Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record, Volume 1This two-volume novel is credited as an originator of the "sword and planet" sub-genre. Greg's tale detailsthe development of an anti-gravity technology called apergy. The narrator usesit to travel to Mars in 1830 in a spacecraft named theAstronaut. The Martians he meets are short, diminutive creatures who do not believe that the narrator is from another planet. The book contains what was probably the first alien language in any work of fiction. |
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Common terms and phrases
absolute afford animals answered apergic current apergy appeared asked Astronaut atmosphere band barycrite birds Camptâ carbonic acid carriage centre certainly character colour course creature dark diameter direction disc discerned discometer distance Earth electric employed equal Esmo esve Eveena evidently eyes feet force give golden band half halo hand height host human hundred inches land latter less light look lower Mars Martial Martialists material means metal metalloid millions of miles minute mist natural nearly never night observed occult occupied once orbit passed perhaps peristyle planet portion present reached recognised Regent rendered replied resembling roof round scarcely seemed seen sextant side silver silver star snow-line space speak square miles stars surface surprise telescope terrestrial thought tion tone turned twelve utterly veil vessel visible voyage whole window words
Popular passages
Page 27 - In shape my Astronaut somewhat resembled the form of an antique Dutch EastIndiaman, being widest and longest in a plane equidistant from floor and ceiling, the sides and ends sloping outwards from the floor and again inwards towards the roof. The deck and keel, however, were absolutely flat, and each one hundred feet in length and fifty in breadth, the height of the vessel being about twenty feet.
Page 28 - ... one in the upper, the other in the lower half of the wall, to enable me to discern any object in whatever direction.
Page 133 - Equalists were driven from one untenable position to another, and forced at last to demand a reduction of the masculine standard of education to the level of feminine capacities. Upon this ground they took their last stand, and were hopelessly beaten. The reaction was so complete that for the last two hundred and forty generations the standard of female education has been lowered to that which by general confession ordinary female brains can stand without violent injury to the physique.
Page 80 - ... for a more advanced race of intelligent beings. Greg gives a haunting description of the planet. The seas are not so much blue as grey. Masses of land reflected a light between yellow and orange indicating . . . that orange must be as much the predominant color of vegetation as green on Earth .... The sky, instead of the brilliant azure of a similar latitude on Earth, presented to my eye a vault of pale green .... The lower slopes [of a mountain] were entirely clothed with yellow or reddish foliage.
Page 28 - ... upon mirrors properly placed. I carpeted the floor with several alternate layers of cork and cloth. At one end I placed my couch, table, bookshelves, and other necessary furniture, with all the stores needed for my voyage, and with a further weight sufficient to preserve equilibrium. At the other I made a garden with soil three feet deep and five feet in width, divided into two _parts so as to permit access to the windows.
Page 24 - Its power of penetration diminishes under a very obscure law, but so rapidly that no conceivable strength of current would affect an object protected by an intervening sheet half an inch in thickness. On the other hand, it prefers to all other lines the axis of a conductive bar, such...
Page 25 - Therefore, by collecting the current from the generator in a vessel cased with antapergic material, and leaving no other aperture, its entire volume might be sent into a conductor. By cutting across this conductor, and causing the further part to rotate upon the nearer, I could divert the current through any required angle. Thus I could turn the repulsion upon the resistant body (sun or planet), and so propel the vessel in any direction I pleased.
Page 76 - Of the perils that might await me I could hardly care to think. They might be greater in degree, they could hardly be other in kind, than those which a traveller might incur in Papua, or Central Africa, or in the North-West Passage. (AZ...
Page 75 - Before I had satisfied myself whether the planet was or was not inhabited, I found myself in a position from which its general surface was veiled by the evening mist, and directly over the mountain in question, within some twelve miles of its summit. This distance I descended in the course of a quarter of an hour, and landed without a shock about half an hour, so far as I could judge, after the Sun had disappeared below the horizon.
Page 28 - In the centre of the floor aud in that of the roof, respectively, I placed a large lens of crystal, intended to act as a window in the first instance, the lower to admit the rays of the Sun, while through the upper 1 should discern the star towards which I was steering.