The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)
Félix J. Palma
ON THE COSMIC SCALE, ONLY THE FANTASTIC HAS A POSSIBILITY OF BEING TRUE.
Teilhard de Chardin
IT IS A STUPID PRESUMPTION TO GO ABOUT DESPISING AND CONDEMNING AS FALSE ANYTHING THAT SEEMS TO US IMPROBABLE.
Montaigne
“WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT MARS?” ASKED GUSEV. “IS IT INHABITED BY PEOPLE OR MONSTERS?”
Aleksey Tolstoy
PART ONE
WELCOME, DEAR READER, AS YOU PLUNGE VALIANTLY INTO THE THRILLING PAGES OF OUR MELODRAMA, WHERE YOU WILL FIND ADVENTURES THAT TEST YOUR SPIRIT AND POSSIBLY YOUR SANITY!
IF YOU BELIEVE OUR PLANET HAS NOTHING TO FEAR AS IT SPINS IN THE VAST UNIVERSE, YOU WILL PRESENTLY LEARN THAT THE MOST UNIMAGINABLE TERROR CAN REACH US FROM THE STARS.
IT IS MY DUTY TO WARN YOU, BRAVE READER, THAT YOU WILL ENCOUNTER HORRORS THERE, WHICH YOUR INNOCENT SOUL COULD NEVER HAVE IMAGINED WERE GOD’S CREATIONS.
IF OUR TALE DOES NOT TAKE YOU TO THE DIZZIEST HEIGHTS OF EXHILARATION, WE WILL REFUND YOUR FIVE CENTS SO YOU MAY SPEND THEM ON A MORE EXCITING ADVENTURE, IF SUCH A THING EXISTS!
“WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT THING IS, PETERS?” ASKED ONE OF THE OTHER SAILORS, A MAN CALLED CARSON.
THE INDIAN REMAINED SILENT FOR A FEW MOMENTS BEFORE REPLYING, CONTEMPLATING WHETHER HIS COMPANIONS WERE READY FOR THE REVELATION HE WAS ABOUT TO SHARE WITH THEM.
“A DEVIL,” HE SAID IN A GRAVE VOICE. “AND IT CAME FROM THE STARS.”
I
HERBERT GEORGE WELLS WOULD HAVE PREFERRED to live in a fairer, more considerate world, a world where a kind of artistic code of ethics prevented people from exploiting others’ ideas for their own gain, one where the so-called talent of those wretches who had the effrontery to do so would dry up overnight, condemning them to a life of drudgery like ordinary men. But, unfortunately, the world he lived in was not like that. In his world everything was permissible, or at least that is what Wells thought. And not without reason, for only a few months after his book The War of the Worlds had been published, an American scribbler by the name of Garrett P. Serviss had the audacity to write a sequel to it, without so much as informing him of the fact, and even assuming he would be delighted.
That is why on a warm June day the author known as H. G. Wells was walking somewhat absentmindedly along the streets of London, the greatest and proudest city in the world. He was strolling through Soho on his way to the Crown and Anchor. Mr. Serviss, who was visiting England, had invited him there for luncheon in the sincere belief that, with the aid of beer and good food, their minds would be able to commune at the level he deemed appropriate. However, if everything went according to plan, the luncheon wouldn’t turn out the way the ingenuous Mr. Serviss had imagined, for Wells had quite a different idea, which had nothing to do with the union of like minds the American had envisaged. Not that Wells was proposing to turn what might otherwise be a pleasant meal into a council of war because he considered his novel a masterpiece whose intrinsic worth would inevitably be compromised by the appearance of a hastily written sequel. No, Wells’s real fear was that another author might make better use of his own idea. This prospect churned him up inside, causing no end of ripples in the tranquil pool to which he was fond of likening his soul.
In truth, as with all his previous novels, Wells considered The War of the Worlds an unsatisfactory work, which had once again failed in its aims. The story described how Martians possessing a technology superior to that of human beings conquered Earth. Wells had emulated the realism with which Sir George Chesney had imbued his novel The Battle of Dorking, an imaginary account of a German invasion of England, unstinting in its gory detail. Employing a similar realism bolstered by descriptions as elaborate as they were gruesome, Wells had narrated the destruction of London, which the Martians achieved with no trace of compassion, as though humans deserved no more consideration than cockroaches. Within a matter of days, our neighbors in space had trampled on the Earth dwellers’ values and self-respect with the same disdain the British showed toward the native populations in their empire. They had taken control of the entire planet, enslaving the inhabitants and transforming Earth into something resembling a spa for Martian elites. Nothing whatsoever had been able to stand in their way. Wells had intended this dark fantasy as an excoriating attack on the excessive zeal of British imperialism, which he found loathsome. But the fact was that now people believed Mars was inhabited. New, more powerful telescopes like that of the Italian Giovanni Schiaparelli had revealed furrows on the planet’s red surface, which some astronomers had quickly declared, as if they had been there for a stroll, to be canals constructed by an intelligent civilization. This had instilled in people a fear of Martian invasion, exactly as Wells had described it. However, this didn’t come as much of a surprise to Wells, for something similar had happened with The Time Machine, in which the eponymous artifact had eclipsed Wells’s veiled attack on class society.
And now Serviss, who apparently enjoyed something of a reputation as a science journalist in his own country, had published a sequel to it: Edison’s Conquest of Mars. And what was Serviss’s novel about? The title fooled no one: the hero was Thomas Edison, whose innumerable inventions had made him into something of a hero in the eyes of his fellow Americans, and subsequently into the wearisome protagonist of every species of novel. In Serviss’s sequel, the ineffable Edison invented a powerful ray gun and, with the help of the world’s nations, built a flotilla of ships equipped with antigravitational engines, which set sail for Mars driven by a thirst for revenge.