THE AMERICAN ADVENTURER: STORY OF THE SECOND TRAVELER (1879) – While looking for new blog posts to mark Frontierado this year I unexpectedly came across this short story that is more sci-fi than Wild West.
Author and poet Don Maguire’s short story collection The American Adventurer is basically an Old West imitation of Canterbury Tales. The title figure is an itinerant peddler in the west who invites other guests at a Little Rock, AR inn to take turns sharing a tale from their life. The individual tales are titled Story of the First Traveler, and so on.
Most of the stories would fit in with Wild West tall tales and the like, but Story of the Second Traveler features wild science fiction elements. An Irishman named Fitzhugh relates how he was once shipwrecked off the coast of South America. (But wait, there’s more as the old joke goes.)
Clinging to a makeshift raft he found an abandoned Spanish ship loaded with gold plundered in the 1500s. Eventually reaching Lima, Peru, Fitzhugh mustered a party to recover the gold and became wealthy beyond his dreams. Continue reading
TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR (1887) – Nearly eighty years before the movie Fantastic Voyage, this work of “ancient” science fiction detailed a party of shrunken heroes on an odyssey through a human being’s body. This cleverly-titled tale was written by Alfred Taylor Schofield under the name Luke T Courteney. 
THE MAD SCIENTIST: A TALE OF THE FUTURE (1908) – Written by Raymond McDonald, a pen name for two Canadians – Raymond Alfred Leger and Edward Richard McDonald. An unusual aspect of this novel was the publisher’s offer of a thousand-dollar reward for any reader who deciphered and provided the best breakdown of a coded message in the story. 
WONDERWORLDS (Wunderwelten) (1911) – Written by Friedrich W. Mader. This novel was published in its native German in 1911 but not translated into English until 1932 under the title Distant Worlds. Some sources mistakenly list 1932 as its original year of publication. 
A TRIP TO THE MOON BY MR. MURTAGH MCDERMOT, CONTAINING OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS MADE BY HIM (1728) – The real author of this is unknown, since it was published using the pen name Murtagh McDermot. Unless, of course, the writer used their real name for the main character. 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE: A STORY OF THE YEAR 2236 (1900) – Written by Robert W Cole. I left out the first half of the title for the headline, since The Struggle For Empire sounds like a mundane history book. In reality this novel was a very, very early example of the Space Opera sub-genre. 
Initially the Earth colonized and inhabited the planets and certain moons of our own solar system all the way out to Neptune. (Pluto was not discovered until 1930.) In a quaint quasi-Steam-Punk way, all of those planets and moons have Earth-like atmospheres and conditions. 
THE GUARDIAN OF MYSTERY ISLAND (1896) – Written by Dr Edmond Molcini. Mystery Island lies off the coast of Maine and everyone near the coast considers the place haunted by a true monstrosity – a large ghost-dog. 
Last month Balladeer’s Blog gave an overview of the German sci-fi hero Captain Mors the Air Pirate 
MASTER OF THE SKIES – The first short story featuring Kapitan Mors der Luftpirat is set in 1905. This origin tale saw him visit the mountain graves of his wife and children before leading his European and Indian crew against the villains responsible for their deaths and for his fugitive status. 
CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL or THE LAST DAYS OF A PHILOSOPHER (1830) – Written by THE Sir Humphrey Davy, this is largely a work of philosophical discourse but with one section devoted to a science fiction tale: The Vision. 
The first planet they travel to is Saturn, where Davy is awestruck by the alien landscape. Strange clouds fill the skies and among the oddest planetary features are large columns of liquid which flow from the ground upward. Saturn is inhabited by intelligent beings with three pairs of wings and organs like elephant trunks dangling from their bodies. 
OMEGON (1915-1916) – Written by George Frederick Stratton, this serialized story dealt with a fictional war of super-scientific weaponry between the United States on one side and China, Japan and Mexico on the other. 
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