The Scientific Romances of Garrett P. Serviss

From the last quarter of the 19th century through the first quarter of the 20th, Garrett P. Serviss was one of the best-known popularizers of astronomy in the United States. Though trained in law, Serviss became a journalist in 1876 for the New York Sun and revealed an aptitude for reporting on scientific matters in clear terms that could be understood by the lay reader. This led to his first publication, Astronomy Through the Opera Glass, in 1888. A decade later he dipped his toes into writing fiction with the publication of Edison's Conquest of Mars, an unofficial sequel to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

It is doubtful that two more different a pair of books could be found than H.G. Wells' classic tale of alien invasion and Garrett P. Serviss sequel. Technically, Serviss' novel is a sequel to the downright copyright-infringing Americanization of Wells' novel that was published in Stateside newspapers as Fighters from Mars: the War of the Worlds in and near Boston. 

H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds was a smash success in England when serialized in Cosmopolitan. The Boston Post wanted to bring the story across the pond, but didn't particularly feel like paying Wells for the rights to do so. The result was Fighters from Mars, an abridgement that transplanted the events of Wells' story to the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

To compare, here is an excerpt from Wells' original:

Then came the night of the first falling-star. It was seen early in the morning rushing over Winchester eastward, a line of flame, high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling-star. Albin described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed for some seconds. Denning, our greatest authority on meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about ninety or one hundred miles. It seemed to him that it fell to earth about one hundred miles east of him.

I was at home at that hour and writing in my study; and although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many people in Berkshire, Surrey, and Middlesex must have seen the fall of it, and, at most, have thought that another meteorite had descended. No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.

But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting-star, and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsell, Ottershaw, and Woking, rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did, soon after dawn, and not far from the sand-pits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction over the heath and heather, forming heaps visible a mile and a half away. The heather was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke rose against the dawn.

The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand, amidst the scattered splinters of a fir-tree it had shivered to fragments in its descent. The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder, caked over, and its outline softened by a thick, scaly, dun-colored incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached the mass, surprised at the size and more so at the shape, since most meteorites are rounded more or less completely. It was, however, still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near approach. A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred to him that it might be hollow.

He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for itself, staring at its strange appearance, astonished chiefly at its unusual shape and color, and dimly perceiving even then some evidence of design in its arrival. The early morning was wonderfully still, and the sun, just clearing the pine-trees towards Weybridge, was already warm. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning, there was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds were the faint movements from within the cindery cylinder. He was all alone on the common.

Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the gray clinker, the ashy incrustation that covered the meteorite, was falling off the circular edge of the end. It was dropping off in flakes and raining down upon the sand. A large piece suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth.

For a minute he scarcely realized what this meant, and, although the heat was excessive, he clambered down into the pit close to the bulk to see the Thing more clearly. He fancied even then that the cooling of the body might account for this, but what disturbed that idea was the fact that the ash was falling only from the end of the cylinder.

And then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top of the cylinder was rotating on its body. It was such a gradual movement that he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had been near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the circumference. Even then he scarcely understood what this indicated, until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk forward an inch or so. Then the thing came upon him in a flash. The cylinder was artificial—hollow—with an end that screwed out! Something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!

"Good heavens!" said Ogilvy. "There's a man in it—men in it! Half roasted to death! Trying to escape!"

At once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the Thing with the flash upon Mars.

The thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he forgot the heat, and went forward to the cylinder to help turn, But luckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands on the still glowing metal. At that he stood irresolute for a moment, then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly into Woking. The time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock. He met a wagoner and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told, and his appearance, were so wild—his hat had fallen off in the pit—that the man simply drove on. He was equally unsuccessful with the potman who was just unlocking the doors of the public-house by Horsell Bridge. The, fellow thought he was a lunatic at large, and made an unsuccessful attempt to shut him into the tap-room. That sobered him a little, and when he saw Henderson, the London journalist, in his garden, he called over the palings and made himself understood.

"Henderson," he called, "you saw that shooting-star last night?"

"Well?" said Henderson.

"It's out on Horsell Common now."

"Good Lord!" said Henderson. "Fallen meteorite! That's good."

"But it's something more than a meteorite. It's a cylinder—an artificial cylinder, man! And there's something inside."

Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand.

"What's that?" he said. He was deaf in one ear.

Ogilvy told him all that he had seen. Henderson was a minute or so taking it in. Then he dropped his spade, snatched up his jacket, and came out into the road. The two men hurried back at once to the common, and found the cylinder still lying in the same position. But now the sounds inside had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body of the cylinder. Air was either entering or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound.

They listened, rapped on the scale with a stick, and, meeting with no response, they both concluded the man or men inside must be insensible or dead.

