Edison's Conquest of Mars (Illustrated) (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781500212483)

Garrett Putnam Serviss (1851 - 1929) was an American astronomer and an early science fiction writer. Born in upstate New York, he majored in science at Cornell, then earned a law degree at Columbia University. Instead of practicing law, he joined The New York Sun as a reporter. His ability to explain scientific details in a way that made them clear to the ordinary reader led to Andrew Carnegie selecting him to deliver The Urania Lectures on astronomy, cosmology, and other scientific topics. In all, he wrote fifteen books, eight of them devoted to astronomy. Five were science fiction novels, including an unauthorized sequel to H.G. Wells' War of the World. This book - Edison's Conquest of Mars - was written on assignment from The Boston Globe, intended as a follow-up to his Wells homage, Fighters from Mars. An avid mountain climber, Serviss scaled the Matterhorn at 43. He described this as his attempt "to get as far away from terrestrial gravity as possible."