Through Space To Mars Or The Longest Journey On Record

The Great Marvel #4

by Roy Rockwood

Through Space To Mars Or The Longest Journey On Record is a science fiction novel by Roy Rockwood. The book follows the journey of a group of explorers who travel to Mars in a spacecraft. The team is led by Captain Jack and includes his loyal crew members, Mark and Joe, as well as a scientist named Professor Henderson. Along the way, they encounter various challenges and obstacles, including a malfunctioning engine, a dangerous asteroid field, and hostile alien life forms. Despite these challenges, the team perseveres and eventually reaches Mars, where they discover a strange and fascinating world filled with wonders and mysteries. Through Space To Mars Or The Longest Journey On Record is a thrilling adventure story that will captivate readers of all ages with its imaginative plot, vivid descriptions, and memorable characters.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Genres: Science Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

Roy Rockwood was a house pseudonym used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate for boy's adventure books. The name is most well-remembered for the Bomba the Jungle Boy and Great Marvel series.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the fourth volume of the Great Marvel series of books that the Stratemeyer Syndicate produced for boys between 1906 and 1935. It's one of the first series that Stratemeyer did, and is their first science fiction series, predating Tom Swift by four years. Cupples & Leon was the publisher, and this title appeared in 1910. Howard Garis wrote six of the nine books in the series, including this one, all of which appeared under the house pseudonym Roy Rockwood, now best remembered as the name used on the Bomba, the Jungle Boy series. Garis was a very prolific writer of juveniles; he wrote many of the early Tom Swift books, the Baseball Joe series, a lot of the Bobbsey Twins novels, etc., but was best known for his Uncle Wiggily series. Many aspects of the Great Marvel books are silly, even by the scientific standards of the time, and the racist elements are terrible, but they are among the first examples of true science fiction intended for young readers. The two young men and their two professors (and their unfortunate assistant Washington White, who calls everyone "Massa") traveled to both poles, Saturn, Venus, and the Moon, etc., encountering strange creatures and having adventures in every volume. The Martians here are of "superior intelligence," but the Earthlings triumph due to their mastery of Etherium and Cardite. As with the other GMs, this one is of important historical significance, but I don't recommend trying it for light entertainment.

[Kiri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charming for its subject matter - and oh so dated in its execution! This is a sci-fi book written in 1910 and aimed at the boy adventurer. In fact, all of the characters are male. But hey, they get to go to Mars!

The story seems heavily influenced by the work of Jules Verne, down to the "projectile" they build to travel to the Red Planet. I love the characters' eagerness to explore and invent - but I can't help wishing that some solid science or engineering (or both) had gone into the story. Admittedly, this was (barely) pre-Einstein, but gravity and acceleration were pretty well known, as was the periodic table (in the first chapter, boy Mark is in the chemistry lab making oxygen, which is "much lighter than hydrogen").

But these things pale before our introduction, on page 13, to the "colored helper", Washington White (?!), who is superstitious, simple, and overstuffed (he continually uses big words in inappropriate ways or confuzzles them up into unrecognamizable knots). And in the end, our heroes invade Mars, trespass, steal, and GET AWAY WITH IT, by outwitting the Martians, who had been described as "a race of superior intelligence." The invading white man wins. Hooray. :(

But hey, they went to Mars... :)

[Jennifer Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of action

I live for a book that is full of action. This is my book. It was great with colourful characters and spicy plot

[Jim Razinha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh my, but this is a horrible book. Before I tell you a few reasons why, I’ll share that I collect certain Stratemeyer/Grosset & Dunlap - Tom Swift, and Junior, Rick Brant, Tom Corbett, and a couple of others. When scouring antique shops, I sometimes find books like these. Not G&D, this is a Cupples& Leon publication, but still from the Stratemeyer Syndicate. I have another in the Roy Rockwood Great Marvel, and it was awful, also. That one is a fairly worn original, while my copy of this one is an early reprint… the cover gives it away, and the dust jacket oddly has a cover drawing from a different book. That this is a reprint is just a little disturbing because it means it reached more than a few grandfathers of today’s neocon extremists.

There is a tad bit of science - some distances to Mars, the number of planets (written/published in 1910, it was before Pluto was, then wasn’t, a planet), the gravity on Mars. One can forgive a little borrow from Verne, with a wildly fantastic propulsion system, through…ether. One can’t forgive the nasty racism, the stereotyping and condescending belittling of “Washington White”, who the author has mangling English, but using “big words”, calling the boys “Massa”. Or speculating that with the Martians (yeah, a lot more fantasy than science), “While I believe that the people there are of a very high grade of intelligence [mind you, nobody - nobody - mentions anything about “Martians” before that], we must be prepared for the worst. We may find them terrible savages, who will want to attack and destroy us.” More on that in a bit.

One character speculates to a hunter character that there might be creatures on Mars bigger than a dinotherium. Another character explains to Washington that “they lived a few centuries before the flood.” Yes. Really. Say it in your best Janice nasal, “Oh. My. Thor.”

There is a character, deemed insane, bent on sabotaging the trip that the cast has dubbed “the crazy machinist”. A brick gets tossed through a window with a message wrapped around it (I really don’t know how old that cliche is, but it’s at least 123 years), and … “It’s signed, ‘The Crazy Machinist,’ “. My eyes rolled back in my head so hard I nearly fell over backwards.

I know more than a little about the history of batteries but I admit I haven’t come across pulling a pin out of one to increase its power - which is how a character figures out the piloting of a Martian boat propulsion.

Crazy machinist stowed away on the projectile and escaped on Mars, and near the end of the book the characters wonder what happened to him with one declaring, “More likely he’s plotting mischief.” The hypocrisy is stunning because all of the characters had just finished stealing some “Cardite” [mysterious substance that is used for light, heat, power, turning the planet red to observers, and more] from the Martians. It was made clear that the earthers weren't to have any, so steal they did. And when the Martians wanted it returned, the savages that the travelers are said something like, "We only took a little, and you have so much" [right solid justification, that one], fought them off [hip hip hooray, three cheers and a tiger for them!], and ran away back to Earth.

Nice introduction to Earthlings. The Martians would do well to heed the story about the message the Native American (in his language) had Neil Armstrong take to the moon. Look it up. It’s truth. The message, if not the anecdote.

Fortunately, science fiction survived, and improved.

[Kent Archie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was fine till we meet Washington White. He is an African-American who calls everybody "Massa" ( this book was published in 1959) . Life's too short to read this

[Jeannie Mancini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun Verne-like early sci-fiction action story for boys. Entertaining and for the times, (1910) ahead of it's time. Light and Easy happy old fashioned story of 2 professors and two college age boys who build a rocket and travel to Mars!

[Papias · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very poor man's Jules Verne.