Reprints of Classic Early Space Fiction

The response to my reprint of "The Moon-Maker" a few months ago was
very gratifying. The result is a line of similar reprints, which can be
found he

http://www.black-cat-studios.com/boo...les/Page9.html

Many of these books have not been reprinted between covers since their
original publication---in some cases more than 200 years ago.

All of the books are high-quality 6x9-inch trade paperbacks (exceptions
are indicated as such), printed on fine paper with full-color covers.
Many include the original illustrations as well as supplemental
material.

Clicking on the covers will take you to a page with a full description
of the book, a preview of the opening pages and ordering information.

I recently upgraded "The Moon-Maker" to include its immediate prequel,
the 1915 "Man Who Rocked the Earth", a James Bondian thriller that
contains the first accurate, realistic description of a nuclear
explosion in literature...including a graphic description of the
effects of radiation poisoning after the blast. (I realize that H.G.
Wells has precedence in his "World Set Free", in which he coined the
word "atomic bomb", but what he described was hardly like the real
thing).

In addition to the forthcoming books listed on the website are "Adrift
in the Stratosphere" (1937) by Prof. A.M. Low, president of the British
Interplanetary Society, "The Moon Colony" (1937) by William Dixon Bell
(an early description of the terraforming process) and numerous others.

RM

On 19 Jul 2006 04:57:11 -0700, "Ron Miller" wrote:

I recently upgraded "The Moon-Maker" to include its immediate prequel,
the 1915 "Man Who Rocked the Earth", a James Bondian thriller that
contains the first accurate, realistic description of a nuclear
explosion in literature...including a graphic description of the
effects of radiation poisoning after the blast.

....Ah! I've seen references to this one, but never could find a copy.
Good move, Ron!

OM
--
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] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
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On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 04:57:11 -0700, Ron Miller wrote:

(Even in the face of such utterly fair ebook
pricing the zapkitty's "opportunistic" gene
remains in high gear...)

I recently upgraded "The Moon-Maker" to include its immediate prequel,
the 1915 "Man Who Rocked the Earth", a James Bondian thriller...

Hey, can those of us who've already bought
"The Moon-Maker" get a discount or an
upgrade?

....

What?... What are you all looking at me like
that for?

Still... that list looks good, Ron.

RM

--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"

Hey, can those of us who've already bought
"The Moon-Maker" get a discount or an
upgrade?

I can't think of any practical way to do this (not the way things are
set up), but...

....what I can do is make a separate volume of "Man Who Rocked the
Earth" for those who need only that title. Would that work for you?
I'll let you know when it's available...

What?... What are you all looking at me like

Still... that list looks good, Ron.

Thanks! It's been fun and a chance to get copies of books I've long
wanted myself. A number of these titles are available as free etexts
online, but (and I don't know about you guys) I like to have books that
I can actually hold in my hand. I've also made an effort to make these
books attractive (I take great pains with the interior design) and with
features not found in any of the available ebooks, such as
illustrations, appendices, etc.

I've also kept the prices almost at cost, so the books are about as
inexpensive as POD books can be.

By the way, the Black Cat edition of "Off On A Comet" includes
considerable material---including one full chapter!---not included in
the Gutenberg etext (as well as something like 100 illustrations).

Ron

Ron Miller wrote:

By the way, the Black Cat edition of "Off On A Comet"

Note: This is an entertaining (though not to "20,000 Leagues" caliber)
tour through the solar system. However, it's also anti-semetic to a
degree that even Hamas would blush.


includes
considerable material---including one full chapter!---not included in
the Gutenberg etext (as well as something like 100 illustrations).

What's the image quality like?

Ron Miller wrote:

(I realize that H.G.
Wells has precedence in his "World Set Free", in which he coined the
word "atomic bomb", but what he described was hardly like the real
thing).




