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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 4, December 1944
Page 57
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 57 FOWLER, George A Flight to the Moon; or, the vision of Randalthus Baltimore: A. Miltonberger, 1813, 185pp. 18 cm. Furthur information: The book is leather-bound and contains three suffixed pages of advertisements. Your reviewer believes it is the first American book using the interplanetary theme to appear. No foreign editions of the work were printed. Synopsis: Randalthus is one evening wandering by a riverside; and seating himself, gazes at the moon and falls into fanciful speculations thereon. Then he engages in meditative revery concerning the vastness of the universe, the wondrous workings of the Creator, and man's insignificant smallness amid the immensity of the cosmic all. Suddenly he becomes aware, just beyond him, of a descending white cloud; it shrouds a beautiful female who addresses him, saying that in reward for his virtuous thoughts he is to be conducted to the object of his meditations, the moon. She vanishes "in a vivid flash of light," and Randalthus finds himself rising swiftly above the earth in the cloud that had enveloped her. On nearing the moon, mountain ranges vast oceans and immense wildernesses are to be seen; and finally, as the voyager approaches the surface still more closely, he spies cultivated lands, human dwellings, and lastly the satellite's inhabitants themselves. These latter resemble those of Earth in general form, but all have golden skin and hair, and blue eyes---varying but little from one another in height and other proportions. Randalthus learns on alighting that they (conveniently) speak English; they excel in music, painting, and poetry, scorn metaphysics, and are far behind beings of Earth with respect to the concrete sciences. Randalthus informs the Lunarians of his own planet and the others of the solar system (of whose existence they are ignorant) and discourses at great length about conditions of his own world, which compare very unfavorably with the placid near-perfection of the Lunarians' state. Tiring at length, the visitor sleeps, and dreams of another strange Lunar civilization, one of whose inhabitants voyages with him above hitherto-unseen areas of the moon's surface. (The author never makes clear if this dream has parallel in reality.) On awakening, Randalthus continues his discussions with the Lunarians respecting customs prevailing in their two worlds. Finally he leaves the moon by the same means he had used in arriving. On his return voyage he passes Mercury, which he notes is inhabited, and also visits the sun. The latter he discovers to have a fiery outer envelope and an inner atmosphere of nitrogen, below which is a peopled world. Just after leaving the sun, Randalthus suddenly finds himself reclining beside the familiar river on earth: his interplanetary adventure has been a dream. Review: A Flight to the Moon is a late example of the imaginary voyage, of which Gulliver's Travels is perhaps the best-known specimen. Unlike Swift, however, Fowler is more interested in merely relating the faults of humanity than in satirizing them, possibly feeling that a recital alone can be of curative effect. Read today, this recital proves but mildly interest-evocative, and is, in portions, often downright tedious. One cannot criticize the faulty science found in the volume (faulty even in its own period) since the author in the end labels the entire voyage a vision. As a novel, all in all, A Flight to the Moon must be considered exceedingly diffuse. As an example of early interplanetary fiction it is passably interesting, though less so than coeval or earlier essays in the same field; and British works of the same period---e. g., the pseudonymous Nicholas Lunatic's "Voyage to the Moon", in his Satiric Tales (1808)---show far more adept handling of the theme. ---A. Langley Searles, in Fantasy Commentator #4.
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 57 FOWLER, George A Flight to the Moon; or, the vision of Randalthus Baltimore: A. Miltonberger, 1813, 185pp. 18 cm. Furthur information: The book is leather-bound and contains three suffixed pages of advertisements. Your reviewer believes it is the first American book using the interplanetary theme to appear. No foreign editions of the work were printed. Synopsis: Randalthus is one evening wandering by a riverside; and seating himself, gazes at the moon and falls into fanciful speculations thereon. Then he engages in meditative revery concerning the vastness of the universe, the wondrous workings of the Creator, and man's insignificant smallness amid the immensity of the cosmic all. Suddenly he becomes aware, just beyond him, of a descending white cloud; it shrouds a beautiful female who addresses him, saying that in reward for his virtuous thoughts he is to be conducted to the object of his meditations, the moon. She vanishes "in a vivid flash of light," and Randalthus finds himself rising swiftly above the earth in the cloud that had enveloped her. On nearing the moon, mountain ranges vast oceans and immense wildernesses are to be seen; and finally, as the voyager approaches the surface still more closely, he spies cultivated lands, human dwellings, and lastly the satellite's inhabitants themselves. These latter resemble those of Earth in general form, but all have golden skin and hair, and blue eyes---varying but little from one another in height and other proportions. Randalthus learns on alighting that they (conveniently) speak English; they excel in music, painting, and poetry, scorn metaphysics, and are far behind beings of Earth with respect to the concrete sciences. Randalthus informs the Lunarians of his own planet and the others of the solar system (of whose existence they are ignorant) and discourses at great length about conditions of his own world, which compare very unfavorably with the placid near-perfection of the Lunarians' state. Tiring at length, the visitor sleeps, and dreams of another strange Lunar civilization, one of whose inhabitants voyages with him above hitherto-unseen areas of the moon's surface. (The author never makes clear if this dream has parallel in reality.) On awakening, Randalthus continues his discussions with the Lunarians respecting customs prevailing in their two worlds. Finally he leaves the moon by the same means he had used in arriving. On his return voyage he passes Mercury, which he notes is inhabited, and also visits the sun. The latter he discovers to have a fiery outer envelope and an inner atmosphere of nitrogen, below which is a peopled world. Just after leaving the sun, Randalthus suddenly finds himself reclining beside the familiar river on earth: his interplanetary adventure has been a dream. Review: A Flight to the Moon is a late example of the imaginary voyage, of which Gulliver's Travels is perhaps the best-known specimen. Unlike Swift, however, Fowler is more interested in merely relating the faults of humanity than in satirizing them, possibly feeling that a recital alone can be of curative effect. Read today, this recital proves but mildly interest-evocative, and is, in portions, often downright tedious. One cannot criticize the faulty science found in the volume (faulty even in its own period) since the author in the end labels the entire voyage a vision. As a novel, all in all, A Flight to the Moon must be considered exceedingly diffuse. As an example of early interplanetary fiction it is passably interesting, though less so than coeval or earlier essays in the same field; and British works of the same period---e. g., the pseudonymous Nicholas Lunatic's "Voyage to the Moon", in his Satiric Tales (1808)---show far more adept handling of the theme. ---A. Langley Searles, in Fantasy Commentator #4.
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