 | |
| Author | Sesh Heri |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Bob Aul & W Bosley |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Published | Highland, CA: Lost Continent Library, 2005 |
| Media type | Book |
| Pages | 361 |
| ISBN | 0-9727472-8-1 [1] |
| OCLC | 63109406 |
| Followed by | Metamorphosis |
Wonder of the Worlds Sesh Heri, [2] published 2005 by Lost Continent Library, is the first in a trilogy of novels featuring secret agent Harry Houdini facing off against a Martian invasion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [3]
In the first installment, Wonder of the Worlds, Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain and Houdini pursue Martian agents who have stolen a powerful crystal from Tesla at the historically pivotal 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Along for the ride aboard Tesla's airship are other historical figures, reporters Lillie West and George Ade, as well as Kolman Czito, Tesla's assistant.
On the journey to the Red Planet, the adventurers are treated to a hidden history of conflict between the Earth and Mars, as well as Tesla's stunning knowledge of geophysics of the two planets. Upon arrival on Mars, the team pursues the crystal deep into the underground civilization ruled by Kel, the mad emperor determined to subjugate Earth with the power of the crystal.
Almost a year after publication of Wonder of the Worlds, the 2006 release of The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, presents biographical material supporting the theory that Harry Houdini was, indeed, a secret government agent during the years this trilogy takes place.
Wonder of the Worlds By Sesh Heri ( ISBN 0-9727472-8-1) contains illustrations by the author.
The Wonder of the Worlds trilogy continues in Metamorphosis and The Lost Pleiad.
Wonder of the Worlds was featured at the International Tesla Exhibit in Zurich, Switzerland in 2006.
Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. Trends in the planet's portrayal have largely been influenced by advances in planetary science. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s, when it became clear that there was no life on the Moon. The predominant genre depicting Mars at the time was utopian fiction. Around the same time, the mistaken belief that there are canals on Mars emerged and made its way into fiction, popularized by Percival Lowell's speculations of an ancient civilization having constructed them. The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells's novel about an alien invasion of Earth by sinister Martians, was published in 1897 and went on to have a major influence on the science fiction genre.
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American science fiction writer known as "the Queen of Space Opera." She was also a screenwriter, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Long Goodbye (1973). She worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before it went into production. In 1956, her book The Long Tomorrow made her the first woman ever shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, and, along with C. L. Moore, one of the first two women ever nominated for a Hugo Award. In 2020, she posthumously won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as "Shadow Over Mars".
The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.
The Martian Manhunter is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Joseph Samachson and artist Joe Certa, the character first appeared in the story "The Manhunter from Mars" in Detective Comics #225. Martian Manhunter is one of the seven original members of the Justice League of America and one of the most powerful beings in the DC Universe.
Xenoarchaeology, a branch of xenology dealing with extraterrestrial cultures, is a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in works of science fiction. The field is concerned with the study of the material remains to reconstruct and interpret past life-ways of alien civilizations. Xenoarchaeology is not currently practiced by mainstream archaeologists due to the current lack of any material for the discipline to study.
A Princess of Mars is a science fantasy novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first of his Barsoom series. It was first serialized in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine from February–July, 1912. Full of swordplay and daring feats, the novel is considered a classic example of 20th-century pulp fiction. It is also a seminal instance of the planetary romance, a subgenre of science fantasy that became highly popular in the decades following its publication. Its early chapters also contain elements of the Western. The story is set on Mars, imagined as a dying planet with a harsh desert environment. This vision of Mars was based on the work of the astronomer Percival Lowell, whose ideas were widely popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Sands of Mars is a science fiction novel by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. While he was already popular as a short story writer and as a magazine contributor, The Sands of Mars was also a prelude to Clarke's becoming one of the world's foremost writers of science fiction novels. The story was published in 1951, before humans had achieved space flight. It is set principally on the planet Mars, which has been settled by humans and is used essentially as a research establishment. The story setting is that Mars has been surveyed but not fully explored on the ground. The Sands of Mars was Clarke's first published novel.