Of course the two were quite unable to do anything. They shouted consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get help. One can imagine them, covered with sand, excited and disordered, running up the little street in the bright sunlight, just as the shop folks were taking down their shutters and people were opening their bedroom windows. Henderson went into the railway station at once, in order to telegraph the news to London.

The newspaper articles had prepared men's minds for the reception of the idea.

By eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already started for the common to see the "dead men from Mars." That was the form the story took. I heard of it first from my newspaper boy, about a quarter to nine, when I went out to get my Daily Chronicle, I was naturally startled, and lost no time in going out and across the Ottershaw bridge to the sand-pits.

And the same from Fighters from Mars:

Then came the night of the first falling star. It was seen early in the morning, rushing over northern Jersey eastward, a line of flame, high in the atmosphere.

Hundreds must have seen it, and taken it for an ordinary falling star. Albin of Yale University described it as leaving a greenish streak behind it that glowed for some seconds.

Dennings, our greatest American authority in meteorites, stated that the height of its first appearance was about 90 or 100 miles. It seemed to him that it fell to the earth to the east.

Some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many persons in the towns and villages of Middlesex county must have seen the fall and have thought that another meteorite had descended. No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.

But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy, who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere in the fields above the Lexington road, rose early with the idea of finding it.

Find it he did soon after dawn, and not far from the Lexington line. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile, and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction.

They formed heaps visible a mile away. The long brown grass was on fire eastward, and a thin blue smoke arose against the dawn.

The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder, caked over and its outline softened by a thick scaly dun-coloured incrustation. It had a diameter of about thirty yards.

It was, however, still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near approach. He did not remember hearing any birds that morning, there was certainly no breeze stirring, and the only sounds were the faint movements from within the cindery cylinder. He was all alone.

Then suddenly he noticed with a start that some of the grey clinker was falling off the circular edge of the end. It was dropping off in flakes and raining down upon the sand.

A large piece suddenly came off and fell with a sharp noise that brought his heart into his mouth.

For a minute he scarcely realized what this meant, until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk forward an inch or so. Then the thing came upon him in a flash.

The cylinder was artificial--hollow--with an end that screwed out! Something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!

"Good heavens!" said Ogilvy. "There's a man in it--men in it! Half roasted to death! Trying to escape!" At once, with a quick mental leap, he linked the thing with the flash upon Mars.

The thought of the confined creature was so dreadful to him that he forgot the heat and went forward to the cylinder to help turn. But luckily the dull radiation arrested him before he could burn his hands on the still-glowing metal.

He stood irresolute for a moment, then turned, scrambled out of the pit, and set off running wildly toward Concord. The time then must have been somewhere about six o'clock.

He met a wagon driver and tried to make him understand, but the tale he told and his appearance were so wild--his hat had fallen off in the pit--that the man simply drove on. He was equally unsuccessful with the porter who was just unlocking the doors of the road house.

The fellow thought he was a lunatic at large and made an unsuccessful attempt to shut him into the stable. That sobered him a little; and when he saw Henderson, the journalist, in his garden, he called over the palings and made himself understood.

"Henderson," he called, "you saw that shooting star last night?"

"Well?" said Henderson.

"It's out on the sand pits now."

"Good Lord!" said Henderson. "Fallen meteorite! That's good."

"But it's something more than a meteorite. It's a cylinder--an artificial cylinder, man! And there's something inside."

Henderson stood up with his spade in his hand. "What's that?" he said. He was deaf in one ear.

Ogilvy told him all that he had seen. Henderson was a minute or so taking it in. Then he dropped his spade, snatched at his coat, and came out into the road.

The two men hurried back at once to the sand pits, and found the cylinder still lying in the same position. But now the sounds inside had ceased, and a thin circle of bright metal showed between the top and the body of the cylinder. Air was either entering or escaping at the rim with a thin, sizzling sound.

They listened, rapped on the scaly burnt metal with a stick, and, meeting with no response, they both concluded the man or men inside must be insensible or dead. Of course they were quite unable to do anything. They shouted consolation and promises, and went off back to the town again to get help.

By eight o'clock a number of boys and unemployed men had already started to see the "dead men from Mars." That was the form the story took. I heard of it first from my newsboy about a quarter to nine. I was naturally startled, and lost no time in going out to the sand pits.

Officially, Fighters from Mars is an anonymous work, but suspicion falls on Garrett P. Serviss since he went on to pen the sequel the same year. And though Edison's Conquest of Mars is intended as a sequel to Fighters from Mars, it is actually better to read it in contrast to the British original. In doing so, the cultural differences permeating each side of the Atlantic at the dawn of the Twentieth Century come more clearly into focus.   

