ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: THE ALERIEL NOVELS (1874-1893)

A VOICE FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1874) – Written by W.S. Lach-Szyrma. The 1874 date marks when a selection of stories that Lach-Szyrma had written beginning at some point around 1865 in untraced magazines were finally collected in novel form. The author penned more novels in the series as the years went by.

Aleriel, an alien from Venus, has come to Earth by piloting a vessel into space, then hitching a ride on a comet he attached it to. He is winged and, like other Venusians, has a lifespan of thousands of years. To better move around on Earth while observing humans, Aleriel tucks his wings under his shirt in a bulge that lets him pass for a hunchback. He uses the alias Dr. Posela. 

Eventually during his years traveling among human beings, “Dr. Posela” rescues a friendly Englishman who is among those trapped in the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. The Earthling gets returned to England, and is delighted with Dr. Posela and his philosophical observations about humanity and his theories that life certainly exists on many other planets.

Dr. Posela’s theories are enthusiastically embraced by the young Brit and he impresses his Oxford professors by including them in his own essays. 

Ultimately, Posela reveals his real name and untucks his wings to prove his Venusian nature. He describes Venus as a scientific and spiritual utopia inhabited by beings like himself who never “fell” into sin the way people on Earth did. The clouds of Venus protect them from observation by Earth telescopes.

Striking a VERY discordant note for modern readers, Aleriel states that Venusians only remained “unfallen” by making their females remain subdued, modest and non-threatening.  We are told that this avoided “tempting” male Venusians into promiscuity and let them focus all their energies on philosophy, science and on devotion to the Divine Lawgiver, who created lifeforms throughout the universe and dictated ethics and morals to them.

Aleriel goes on to return to Venus but corresponds with the narrator about his subsequent travels in space. 

ALERIEL, or A VOYAGE TO OTHER WORLDS (1883) – Our favorite Venusian is joined by several of his kind as he resumes his travels, this time aboard a spaceship that operates independently of comets. After determining that Earth’s moon is devoid of life Aleriel and his crew arrive on Mars. They conceal their spaceship under Martian snows while they go forth to explore.

The inhabitants of Mars are intelligent and scientifically advanced lion-like humanoids. It turns out that long ago Mars was consumed with warfare, but all of that ended after Mars got its version of a visitation from a Messiah called the Holy One. 

The Martians then redirected their energies to the universal teachings of the Divine Lawgiver. War is now a thing of the past, with violent youngsters given one legal warning then are executed for a second offense. The Red Planet’s post-visitation culture is compared by the Polish-British author to the hustle and bustle of America, albeit with communist and theocratic principles acting in unison.

Regarding Jupiter, we readers learn that the planet was water-covered, and the lifeforms were all intelligent fishlike beings. The Venusians are unable to communicate with the Jovians through what we have been told are universal methods, unfortunately.

Apparently – and the author is not very clear about this at all – this lack of familiarity with the universal methods taught by the Divine Lawgiver convinced the self-satisfied Venusians that the inhabitants of Jupiter were beyond salvage, or a threat to other life in the universe, or … something.

Aleriel’s letter to his British pen pal explains that the Venusians WIPED OUT all life on Jupiter by electrifying the water. No, I’m not joking. And Lach-Szyma was a very earnest clergyman so it’s not likely he was using this development to underline the bloody, genocidal urges that can be displayed by self-righteous beings like those from Venus.

Hell, maybe Jupiter had simply not yet been visited by its own version of a Messiah and THAT’S the only reason the Jovians were not well-versed in the ways of the Divine Lawgiver. And Aleriel’s casual airs regarding all this might as well be “So, anyway, we wiped out all life there and mosied along.” 

Saturn turns out to be a Lovecraftian hellscape inhabited by enormous fungal creatures and insectoid monsters. Yet Saturnian life does not get snuffed out by the Venusians.

At any rate, the Venusians stop off at the Earth on their way back to Venus, and in a covert meeting in Switzerland, Aleriel and company show their spaceship to his British pen pal and his wife.   

LETTERS FROM THE PLANETS (1887) – Aleriel sends missives to his Earthling friend via a crystal cone that lands like a fallen meteorite in a Druid Ring near the original narrator’s home. Aleriel mentions that he and his colleagues have done intensive studies on Earth’s moon and have discovered relics of an ancient civilization.   

