Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky did real-life work crucial to space-flight and is one of the neglected pioneers of Science Fiction. Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at a few of his works.
DREAMS OF EARTH AND SKY (1895) – The opening section of this piece presents the well-worn Hollow Earth with an interior sun storyline. The real treasure is found in the “Dreams of the Sky” portion.
An asteroid in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter is so large that today it would be called a Dwarf Planet like Ceres. The planetoid is inhabited by ambulatory plant-like humanoids who have wings instead of arms and who live in small versions of greenhouses.
These flying plant-people from the Asteroid Belt obtain nourishment through chlorophyll and solar radiation. They also have advanced technology like the harnessing of dismantled asteroids into rings, resulting in lower gravity for manufacturing work.
The beings have even created “space-trains” capable of taking them on interstellar journeys.
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OUT OF THE EARTH (1920) – Set in the year 2017 A.D. this tale features what readers are told is the first manned flight to the moon, some 48 years AFTER it happened in real life.
An international team of tycoons and scientific adventurers are planning to explore the universe, with the moon an obvious first step. Continue reading
This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog will look at some of the stories Marvel Comics created around the licensed I.P. of Micronauts toys. 
BARON KARZA – The evil, black-armored Baron Karza was a very impressive villain, despite being one of the most blatant Darth Vader ripoffs this side of Japan’s Swords of the Space Ark movies.
SPACE GLIDER ARCTURUS RANN – The leader of the Micronauts. Rann was the very first Micronaut (the Microverse’s version of Astronauts), who was placed in suspended animation and sent out in a spaceship called The Endeavor on a 1,000-year mission of exploration throughout the Microverse. 
PART FIVE – Horn recounted an incredible event he attended in Angola, which was not yet the name of the country, just a populated region. He and his subordinate Trade Agents were guests at a conjo – a performance of traveling entertainers called the Akowas.
THE FEARSOME ISLAND (1896) – Written by British author Albert Kinross. An unusual work with a multi-layered narrative. The entire novel was penned by Kinross, but it is one of the countless works of fiction presented as if it is a rediscovered manuscript relating the “true” adventures of Silas Fordred from the 1500s. Kinross adds another layer by explaining the sci-fi devices that Fordred could not comprehend and put down to sorcery and the supernatural. 
DAZZLER Vol 1 #1 (March 1981) 
AFTER LONDON aka WILD ENGLAND (1885) – Written by Richard Jefferies. A post-apocalypse saga in which the shifting of the Earth’s axis has reduced the British Isles to a medieval level with feral animals and pockets of toxic wasteland. There are scattered “kingdoms” and roving bands of marauders but no contact with the world outside the area. 
The Thames and Severn Rivers have backed up, forming a large central lake in England. What was once London is a toxic marsh so deadly to human life that its gases and vapors, when carried by the winds, kill or drive mad humans exposed to them. 
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at licensed I.P. Rom the Spaceknight’s crossovers with Marvel Comics characters. 
ROM Vol 1 #5 (April 1980) 
PART FOUR – We pick up this time with Trader Horn’s reflection on how the British and German firms in Africa dominated the European trade in ivory and rubber, while France was a distant third. There were whispers that the French (whom Horn referred to far more insultingly than he ever referred to the indigenous Africans) were strategizing about using their Colonial Governments to limit the success of Great Britain and the German Empire wherever they could. 
These two works were written by Lucian, the Greek philosopher and satirist who lived in the 2nd century A.D. Lucian was noted not just for his philosophical observations but also for two works that defied definition by his contemporaries but would easily fall into the category of science fiction today. Both works are from roughly 150 A.D. and feature trips to the moon by pseudo-scientific means. 
He discovered that the moon (on which he could breathe just like on Earth) was populated by the souls of the deceased (roughly twelve hundred years before Dante’s Paradiso). From the moon Menippus made the astonishing observation that the Earth was round and not flat, in a wry addition to the then-ongoing philosophical debate about the subject. 
DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU Vol 1 #22 (March 1976) 
While fleeing those villains, Jonathan was accidentally exposed to the Zero Fluid, transforming him into a super-powered being able to shoot Zero Energy from his hands in the form of rays of concussive force. That concussive force from his hands could allow him to fly, as well, the same way the Fantastic Four villain Blastarr does. 
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