''Two Planets'' (german: Auf zwei Planeten, lit. ''On Two Planets'',

1897 Events January–March * January 2 – The International Alpha Omicron Pi sorority is founded, in New York City. * January 4 – A British force is ambushed by Chief Ologbosere, son-in-law of the ruler. This leads to a puni ...

) is an influential

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

novel postulating intelligent

life on Mars The possibility of life on Mars is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to the planet's proximity and similarities to Earth. To date, no proof of past or present life has been found on Mars. Cumulative evidence suggests that during the ...

Kurd Lasswitz Kurd Lasswitz (german: link=no, Kurd Laßwitz; 20 April 1848 – 17 October 1910) was a German author, scientist, and philosopher. He has been called "the father of German science fiction". He sometimes used the pseudonym ''Velatus''. Biograph ...

. It was first published in hardcover by Felber in two volumes in 1897; there have been many editions since, including abridgements by the author's son Erich Lasswitz (Cassianeum, 1948) and Burckhardt Kiegeland and Martin Molitor (Verlag Heinrich Scheffler, 1969). The 1948 abridgement, with "incidental parts" of the text taken from the 1969 version, was the basis of the first translation into English by Hans H. Rudnick, published in hardcover by

Southern Illinois University Press Southern Illinois University Press or SIU Press, founded in 1956, is a university press located in Carbondale, Illinois, owned and operated by Southern Illinois University. The press publishes approximately 50 titles annually, among its more tha ...

in 1971. A paperback edition followed from

Popular Library Popular Library was a New York paperback book company established in 1942 by Leo Margulies and Ned Pines, who at the time were major pulp magazine and newspaper publishers. The company's logo of a pine tree was a tribute to Pines, and another ...

in 1976. The story covers topics like colonization, mutually assured destruction and clash of civilizations many generations before these topics came into politics.

Summary

A group of Arctic explorers seeking the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

find a

Martian Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s as the Moon was evidently lifeless. At the time, the pr ...

base there. The Martians can only operate in a polar region not because of climatic requirements, but because their spacecraft cannot withstand the rotation of the Earth at other

latitude In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north pol ...

s. The aliens resemble Earth people in every respect except that they have much larger eyes, with which they can express more emotions. Their name for the inhabitants of Earth is "the small-eyed ones". Lasswitz's Martians are highly advanced, and initially peaceable; they take some of the explorers back with them to visit

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

dominated by

canals Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...

. The Martian society seems to be enlightened, peaceful and highly advanced at first, but later the explorers learn about a plan to colonize Earth for farming solar power. In the following years, Mars subdues with ease every major government on Earth by force and diplomacy and promises to bring peace, education and prosperity for all. The situations start to look a lot like European colonization of third world countries before. Only parts of North America stay mostly independent for their low population density in the late 19th century. Over time, the Martian colonists become more arrogant towards the general population, which leads to uprising and atrocities from both sides with no chance of winning for the technologically inferior people from Earth, who form an organized planet-wide underground movement which operates from the shadows, steals technologies and unites the world in a final push against the Martians. In the final confrontation, both sides are faced with no way of winning the conflict as both sides have the power to annihilate the opposing infrastructure but not the opposing armies. In the end, an uneasy truce is made and honest talks start, giving Earth more freedom but still changed forever.

Mars as depicted by Lasswitz

Lasswitz hewed closely to the description by the astronomer

Giovanni Schiaparelli Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli ( , also , ; 14 March 1835 – 4 July 1910) was an Italian astronomer and science historian. Biography He studied at the University of Turin, graduating in 1854, and later did research at Berlin Observatory, ...

of Martian channels (''canali''), and even closer to that of

Percival Lowell Percival Lowell (; March 13, 1855 – November 12, 1916) was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, and furthered theories of a ninth planet within the Solar System. ...

, who viewed them as actual canals engineered by intelligent beings. Lasswitz's depiction is more reflective of the views of these astronomers than those of other science fiction stories of the era dealing with the planet, including

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

The War of the Worlds ''The War of the Worlds'' is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells, first serialised in 1897 by ''Pearson's Magazine'' in the UK and by ''Cosmopolitan (magazine), Cosmopolitan'' magazine in the US. The novel's first appear ...

'',

Edwin Lester Arnold Edwin Lester Linden Arnold (14 May 1857 – 1 March 1935) was an English author. Most of his works were issued under his working name of Edwin Lester Arnold. Life and literary career Arnold was born in Swanscombe, Kent, as son of Sir Edwin Arnol ...

's '' Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation'' and Edgar Rice Burroughs's tales of Barsoom, all of which were all written in the wake of Lasswitz's book.

Literary significance

This novel was popular in the Germany of its day.

Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the develop ...

and Walter Hohmann were inspired by reading it as children just as

Robert H. Goddard Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945) was an American engineer, professor, physicist, and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket. Goddard successfully laun ...

was by reading ''

''. While there was no English translation before 1971, Everett F. Bleiler notes that it likely influenced American genre SF via

Hugo Gernsback Hugo Gernsback (; born Hugo Gernsbacher, August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967) was a Luxembourgish–American editor and magazine publisher, whose publications including the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as pub ...

: "Hugo Gernsback would have been saturated in Lasswitz's work, and Gernsback's theoretical position of technologically based liberalism and many of his little scientific crotchets resemble ideas in Lasswitz's work." Everett F. Bleiler, ''Science-Fiction: The Early Years'', Kent State University Press, 1990, pp.422-24

Reception

Theodore Sturgeon Theodore Sturgeon (; born Edward Hamilton Waldo, February 26, 1918 – May 8, 1985) was an American fiction author of primarily fantasy, science fiction and horror, as well as a critic. He wrote approximately 400 reviews and more than 120 sh ...

, reviewing that 1971 translation for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', found ''Two Planets'' "curious and fascinating . . . full of quaint dialogue, heroism, decorous lovemaking, and gorgeous gadgetry." Bleiler noted that the translated text was severely abridged, losing 40% of the original text; although the quality of the translation was good, he characterized the abridgment as "a bad emasculation . . . This loss of detail results in a skeletization that omits important background and weakens motivations and plot connections.

Lester del Rey Lester del Rey (June 2, 1915 – May 10, 1993) was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the author of many books in the juvenile Winston Science Fiction series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and scienc ...

similarly dismissed the 1971 translation as a bowdlerization" which is "bad scholarship, . . . unfair to readers ndgrossly unfair to Lasswitz." Del Rey noted that the translation was based on a 1948 abridgment prepared by the author's son, with other modifications made by the translator."Reading Room", '' If'', June 1972, p.111

References

{{Authority control 1897 German novels German science fiction novels 1897 science fiction novels Novels set on Mars Planetary romances Novels about extraterrestrial life