imaginative accounts of first journeys to other planets in the Solar System;
thus, works by Verne, Wells and CS Lewis that I need not list again;
also Rocketship Galileo by Robert Heinlein and Welcome To Mars by James Blish;
nothing particular by Poul Anderson? - I don't think.
Such stories faded out. The Moon was visited. Mars and Venus have been probed. All other bodies in the Solar System are known to be uninhabitable and inhospitable.
A later sf cliche:
regular faster than light interstellar travel;
Anderson does this well, particularly in his Technic History, but that does not prevent it from having become a cliche.
How can sf break out of cliches? Anderson's Tau Zero, an account of an endlessly accelerating relativistic spaceship, was a good start.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
In books like THE CASE FOR MARS, Robert Zubrin argued Mars could be made habitable for humans. And I hope Elon Musk soon sends his hope for colonizing expedition there. A real life Barsoom Project!
One problem with Jules Verne's works has been a lack of satisfactory English translations for them. But I have read 20,000 LEAGUES BENEATH THE SEA, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (I may have gotten the title wrong).
No early space flight stories by Anderson, but he did write some stories set on Mars, written when people still wondered if it was inhabited. Such as THE WAR OF TWO WORLDS.
Ad astra! Sean
Another term for "cliche" is "common experience". Will people falling in love (or out of it) ever cease to be a subject for fiction?
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Of course not! Not as long as human beings are still the bollixed up mess we all are. And I don't believe one bit that will ever change!
Ad astra! Sean
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