mars, Earth's expeditionary force
retreats to Deimos, the smaller of Mars' moons, with a mean radius of
6.2 km. Although the story's illustrations show earthlings breathing
Martian air, it's unclear whether Deimos has breathable air.

"Im Banne des Hypno" [5] depicts my favorite solar system rock,
colloquially called "Monterny's world." It's an asteroid planetoid with
a diameter just under eighty kilometers. Although it has no atmosphere
mutant master Monterny jumps for joy on it. [6]

"Kepler's Somnium" (1634) [7][8] is an early example of "science fiction
before the genre." In the story, humans insert damp sponges into their
nostrils in order to breath on Earth's moon.

Note.
[1] http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?20773
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison's_Conquest_of_Mars
[3] https://archive.org/details/edisonsconquesto21670gut
[4] https://librivox.org/edisons-conquest-of-mars-by-garrett-p-serviss/
[5] https://crcomp.net/arts/pr0027/index.php
[6] https://www.perrypedia.de/mediawiki/images/c/cb/PR0027Illu_4.jpg
[7] https://archive.org/details/den-kbd-pil-130011021345-001
[8] https://www.bookdepository.com/Keplers-Somnium-Edward-Rosen/9780486432823

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Someone, Jack Bohn perhaps, previously pigeonholed _Conquest of Mars_ as
an Edisonade.

[9] "Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a
man." In the end, it's almost as vexatious to discover my own
proclivity for excessive alliteration and affected prose may mark
me as a dreadful euphuist. LOL. It takes one to know one, they
say. ROTFLMAO.

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.

[Jack Bohn]

Among the things Don wrote:
> A couple of earlier threads are resurrected herein due to renewed
> interest in _Edison's Conquest of Mars_.
>

<whew> I had thought Nicoll had reread the whold thing and dashed a column out at inhuman speed.

>
> Someone, Jack Bohn perhaps, previously pigeonholed _Conquest of Mars_ as
> an Edisonade.

To me, it sounds like like somethng I could possibly say, but would be unlikely to. (I knew of a "Robinsonade" as in _Robinson Crusoe_ and that Swiss Family.)

I see above I ascribe to Ray Cummings an honor I recently gave to Ray Palmer. How ChatGPT of me. I'm going to assume the earlier me had the book to hand.

--
-Jack

[Quadibloc]

On Sunday, September 22, 2019 at 7:31:22 AM UTC-6, James Nicoll wrote:
> Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss
>
> https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/terrible-swift-sword

It was a newspaper in Boston, along with one in New York, that published
the altered version of The War of the Worlds to which Serviss' Edisonade
was a sequel. Cosmopolitan serialized Wells' novel in an authentic
manner, based on the information I found in searches after reading your
column.

John Savard

[Don]

Indeed. How ChatGPT of me to assume you said it. (And how human of
ChatGPT in turn (as Christian more-or-less noted elsewhere) to "fake it
til you make it." BTW, ChatGPT's core competency seems to be in its role
as a conversation piece of s...oftware.)
Enough BS - it's time for genuine effort. A search of my private
usenet spool (find . | xargs grep 'Edisonade') ultimately reveals this
interesting (to me), rasw provenance:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20091203 Robert Carnegie wrote:

I know I recently mentioned _Edison's Conquest of Mars_ - on casual
inquiry it's one of a genre of "Edisonades", just as there were
"Robinsonades" based on _Robinson Crusoe_, of which _The Swiss Family
Robinson_ is conspicuous. I think /that/ term is German. I don't
know whether "Edisonades" always featured Thomas Edison himself, or
whether e.g. the original Tom Swift counts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20150715 Sea Wasp wrote:

Lawrence Watt-Evans does mostly fantasy, but he recently self-published
an absolutely lovely YA Edisonade titled _Tom Derringer and the Aluminum
Airship_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20150827 Sea Wasp wrote:

Lawrence Watt-Evans is one of my favorite authors, and he nails this one
perfectly.

