In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads the first novel in Isaac Asimov’s juvenile science fiction series
Science fiction set in our own solar system arguably began with Lucian, the classical author whose short satirical piece True History paved the way for later planetary adventures using Mars, Venus, the Moon, and various other locations as the backdrop for almighty battles, fearsome imaginary monsters, and numerous ‘there and back again’ narratives. In the Victorian era, George Griffith, the contemporary of the far more famous and enduring H. G. Wells, wrote his Stories of Other Worlds, starring a newlywed couple who choose to spend their honeymoon travelling around Earth’s neighbouring planets.