Across the Zodiac

Across The Zodiac

First editions
Author	Percy Greg
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction
Publisher	Trübner & Co
Publication date	1880
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	Vol. 1: 302 pp. Vol. 2: 294 pp.

Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record (1880) is a science fiction novel by Percy Greg, who has been credited as an originator of the sword and planet subgenre of science fiction.[1] It is the first science fiction novel set primarily on Mars.[2] It contains the first documented use of the term "astronaut", here the name of a spacecraft.[3][4]

Plot

The book details the creation and use of apergy, a form of anti-gravitational energy, and details a flight to Mars in 1830. The planet is inhabited by diminutive beings; they are convinced that life does not exist elsewhere than on their world, and refuse to believe that the unnamed narrator is actually from Earth. (They think he is an unusually tall Martian from some remote place on their planet.)

The book's narrator names his spacecraft the Astronaut.

Novel concepts

The book contains what was probably the first alien language in any work of fiction.[5] His space ship design also featured a small garden, an early prediction of hydroponics.[6]: 69 

Influence

The same title was used for a later, similar book—Across the Zodiac: A Story of Adventure (1896) by Edwin Pallander (1869–1952) (the pseudonym of UK biologist, botanist and author Lancelot Francis Sanderson Bayly). Pallander copied some elements of Greg's plot; in his book, gravity is negated by a gyroscope.[7]

See also

• Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century
• A Journey in Other Worlds
• Mars in fiction

References

1. Everett Bleiler, The Checklist of Fantastic Literature, Chicago, Shasta Publishers, 1948; p. 132.
2. Hotakainen, Markus (2010). "Little Green Persons". Mars: From Myth and Mystery to Recent Discoveries. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 204. ISBN 978-0-387-76508-2. The first science fiction novel situated on Mars is considered to be Percy Greg's Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record, published in 1880.
3. Roberts, Adam (2016). "SF 1850–1900: Mobility and Mobilisation". The History of Science Fiction. Palgrave Histories of Literature (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. p. 156. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-56957-8_7. ISBN 978-1-137-56957-8. OCLC 956382503.
4. Crossley, Robert (2011). "Inventing a New Mars". Imagining Mars: A Literary History. Wesleyan University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-8195-6927-1.
5. Ekman, F: "The Martial Language of Percy Greg", Invented Languages Summer 2008, p. 11. Richard K. Harrison Archived 2008-09-08 at the Wayback Machine, 2008
6. Ash, Brian (1977). The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Harmony Books. ISBN 978-0-517-53174-7.
7. Jess Nevins, The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, Austin, TX, Monkeybrain Books, 2005.

Further reading

• Bailey, James Osler (1972) [1947]. "Chapter Four: To the Islands of the Blest: Scientific Fiction, 1871–1894—C. The Wonderful Journey—3. To Other Planets". Pilgrims Through Space and Time: Trends and Patterns in Scientific and Utopian Fiction. Greenwood Press. pp. 67–69. ISBN 978-0-8371-6323-9.

External links

• Across the Zodiac at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Across the Zodiac at Project Gutenberg