The initial, spoiler-free review: _Tom Derringer and the Aluminum
Airship_ is a nigh-perfect recapturing of the spirit of pulp and,
really, pre-pulp adventure fiction. Not really steampunk, but close to
it, this is more an Edisonade or a Vernian homage in a sense. The
language and setting evoke those of the older works, while avoiding the
overly-intrusive narration which sometimes will mar older works for new
readers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20200517 Robert Woodward wrote:

The first Interstellar Patrol story ("Crashing Suns") appeared in Weird
Tales in the same month that _Skylark of Space_ appeared in Amazing
Stories. So, declaring _Skylark..._ as the first is a bit iffy (true,
the first draft was written almost a decade earlier). Besides,
_Skylark.._ was the first Superscience story and was in many ways an
Edisonade (as was much of the early John W. Campbell).
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 20210523 dsr wrote (in regards to "Triplanetary"):

It borders on the Edisonade, in which a plucky scientist-inventor (usually accompanied
by a few more or less hardworking assistants) discovers a new thing and immediately
turns it into a pile of cool gizmos - typically a space drive, a weapon and a
defense. Then they have adventures, some of which may demand further inventions.

Smith wrote more distinctive Edisonades in the Skylark series. Besides
him, there's:

Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
Campbell's Arcot, Wade and Morey trilogy
Travis Taylor's Warp Speed
Kooisra's Dykstra's War
Varley's Red Thunder
------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Kevrob]

On Monday, May 1, 2023 at 5:19:05 PM UTC-4, Jack Bohn wrote:
> Among the things Don wrote:
> > A couple of earlier threads are resurrected herein due to renewed
> > interest in _Edison's Conquest of Mars_.
> >
> <whew> I had thought Nicoll had reread the whold thing and dashed a column out at inhuman speed.
> >
> > Someone, Jack Bohn perhaps, previously pigeonholed _Conquest of Mars_ as
> > an Edisonade.
> To me, it sounds like like somethng I could possibly say, but would be unlikely to.
> (I knew of a "Robinsonade" as in _Robinson Crusoe_ and that Swiss Family.)
>

.
I try not to get that mixed up with this stuff:

https://www.robinsonssquash.co.uk/ {No relation}

> I see above I ascribe to Ray Cummings an honor I recently gave to Ray Palmer.
> How ChatGPT of me. I'm going to assume the earlier me had the book to hand.

Kids would use "Crusoe" as a jibe in the schoolyard. How was that an insult?
"Where's Friday?" earned "I gave him the day off" or "Right before the weekend
where we always keep it." {Or it did on the stairs...}

"I guess that makes you Gilligan...." was another one.

--
Kevin R

[Jack Bohn]

Kevrob wrote:
> On Monday, May 1, 2023 at 5:19:05 PM UTC-4, Jack Bohn wrote:

> > (I knew of a "Robinsonade" as in _Robinson Crusoe_ and that Swiss Family.)
> >

> Kids would use "Crusoe" as a jibe in the schoolyard. How was that an insult?

"It was a rooster, but we called it a robin's son, because it crew so."

--
-Jack

[Jack Bohn]

On Tuesday, May 2, 2023 at 12:11:51 PM UTC-4, Don wrote:

> Jack Bohn wrote:
> >>
> >> Someone, Jack Bohn perhaps, previously pigeonholed _Conquest of Mars_ as
> >> an Edisonade.
> >
> > To me, it sounds like like somethng I could possibly say, but would be
> > unlikely to. (I knew of a "Robinsonade" as in _Robinson Crusoe_ and
> > that Swiss Family.)
> >

> Indeed. How ChatGPT of me to assume you said it. (And how human of
> ChatGPT in turn (as Christian more-or-less noted elsewhere) to "fake it
> til you make it."

It strikes me that the major hurdle in acquiring this specific knowledge would be actually knowing it exists.
Then the difficulty is finding the related reading, until you run across a word someone has coined for it, which, if it has caught on, eases your search.

> Smith wrote more distinctive Edisonades in the Skylark series. Besides
> him, there's:
>
> Harrison's Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
> Campbell's Arcot, Wade and Morey trilogy
> Travis Taylor's Warp Speed
> Kooisra's Dykstra's War
> Varley's Red Thunder

Do we count short story series, such as the Gallegher stories of Kuttner/Moore, or the Professor Manderpootz stories of Weinbaum?

Smith's "Spacehounds of IPC" is perhaps more a Robinsonade than an Edisonade, in that our hero has to recreate rather than invent the entire technological base to repair his spaceship. I don't even think he had to trial-and-error any steps.

(I have notes towards a book review that perhaps stretches the definition of Robinsonade into a generational saga.)

--
-Jack