The planet Venus has been used as a setting in fiction since before the 19th century. Its opaque cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface—a "cosmic Rorschach test", in the words of science fiction author Stephen L. Gillett. The planet was often depicted as warmer than Earth but still habitable by humans. Depictions of Venus as a lush, verdant paradise, an oceanic planet, or fetid swampland, often inhabited by dinosaur-like beasts or other monsters, became common in early pulp science fiction, particularly between the 1930s and 1950s. Some other stories portrayed it as a desert, or invented more exotic settings. The absence of a common vision resulted in Venus not developing a coherent fictional mythology, in contrast to the image of Mars in fiction.
Eric John Stark is a character created by the science fiction author Leigh Brackett. Stark is the hero of a series of pulp adventures set in a time when the Solar System has been colonized. His origin-story shares some characteristics with feral characters such as Mowgli and Tarzan; his adventures take place in the shared space opera planets of 1940s and 1950s science fiction.
Many works of fiction have featured UFOs. In most cases, as the fictional story progresses, the Earth is being invaded by hostile alien forces from outer space, usually from Mars, as depicted in early science fiction, or the people are being destroyed by alien forces, as depicted in the film Independence Day. Some fictional UFO encounters may be based on real UFO reports, such as Night Skies. Night Skies is based on the 1997 Phoenix UFO Incident.
The Five Fists of Science is a steampunk graphic novel created by writer Matt Fraction and artist Steven Sanders. It was published in 2006 by Image Comics.
Edison's Conquest of Mars is an 1898 science fiction novel by American astronomer and writer Garrett P. Serviss. It was written as a sequel to Fighters from Mars, an unauthorized and heavily altered version of H. G. Wells's 1897 story The War of the Worlds. It has a place in the history of science fiction for its early employment of themes and motifs that later became staples of the genre.
Mark Twain's legacy includes awards, events, a variety of memorials and namesakes, and numerous works of art, entertainment, and media.
Nikola Tesla is portrayed in many forms of popular culture. The Serbian-American engineer has particularly been depicted in science fiction, a genre which is well suited to address his inventions; while often exaggerated, the fictionalized variants build mostly upon his own alleged claims or ideas. A popular, growing fixation among science fiction, comic book, and speculative history storytellers is to portray Tesla as a member of a secret society, along with other luminaries of science. The impacts of the technologies invented by Nikola Tesla are a recurring theme in the steampunk genre of alternate technology science-fiction.
Thomas Edison has appeared in popular culture as a character in novels, films, comics and video games. His prolific inventing helped make him an icon and he has made appearances in popular culture during his lifetime down to the present day. He is often portrayed in popular culture as an adversary of Nikola Tesla.
"Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. It was originally published in the magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories in August 1949, under the title "The Naming of Names". It was subsequently included in the short-story collections A Medicine for Melancholy and S Is for Space.
Barsoom is a fictional representation of the planet Mars created by American pulp fiction author Edgar Rice Burroughs. The first Barsoom tale was serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in pulp magazine The All-Story from February to July 1912 and published compiled as a novel as A Princess of Mars in 1917. It features John Carter, a late-19th-century American Confederate veteran who is mysteriously transported from Earth to the dying world of Mars where he meets and romances the beautiful Martian princess Dejah Thoris. Ten sequels followed over the next three decades, further extending his vision of Barsoom and adding other characters.
The planet Mars is named after the Roman god of war Mars. In Babylonian astronomy, the planet was named after Nergal, their deity of fire, war, and destruction, most likely due to the planet's reddish appearance. Whether the Greeks equated Nergal with their god of war, Ares, or whether both drew from a more ancient association is unclear. In the age of Plato, the Greeks called the planet Ἄρεως ἀστἡρ, or "star of Ares". Following the identification of Ares and Mars, it was translated into Latin as stella Martis, or "star of Mars", or simply Mars. The Hellenistic Greeks also called the planet Πυρόεις Pyroeis, meaning "fiery".
"The Crystal Crypt" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in the January 1954 edition of Planet Stories and later published in Beyond Lies the Wub in 1988.
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