Edison’s Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss

Well that felt long, sometimes you read long books and they fly by, other times short books feel like you’ve read the length of Don Quixote even though what you've read is less than a quarter the length, 'Conquest of Mars' is the latter.

There are a lot of unofficial sequels to H.G. Wells The ‘War of the Worlds’, which is telling of how good the book was both in ideas and writing. I have recently headed down that sequel rabbit hole and found kittens (yes that’s what baby rabbits are called) in various degrees of health. Edison’s Conquest of Mars was the first in that line.

The book as much as it is a sequel to ‘War of the Worlds’ is a more direct sequel of ‘Fighters from Mars’ which were two unauthorised versions of War of the worlds published in the New York Evening Journal and the Boston Post, these versions were heavily edited and took out the Science, actions by the narrator they deemed inappropriate and also set them in their respective areas of New York and Boston. It’s weird how we’ve seen the same thing happen to many European films as well.

I’ll start by saying that the writing and prose in ‘Conquest of Mars’ is in my opinion poor, however it is stacked full of ideas and the first time many of these ideas appeared in Science Fiction. There are Space Suits, asteroid Mining, Alien civilisations, Alien Abductions, Airlocks and many more. The author Garrett P Serviss was an astronomer so had a good handle on Science. As implied in the title Thomas Edison is the protagonist and the narrative involves a conglomerate of Earth nations attacking Mars before the Martians return, after being defeated in their first attempt. The setting up of this involves Edison and inventions such as spaceships that used electric repulsion. We follow the group as they first head to Mars (via the Moon) in order to defeat Mars.

Well’s story was an anti-imperialist tale, Conquest though embraces all that Wells pushed back against in his story. In order to attack Mars, gathered together are the heads of most states including Queen Victoria, Kaiser Willhelm and the Emperor Mutsuhito. This book may actually be the first case of American Exceptionalism, it really is quite unbelievable that the likes of the leaders of the British Empire, The Austro-Hungarian Empire would happily sit back and let the young nation of America lead the way.

Knowledge after the fact knowing that Edison was one of the greatest self-publicists ever make his appearance interesting after the fact. To use modern terminology, it felt like the author was fanboying Edison. I personally would have had more belief in the story if he'd used another figure. This is probably my modern eyes and attitude looking back at this work. When this was written Tesla (the obvious choice) would not have been well known and interestingly was working for the Edison company in Paris at the time. Edison's fame and self publicity does make him an obvious choice for the author at the time.

Overall this is an interesting read for those of us who love to explore the history of Science Fiction but as a good read to recommend, I personally wouldn’t. The Stars I have rated this at are more for the ideas rather than the execution. If you are interested enough to read this it is available through the wonderful Project Gutenberg.