THE BRICK MOON (1872) – Written by Edward Everett Hale, best known for The Man without a Country. This novella started out as a serialized story published in 1869 in the October, November and December issues of Atlantic Monthly. A follow-up installment, titled Life in the Brick Moon, was published in the February 1870 issue.
In 1872, the entire four-part piece was published by Roberts Brothers as part of His Level Best and Other Stories, which contained works by multiple authors. The Brick Moon was published again in 1899 as part of Edward Everett Hale’s The Brick Moon and Other Stories.
The story begins in the 1840s when Frederic Ingham, the tale’s narrator, and his college friends Orcutt and Halliburton plan a dream project which winds up taking decades to fulfill – a manmade artificial satellite, the first recorded in science fiction stories.
The possibility of wireless communication was unknown in that time period, so the three friends don’t plan to use their Brick Moon to transmit and receive communications. They instead plan for it to serve as a heavenly object that ships at sea can use as a marker. Continue reading
Balladeer's Blog 