The War of the Worlds is very much the story of Imperial decline and cosmic nihilism. Wells turns the tables on the British Empire by bringing down an invasion force that does to it as Britannia has done to so many others around the world. How many spears and muskets were but pinpricks against the undefeatable might of the English armada? A superior force from beyond our furthest frontier annihilates the seat of the Empire itself, literally sucking the lifeblood from its citizens. Those citizens are themselves anonymous spectators. The narrator has been denied a name and identity. That is the point: he was just another faceless Imperial functionary before the invasion and just another faceless victim during it. Only a bizarre twist of evolutionary fate rescues a subjugated Earth, but it is psychologically conquered. Our narrator has still lost himself in contemplations of a universe cruelly indifferent to humanity.

Then there is Edison's Conquest of Mars. The title alone betrays so much about it, for this is not merely a war between planets. This is the conquest of the alien orb by the soldiers of Earth, and it is led, by name, by Thomas Edison. The anonymity imparted by Wells is utterly overturned by Serviss, who was himself an already notable scientific author and lecturer. Everybody who's anybody is involved in launching this invasion spearheaded by Edison. Just as Napoleon brought along a cadre of researchers and artists in his invasion of Egypt, so does Edison bring along the best and brightest of the turn-of-the-century: Kelvin, Roentgen, Rayleigh, Mossiman, Hale, and more. Contrary to the nihilistic egalitarianism of Wells, Serviss has all of the significant heads of state survive the initial onslaught, from Queen Victoria to Kaiser Wilhelm to Emperor Meiji to the King of Siam, whose donation of a massive diamond assists the subscription service required to raise an army of vessels designed by Edison.

Of course, this great counter-invasion force is led by the Americans. Wells wrote of the decline of the British Empire and Serviss writes of the ascent of the American one. This aspiring world power lacks for neither money nor enthusiasm, and Serviss spares no shame for informing us of how grateful the world is to be led by them in this endeavour. With the exception of Wilhelm, however, who Serviss has no small pleasure in picking on. As these royal heads meet in Washington to hash over the invasion, Wilhelm finds democracy unflattering and insists on returning home to lands that know proper respect for a king. Such unruly citizens are practically falling over themselves to enlist for the counter-invasion force.

Efforts like flying to Mars and attacking the invincible Martians would be impossible if not for Edison's technological breakthroughs. Two are most critical for the progress of the story, the first being the development of craft that can cruise between the planets on a principle of electric repulsion. The second is a disintegration beam, the effect of which is achieved by disrupting the harmonic convergence of atoms. Humanity is not waiting around for microbes this time. 

Besides imperial American jingosim, the tone of Edison's Conquest of Mars is quite different from Wells. Given Serviss' scientific credentials, having published the popular guide Astronomy Through an Opera Glass a decade before, his story is much more of a Scientific Romance in the vein of Jules Verne and Camille Flammarion. En route to Mars, the savants pause on the Moon to explore its environs, discovering traces of an ancient cyclopean civilization and diamond-encrusted craters. Before reaching Mars, they have their first engagement with Martian asteroid miners excavating gold from an orbiting body. As much time is given to the study of gravity as to the effects of disintegration rays on Martian physiology.

In contradiction to Wells, who was always light on actual science to begin with, Serviss' universe is not only comprehensible to humanity, but conquerable by it through the marriage of scientific knowledge and financial capital flowering in the United States. This emphasis on "Capitalism's Conquest of Nature" actually distances Edison's Conquest of Mars from the likes of Verne and Flammarion, implanting it more thoroughly in the American literary zeitgeist shared with John Jacob Astor IV's A Journey in Other Worlds and Edward S. Ellis' The Huge Hunter; or, The Steam Man of the Prairies. Inspired by this very novel, John Clute coined the term "Edisonade" for this variation on the Scientific Romance (defined as "any story dating from the late nineteenth century onward and featuring a young US male inventor hero who ingeniously extricates himself from tight spots and who, by so doing, saves himself from defeat and corruption, and his friends and nation from foreign oppressors.").

Beyond this, some critics suggest that Serviss had been long holding onto this story and that War of the Worlds only provided an occasion for it. A solid clue is that the Martians of the piece in no way resemble the Lovecraftian extraterrestrial menace of Wells. Such alien entities stand as embodiments of malevolent nature, and I doubt that there is any accident in Cthulhu being tentacled. Serviss' Martians are giant, bestial men, a breed of "intelligent savage" who in the end are conquerable by humanity not only in military prowess, but in culture and spirit.

In itself proof of the transition in global power at the end of the 19th century, Edison's Conquest of Mars must have captured the American zeitgeist sufficiently to warrant a new side-career for Serviss. Though never matching the output of a Verne or Wells, he nevertheless did produce a new story every few years, from 1900's The Moon Metal to 1909's A Columbus of Space to 1911's The Second Deluge and his final novel, 1915's The Moon Maiden. This, paired with his almost yearly output of popular scientific books, make him one of the last of the true, grand old Victorian Scientific Romantics in marked contrast with the man whose work he cribbed in Edison's Conquest of Mars. The arc of Wells' career was from metaphoric Scientific Romances through which he voiced his social critiques, to true Science Fiction prescribing how technology may be used to achieve his faux-utopian ends, to plain political tracts. 

