Space Travel

The theme that I addressed least in the previous post was space travel but this has become an sf cliche and part of a general fictional backdrop. Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series is not about space travel. It just assumes it.

Questions that might be asked about space travel

(i) What would happen if someone travelled to the Moon? 

In the previous post, this question was variously answered by Wells and Heinlein. Lewis also wrote a "first man on the Moon" story, "Forms of Things Unknown."

(ii) What would happen if someone travelled to Mars? 

Answered in the previous post by Lewis and Blish. The latter also wrote two very different accounts of a first interstellar crossing: "Common Time" (to Proxima Centauri); "Darkside Crossing" (to Beta Solis).

(iii) What would happen if someone travelled as fast and as far as possible in a relativistic, cyclical universe? 

Poul Anderson answers this question in Tau Zero, a "space travel" novel but as different as possible from Wells' The First Men In The Moon.

Anderson's works are culminations of Wellsian themes.