The Venusians revisit Mars, focusing this time on its south pole. They find enormous caverns in which the Martians have built factories and mills that harness power from the Red Planet’s internal heat. Aleriel wonders if Earth will one day learn to draw on geo-thermal forces.   

Returning to Venus, Aleriel is smothered in plaudits for what his expeditions have accomplished. He is now Roving Commissioner and expounds to his Earth pal how Venusian Town Hall meetings work. I’m not joking.

Aleriel departs with his crew on a new expedition, this one to Mercury. Due to that planet’s nearness to the sun a new type of design is needed for their spaceship, but it still operates via antigravity. It turns out that Mercury is heavily populated, with its inhabitants dwelling on floating islands in the sky.

The Mercurians are more scientifically advanced than the high and mighty Venusians. Next, Aleriel and his crew move on to the sun. They are stopped short by a written command from the Divine Lawgiver, which message appears in a cloud and orders them to go no closer to the sun.   

After a brief return to Venus, our explorers travel back to Mars for some more in-depth studies. The canals of Mars have artificial floating islands on them. The Martian diet consists mostly of subaquatic plants.

Martian homes are dome-shaped and each one boasts a Sacred Fire. The leonine beings of the Red Planet have taken to practicing a large-scale version of terraforming in which they sculpt mountains into works of art. 

Aleriel and his crew are given tours through the floating cities on the canals. They are shown the pontoons supporting those cities and reflect on the skyscrapers in which are the island dwellers’ homes and businesses.

A fairly pointless trip to an unnamed moon of Jupiter follows. After soaking in the sight of the planet Jupiter in the sky above its satellite the Venusians move on.

UNDER OTHER CONDITIONS: A TALE (1892) – Readers are introduced to another Venusian, this one calling himself Dr. Ezariel, just as Aleriel once went by Dr. Posela. He’s in Italy, but the Venus to Oxford Axis continues as Ezariel befriends a vacationing British Oxonian named Philip Maynard.

Philip and Ezariel save fellow vacationing Brit Lilian Carlyon from drowning via the Venusian’s advanced medicine and a romance develops between her and Philip. Months later back in England, Ezariel and Maynard resume their friendship. 

 When Lilian is later diagnosed with tuberculosis, Maynard goes in search of Ezariel, hoping that his medicine can once again save her. While tracking down his unusual friend, Philip meets many other people who interacted with Ezariel and they all recount how the altruistic figure rescued them, too, from various problems.

Ezariel senses that Philip Maynard is searching for him and contacts him telepathically. After curing Lilian’s tuberculosis, he becomes a frequent companion of the couple.

Lilian comes to suspect something sinister behind Ezariel’s odd nature and spreads her suspicion to Philip. They confront their unusual friend and Ezariel expresses disappointment in them but goes on to explain his Venusian nature.

He also tells the young Brits that life on many worlds does NOT contradict the Bible and explains why in this work that is sadly more religious dissertation than science fiction epic. Ezariel also discusses how his Venusian form is made of materials that make him immune to Earth weapons, as assorted witnesses had mentioned to Maynard during his search.

Their suspicions allayed, Philip and Lilian are taken aboard Ezariel’s hidden vessel that has four wings and is designed for intra-atmospheric flight. He takes them with him to his spaceship in the Alps, where he transfers several specimens of Earth materials from the winged craft to the spaceship.

The trio part company as Ezariel returns to Venus in the ending of this lackluster story. 

CORRESPONDING WITH THE PLANETS (1893) – This short story served as a post-script to the Aleriel novels. The Venusian resumes contact with his Earth pen pal in order to instruct him how the people of our planet can make the initial steps toward interplanetary communication.

Those methods include concentrating electrical lighting on bodies of water or masses of snow, and making enormous representations of geometric shapes and human forms in the landscape. These will supposedly catch the attention of alien beings when they train their telescopes on Earth.

Aleriel doesn’t explain why he and his people can’t just inform the inhabitants of other planets about us. This uninspired short story is even more disappointing than the preceding novel was.

Setting aside the final two stories in this series, I would definitely say that the Aleriel saga can make for fun reading. There are a lot of interesting ideas in Lach-Szyrma’s writing, and his frequent digressions into religious principles can be skipped over if the reader finds them boring.

A Voice from Another World, Aleriel or A Voyage to Other Worlds, and Letters from the Planets are entertaining and infuriating by turns, but I found the overall reading experience worthwhile. 

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