The Official Blurb
Edison’s Conquest of Mars, by Garrett P. Serviss, is one of the many science fiction novels published in the nineteenth century. Although science fiction was not at the time thought of as a distinct literary genre, it was a very popular literary form, with almost every fiction magazine regularly publishing science fiction stories and novels. “Edison’s Conquest of Mars” was published in 1898 as an unauthorized sequel to H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, but did not achieve the fame of its predecessor. The book was endorsed by Thomas Edison, the hero of the book — though not by Wells.
My Review
I was drawn to this book because I'm a big fan of the "War of the Worlds". This story couldn't really fail to be a good story, spaceships, aliens and warfare litter the book in a loverly pile of SciFi crunchiness.
The book starts off with a very short ride through the recovery of mankind from the Martian attack up to the mounting of an Attack on Mars. Then it slows down to a more normal narative pace as the human forces are mustered and set force to cross the gulf of space.
At that point we have a space opera type adventure as they discover the unknowns of space suffering setbacks and discovering the amazing.
Once the human fleet reaches Mars the pace picks up and the action is non stop. Of course being such an old book, many of the assumptions made by the author are complete nonsence but this really adds to the "Classic" feel of the tale.
All in all I really enjoyed this book. And considering that it's free, the price was a bonus!
Reading 2/3
Production 2/3
Story 2/3
Total Score 6/9
This book is available from Librivox.
There is an Audio promo for this book.
