work designed to satisfy a reading public's
waiting appetite for the unusual--in short, presenting legitimatized
sensationalism at the psychological moment--this must have had
irresistible appeal. That _Edison's Conquest of Mars_ was written on
editorial commission, perhaps as fast as it appeared, seems, then, the
most probable interpretation.

Historically, the work is one of the earliest to employ the
interplanetary theme. It is the first to portray a battle fought by
space craft in the airless void; and possibly the first also to propose
the use of sealed suits that enable men to traverse a vacuum. Of the
more minor twists of plot initially found here that have since become
parts of the "pulp" science-fiction writers' standard stock-in-trade,
there are literally too many to mention.

The novel opens with a description of the ruins of eastern America.
Although the Martians who survived terrestrial bacteria have left the
planet, astronomical observations show a recurrence on the red planet of
the same lights that were a prelude to the first onslaught. The
conclusion is inevitable: a second invasion is on the way. Serviss
pictures the gathering together of the most famous scientists of the
day--Edison, Roentgen, Lord Kelvin and others. The Martian machines and
weapons left behind are dismantled; their principles of operation are
discovered and duplicated; and a defense against their forces is
perfected. Armed with this knowledge and with the "disintegrator," a
device invented by Edison which is capable of reducing to atoms any
substance at which it is aimed, the nations of the world pool their
resources and launch an invasion of Mars across interplanetary space.

More by way of explanation than justification, it should be stated that
science today is diminishing the number of critics who are wont to label
plots of this nature "too fantastic." For them to say that the colossal
has become more important than the rational is, I feel, misleading. For
this is a branch of literature that is in many respects the most
rational of all: it is a symptom of progress. These same critics also
complain that a fantastic plot is frequently developed at the expense of
characterization. To this, one may answer that at times what happens can
be more important than the people to whom it happens. In essence, both
charges derive from laying undue stress upon psychology as the only
legitimate fibre from which a fictional cloth may be woven.