 First editions | |
| Author | Percy Greg |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Trübner & Co |
Publication date | 1880 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | Vol. 1: 302 pp. Vol. 2: 294 pp. |
Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record (1880) is a science fiction novel by Percy Greg, who has been credited as an originator of the sword and planet subgenre of science fiction. [1]
The book details the creation and use of apergy, a form of anti-gravitational energy, and details a flight to Mars in 1830. The planet is inhabited by diminutive beings; they are convinced that life does not exist elsewhere than on their world, and refuse to believe that the unnamed narrator is actually from Earth. (They think he is an unusually tall Martian from some remote place on their planet.)
The book's narrator names his spacecraft the Astronaut.
The book contains what was probably the first alien language in any work of fiction. [2] His space ship design also featured a small garden, an early prediction of hydroponics. [3] : 69
The same title was used for a later, similar book—Across the Zodiac: A Story of Adventure (1896) by Edwin Pallander (1869–1952) (the pseudonym of UK biologist, botanist and author Lancelot Francis Sanderson Bayly). Pallander copied some elements of Greg's plot; in his book, gravity is negated by a gyroscope. [4]
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's Islands of Space in the November issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction, first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences, although there are examples generally considered as "hard" SF, such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, built on mathematical sociology. Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.
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Percy Greg, son of William Rathbone Greg, was an English writer.
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For the silent film see The Great Romance (film)
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