The Moon Metal begins with a simple and practical premise: the discovery of gold reserves at the South Pole which throws off the gold standard and creates economic chaos throughout the world. Suitable replacements are discussed with little resolution, and one would be excused for thinking that Serviss saw this as his chance to offer up his opinion on global monetary systems. Into this mess arrives Dr. Max Syx, bearing with him a brand new metal of previously unknown type. He has dubbed this metal "artemisium" and offers it as a substitute for the gold standard. And how will he maintain the appropriate and necessary amounts of artemisium available to the world's governments? Why, by his own proprietary knowledge of how to extract it.

Dr. Syx has little fear for the security of his monopoly. He even invites bankers, investors and other scientists out to his mine in the Grand Teton Mountains to investigate the ore for themselves. To the untrained eye, Syx insists, natural artemisium looks virtually identical to ordinary chrysolite, and the process for its extraction is so deceptively simply that it defies the brilliance of anyone but him to discover it. Prospectors flood to the Tetons to try their hand and find a great deal of the ore, quite easily... too easily... but are none the wiser for how to turn it into the precious metal.

This piques the curiousity of a group of investigators, who deduce that it must be Syx himself who is seeding the mountains with an ore that not only seems like chrysolite but is chrysolite. This sets off a scientific mystery story as they try to figure out what Syx is up to and uncover the nature of this miraculous substance which only he can produce. Evidently they did not read the title of the story they are in.

Serviss is at his best in this story. With the cosmos at his fingertips he seems only to produce something banal. When forced to restrain himself to a scientific mystery, and only in so many pages, he fashions a real little gem. The investigators' snooping around is enjoyable and there's some fun nonsense science in it to explain the eponymous element. Most curiously, we see in The Moon Metal an early prognostication of our still-ambitious proposal to mine the celestial bodies for resources that may prove useful (and profitable) here on earth.

Another decade passed - during which he mostly wrote scientific books - before he wrote another Scientific Romance. This was A Columbus of Space, which began with a lofty dedication "To the readers of Jules Verne's romances..." Thankfully he had the presence of mind to clarify  "Not because the author flatters himself that he can walk in the Footsteps of that Immortal Dreamer, but because, like Jules Verne, he believes that the World of Imagination is as legitimate a Domain of the Human Mind as the World of Fact." He was right not to flatter himself so.

A Columbus of Space is the nadir of Serviss' Edisonades, who wrote the most Edisonadish of the Edisonades... The pulpiest, purplest, most petrified stories of the type. Their lionization of specifically American individualism, industry, invention, and colonialism - Disneyland's Main Street U.S.A. in space - can be entertaining enough in the right hands. Certainly no implicitly worse than comparable stories of British or French exploration. Unfortunately, Serviss' hands are not the right ones. A Columbus of Space means to describe scientific heroism, and instead describes what I can only call a kind of maleficent pranksterism.

The science-hero of the book is Edmund Stonewall, a quiet and dreamy-eyed inventor whose associates never cease to praise his unfailing, unflappable, imperturbable intelligence. It begins with the very first sentence of A Columbus of Space, and is loathe to diminish in intensity:

I am a hero worshiper; an insatiable devourer of biographies; and I say that no man in all the splendid list ever equaled Edmund Stonewall. You smile because you have never heard his name, for, until now, his biography has not been written. And this is not truly a biography; it is only the story of the crowning event in Stonewall's career.

The effect Serviss was going for is severely diminished by the fact that neither Edmund nor his companions have the slightest clue what they're doing as they traipse around the planet Venus aboard his atomic-powered airship. Most of their choices seem to be made simply for puerile interest, like strapping a gang of the gorilla-like inhabitants of Venus' dark side to a carriage on the underside of their ship, only to have them die in a reckless charge on the stormy winds of the great ice mountains separating the hemispheres. The activities of this latter day "Columbus" during their and a half on Earth's sister sphere are reckless at best, and just as frequently senseless and violent.

Anything, taken too seriously, may be reduced to a kind of self-parody. A Columbus of Space nearly reads as a satire, and would have been a pretty funny one if it were. Yet there is such an earnestness in Serviss' delivery that the reader must inescapably conclude that he kind of means it. Edmund with his floolhardy choices and bipolar regret after those choices kill off one or two or a dozen people really does come across like Serviss' ideal man. Is it a flaw in Serviss' own character, or merely a want of literary ability?