Ever read the section where Paris gets nuked? That's fairly accurate
right down to the color of the air ionization from the radiation:
"She roused herself with a start. She became aware that the night
outside was no longer still. That there was an excitement down below on
the bridge and a running in the street and a flickering of searchlights
among the clouds from some high place away beyond the Trocadero. And
then the excitement came surging up past her and invaded the hall within.
One of the sentinels from the terrace stood at the upper end of the
room, gesticulating and shouting something.
And all the world had changed. A kind of throbbing. She couldn't
understand. It was as if all the water-pipes and concealed machinery and
cables of the ways beneath, were beating—as pulses beat. And about her
blew something like a wind—a wind that was dismay.
Her eyes went to the face of the Marshal as a frightened child might
look towards its mother.
He was still serene. He was frowning slightly, she thought, but that was
natural enough, for the Earl of Delhi, with one hand gauntly
gesticulating, had taken him by the arm and was all too manifestly
disposed to drag him towards the great door that opened on the terrace.
And Viard was hurrying towards the huge windows and doing so in the
strangest of attitudes, bent forward and with eyes upturned.
Something up there?
And then it was as if thunder broke overhead.
The sound struck her like a blow. She crouched together against the
masonry and looked up. She saw three black shapes swooping down through
the torn clouds, and from a point a little below two of them, there had
already started curling trails of red....
Everything else in her being was paralysed, she hung through moments
that seemed infinities, watching those red missiles whirl down towards her.
She felt torn out of the world. There was nothing else in the world but
a crimson-purple glare and sound, deafening, all-embracing, continuing
sound. Every other light had gone out about her and against this glare
hung slanting walls, pirouetting pillars, projecting fragments of
cornices, and a disorderly flight of huge angular sheets of glass. She
had an impression of a great ball of crimson-purple fire like a maddened
living thing that seemed to be whirling about very rapidly amidst a
chaos of falling masonry, that seemed to be attacking the earth
furiously, that seemed to be burrowing into it like a blazing rabbit....
She had all the sensations of waking up out of a dream.
She found she was lying face downward on a bank of mould and that a
little rivulet of hot water was running over one foot. She tried to
raise herself and found her leg was very painful. She was not clear
whether it was night or day nor where she was; she made a second effort,
wincing and groaning, and turned over and got into a sitting position
and looked about her.
Everything seemed very silent. She was, in fact, in the midst of a vast
uproar, but she did not realise this because her hearing had been destroyed.
At first she could not join on what she saw to any previous experience.
She seemed to be in a strange world, a soundless, ruinous world, a world
of heaped broken things. And it was lit—and somehow this was more
familiar to her mind than any other fact about her—by a flickering,
purplish-crimson light. Then close to her, rising above a confusion of
debris, she recognised the Trocadero; it was changed, something had gone
from it, but its outline was unmistakable. It stood out against a
streaming, whirling uprush of red-lit steam. And with that she recalled
Paris and the Seine and the warm, overcast evening and the beautiful,
luminous organisation of the War Control....
She drew herself a little way up the slope of earth on which she lay,
and examined her surroundings with an increasing understanding....
The earth on which she was lying projected like a cape into the river.
Quite close to her was a brimming lake of dammed-up water, from which
these warm rivulets and torrents were trickling. Wisps of vapour came
into circling existence a foot or so from its mirror-surface. Near at
hand and reflected exactly in the water was the upper part of a
familiar-looking stone pillar. On the side of her away from the water
the heaped ruins rose steeply in a confused slope up to a glaring crest.
Above and reflecting this glare towered pillowed masses of steam rolling
swiftly upward to the zenith. It was from this crest that the livid glow
that lit the world about her proceeded, and slowly her mind connected
this mound with the vanished buildings of the War Control."

Actually I'm glad Wells' description didn't pan out...his
bowling-ball-sized atomic bombs create something like nuclear volcanos
that continue to react for years afterwards.
Although things don't end up quite this bad at a nuclear blast site:

"That zone was rather arbitrarily defined. If our spectator could have
got permission to enter it, he would have entered also a zone of uproar,
a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange purplish-red light,
and quivering and swaying with the incessant explosion of the
radio-active substance. Whole blocks of buildings were alight and
burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and ghastly
and attenuated in comparison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond.
The shells of other edifices already burnt rose, pierced by rows of
window sockets against the red-lit mist.
Every step farther would have been as dangerous as a descent within the
crater of an active volcano. These spinning, boiling bomb centres would
shift or break unexpectedly into new regions, great fragments of earth
or drain or masonry suddenly caught by a jet of disruptive force might
come flying by the explorer's head, or the ground yawn a fiery grave
beneath his feet. Few who adventured into these areas of destruction and
survived attempted any repetition of their experiences. There are
stories of puffs of luminous, radio-active vapour drifting sometimes
scores of miles from the bomb centre and killing and scorching all they
overtook. And the first conflagrations from the Paris centre spread
westward half-way to the sea.
Moreover, the air in this infernal inner circle of red-lit ruins had a
peculiar dryness and a blistering quality, so that it set up a soreness
of the skin and lungs that was very difficult to heal....
Such was the last state of Paris, and such on a larger scale was the
condition of affairs in Chicago, and the same fate had overtaken Berlin,
Moscow, Tokio, the eastern half of London, Toulon, Kiel, and two hundred
and eighteen other centres of population or armament. Each was a flaming
centre of radiant destruction that only time could quench, that indeed
in many instances time has still to quench. To this day, though indeed
with a constantly diminishing uproar and vigour, these explosions
continue. In the map of nearly every country of the world three or four
or more red circles, a score of miles in diameter, mark the position of
the dying atomic bombs and the death areas that men have been forced to
abandon around them. Within these areas perished museums, cathedrals,
palaces, libraries, galleries of masterpieces, and a vast accumulation
of human achievement, whose charred remains lie buried, a legacy of
curious material that only future generations may hope to examine...."

Minus the volcanic aspects the danger of the blast area and its air
that: "had a peculiar dryness and a blistering quality, so that it set
up a soreness of the skin and lungs that was very difficult to heal"
....isn't that bad a description of radiation sickness from fallout
contamination.

Pat

wrote:


Note: This is an entertaining (though not to "20,000 Leagues" caliber)
tour through the solar system. However, it's also anti-semetic to a
degree that even Hamas would blush.


