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 Many writers of popular
literature and science fiction discovered that a fertile imagination
was one of the most vital elements in the formula for space travel.
Under the impression that the sun draws up dewdrops, Cyrano de Bergerac
suggested fancifully that one might fly by trapping dew in bottles,
strapping the bottles to oneself, and standing in sunlight.
 Engraving from the
1872 illustrated edition of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the
Moon. In this illustration, the director of the Cambridge Observatory
can be seen at his post on the Rocky Mountain.
 Jules Verne published
his first science fiction novel in 1865. It was called From the
Earth to the Moon. As shown here in an illustration, passengers
in Verne's space ship enjoying their first taste of weightlessness.
 Edward Everett Hale's
characters in The Brick Moon planned to use brick for the satellite
they planned to send up into space. The brick would protect the
satellite from fire. In the story, the 37 inhabitants of the satellite
signaled the Earth in Morse code by jumping up and down on the outside
of the satellite.
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Science Fiction Literature
Many of the people who became pioneers in the field of space exploration were influenced by literature they read when they were young, particularly the works of two authors, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. But many other "science fiction" authors also led people to try to think of ways of turning dreams into reality.
It is difficult to determine what was the first fictional description of space travel because it depends upon what definition a person chooses to use. But the first description of a travel through space and a landing on another world occurred in the second century. A Greek writer, Lucian of Samosata, wrote the Vera Historia, or True History. Lucian was a satirist and repeatedly assured his readers that he was lying to them with his tall tale. In the story that followed, he described a sailing ship picked up by a great wind and held in the air for seven days and nights before being set down on a large round island, obviously the moon. The crew encountered strange beasts, but eventually returned home.
Many other writers told tales of trips to the Moon in the following centuries. The heroes of their stories used many different means to travel to Luna, including wings, balloons, giant springs, and mysterious elements with names like Lunarium. But two authors in particular inspired generations of people who read their works.
Jules Verne was a Frenchman who was probably the most influential early science fiction writer and whose ideas still inspire writers and dreamers. Many literary scholars consider him to be the person most responsible for the creation of the field of science fiction literature. In 1865, Verne published De la terre a la lune, or From the Earth to the Moon. In the story, scientists and engineers construct a 900-foot-long cannon to shoot a space capsule to the Moon. The book was quite accurate for its day, although anybody unfortunate enough to be inside such a space capsule would have been squashed into jelly by the acceleration of launch. In a second book, Verne described the actual journey to the moon, but his characters did not land on the surface. Verne's novels were immensely successful and were translated into many languages.
H.G. Wells was an Englishman who followed in Verne's footsteps. Wells wrote numerous stories about subjects and journeys far beyond the scientific abilities of his day. Among Wells' most famous works is The War of the Worlds, which was initially serialized in a magazine in 1897 and published as a book the following year. The story was about an invasion of earth by Martians, who roamed the earth in giant spherical spacecraft on thin legs and destroyed everything they encountered using advanced weaponry. Humanity is apparently doomed, but eventually the Martians succumb to the microbes in Earth's atmosphere.
A few years later, Wells published his book The First Men in the Moon, about a journey to the Moon where the protagonists encounter insectlike creatures living underground. The spaceship travels to the Moon using an antigravity material named Cavorite. As historian Frederick Ordway has noted, Wells' book essentially marked the end of an era in science fiction literature, because by then it was becoming apparent that rockets were the most efficient means of traveling the vast distances through space and so authors no longer needed to invent magical materials to reach the Moon, Mars, or any other planetary body.
During the 1920s, science fiction stories found wide circulation in mass market magazines known as "pulps" because of the cheapness of their paper. Many authors who became giants in their field obtained their start by writing for the pulps. Three authors emerged during the so-called "golden age of science fiction" that started in the late 1930s and became highly influential for generations of fans and other writers. They were: Robert Heinlein, Issac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke.
Robert Heinlein was an American born in 1907, who started writing for the pulp magazines in the late 1930s. Soon he was writing for mass market general publications like the Saturday Evening Post and demonstrating that science fiction was a serious literary field. His novels often contained a political message, usually a conservative message about freedom and responsibility. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress concerned a revolt by a penal colony on the Moon. Starship Troopers was about infantry soldiers in a futuristic society where citizenship has to be earned through military service. Heinlein also wrote so-called "juvenile" novels aimed at young people. One of the most notable of these was Rocketship Galileo, a 1947 novel that inspired the 1950 movie Destination Moon. Another juvenile novel, Space Cadet, published in 1948, featured cell phones and orbital nuclear weapons.
Issac Asimov was born in Russia in 1920, and came to the United States when he was three years old. Asimov was originally a chemist who discovered that there was more money to be made in writing. Asimov became a highly successful writer in the 1950s, known for his stories about vast space empires and robots. His Foundation series of novels served as a benchmark for what came to be known as "space opera" about civilizations that spanned the galaxy and lasted for millennia. His "three laws of robotics," which stipulate that no robot is allowed to harm a human being, is often misunderstood by people to be a real rule for robot designers, but in reality nothing prevents a robot from killing a human being but the programming developed for it.
Arthur C. Clarke was an Englishman born in 1917. During World War II Clarke worked on British radar and in 1945, he wrote an article for the radio engineering magazine Wireless World proposing that three satellites placed in high orbits around the Earth could be used to provide global communications. This was later demonstrated in the many satellites that were placed into geosynchronous orbit. Clarke also became highly successful in the 1950s with stories like Sands of Mars and Childhood's End. His short story The Sentinel inspired the 1968 movie 2001, A Space Odyssey.
All of these authors sold many books and influenced other writers, either to write similar stories or to write stories that responded to what they found incomplete or objectionable about their work. But the works of Verne, Wells, Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke were probably most important to the field of space exploration by inspiring young people to dream about traveling to other planets. The realities of physics and engineering dashed some of these dreams, but represented challenges to others, who grew up to work for NASA or the U.S. Air Force.
-Dwayne Day
Sources and further reading:
Costello, Peter. Jules Verne: Inventor of Science Fiction. New York: Scribner, 1978. Gunn, James. Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975. Jules-Verne, Jean, translated by Roger Greaves. Jules Verne: A Biography. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1976. Williamson, Jack. H.G. Wells: Critic of Progress. Baltimore, Md.: Mirage Press, 1973. Von Braun, Wernher, and Ordway, Frederick I. History of Rocketry and Space Travel. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1966.
"Arthur C. Clarke Unauthorized Home Page." http://www.lsi.usp.br/~rbianchi/clarke/ Dehs, Volker, Har'El, Zvi, and Margot, Jean-Michel. "The Complete Jules Verne Bibliography." http://jv.gilead.org.il/biblio/. "The H.G. Wells Society." http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/ "Isaac Asimov." http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-9,00.html "Robert A. Heinlein – Dean of Science Fiction Writers." http://www.wegrokit.com/ "Robert A. Heinlein Topics." http://www.allscifi.com/Topic.asp?TopicID=15 The Heinlein Society. http://www.heinleinsociety.org
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