Funny, that wasn't notable in the Classics Illustrated edition. ;-)
Verne had a distinct anti-Jewish tinge to his writing at points, and
their are a lot of anti-black aspects to his work also.
Here's a little something from Robur The Conqueror:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/robc10h.htm

"He was a pure South Carolina Negro, with the head of a fool and the
carcass of an imbecille. Being only one and twenty, he had never been a
slave, not even by birth, but that made no difference to him. Grinning
and greedy and idle, and a magnificent poltroon, he had been the servant
of Uncle Prudent for about three years. Over and over again had his
master threatened to kick him out, but had kept him on for fear of doing
worse. With a master ever ready to venture on the most audacious
enterprises, Frycollin's cowardice had brought him many arduous trials.
But he had some compensation. Very little had been said about his
gluttony, and still less about his laziness.
Ah, Valet Frycollin, if you could only have read the future! Why, oh
why, Frycollin, did you not remain at Boston with the Sneffels, and not
have given them up when they talked of going to Switzerland? Was not
that a much more suitable place for you than this of Uncle Prudent's,
where danger was daily welcomed?
But here he was, and his master had become used to his faults. He had
one advantage, and that was a consideration. Although he was a Negro by
birth he did not speak like a Negro, and nothing is so irritating as
that hateful jargon in which all the pronouns are possessive and all the
verbs infinitive. Let it be understood, then,that Frycollin was a
thorough coward."

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:


Note: This is an entertaining (though not to "20,000 Leagues" caliber)
tour through the solar system. However, it's also anti-semetic to a
degree that even Hamas would blush.


Funny, that wasn't notable in the Classics Illustrated edition. ;-)
Verne had a distinct anti-Jewish tinge to his writing at points, and
their are a lot of anti-black aspects to his work also....

All true...but to be fair, he had a number of black characters---such
as those in North Against South---who are portrayed heroically.

R

Pat Flannery wrote:
Ron Miller wrote:

(I realize that H.G.
Wells has precedence in his "World Set Free", in which he coined the
word "atomic bomb", but what he described was hardly like the real
thing).




Ever read the section where Paris gets nuked? That's fairly accurate
right down to the color of the air ionization from the radiation: (snipped)

Indeed...

The nuclear detonation in "The Man Who Rocked the World", however, is
much more specifically a single, titanic blast---unlike Wells'
continuous explosion. And the authors are very specific about how this
is accomplished. Neither is there any ambiguity about the subsequent
radiation sickness.

Here are a couple of excerpts...

"Instantly the earth blew up like a cannon-up into the air, a
thousand miles up. It was as light as noonday. Deafened by titanic
concussions he fell half dead. The sea boiled and gave off thick clouds
of steam through which flashed dazzling discharges of lightning
accompanied by a thundering, grinding sound like a million mills. The
ocean heaved spasmodically and the air shook with a rending, ripping
noise, as if Nature were bent upon destroying her own handiwork. The
glare was so dazzling that sight was impossible. The falukah was tossed
this way and that, as if caught in a simoon, and he was rolled hither
and yon in the company of Chud Abdullah, and the headless mullet..."

"Though many persons must have lost their lives, the records are
incomplete in this respect... Reaching Sfax they reported their
adventures and offered prayers in gratitude for their extraordinary
escape; but five days later all three began to suffer excruciating
torment from internal burns, the skin upon their heads and bodies began
to peel off, and they died in agony within the week."

""Why not?" repeated Hooker. "All you need is the energy. And
it's lying all round if you could only get at it. That's just what
I'm working at now. Radium, uranium, thorium, actinium-all the
radioactive elements-are, as everybody knows, contin-ually
disintegrating, discharging the enormous energy that is imprisoned in
their molecules. It may take generations, epochs, centuries, for them
to get rid of it and transform themselves into other substances, but
they will inevitably do so eventually. They're doing with more or
less of a rush what all the elements are doing at their leisure. A
single ounce of uranium contains about the same amount of energy that
could be produced by the combustion of ten tons of coal-but it
won't let the energy go. Instead it holds on to it, and the energy
leaks slowly, almost imperceptibly, away, like water from a big
reservoir tapped only by a tiny pipe. 'Atomic energy' Rutherford
calls it. Every element, every substance, has its ready to be touched
off and put to use. The chap who can find out how to release that
energy all at once will revolutionize the civilized world. It will be
like the discovery that water could be turned into steam and made to
work for us-multiplied a million times. If, instead of that energy
just oozing away and the uranium disintegrating infinitesimally each
year, it could be exploded at a given moment you could drive an ocean
liner with a handful of it. You could make the old globe stagger round
and turn upside down! Mankind could just lay off and take a holiday.
But how?""

R

Hey, can those of us who've already bought
"The Moon-Maker" get a discount or an
upgrade?

If you already have Moon-Maker and can wait a couple of days, I will
provide The Man Who Rocked the Earth as a free download. Ditto to
anyone else who would like to do that.

R