Audiobook · read by volunteers
Moon Metal
Garrett P. Serviss (1851–1929)
Read by Betsie Bush · 14 chapters · 2 h 37
About the book
Gold at the bottom of the world, a strange new metal, and a chain of discoveries that begins in the ice and does not stop there. Garrett P. Serviss, an astronomer who was also a gifted popular writer, spins a tale that opens with South Polar gold and moves quickly to larger wonders, bringing together the worlds of fact and fantasy. Serviss was famous for making the heavens understandable to ordinary readers, and he puts that talent to work in a story that treats science as an adventure, with the excitement of an age when new discoveries seemed to promise almost anything. Its fourteen chapters carry the reader from the first strange find to the work of a scientific magician and beyond. Betsie Bush reads with clarity and a sense of fun. A short, brisk piece of early science fiction, and a pleasure for those who enjoy the older tradition of scientific romance.
Introduction
Garrett Putnam Serviss was born in 1851 and died in 1929. He was an astronomer, a popularizer of astronomy and an early science fiction writer. He lectured widely, wrote books for the general public, and had a talent for explaining scientific details in a way that made them clear to the ordinary reader. His favourite subject was astronomy, and he wrote numerous works for readers who wanted to know more about the stars and planets.
Moon Metal appeared in 1900. It belongs to the early period of science fiction, sometimes called scientific romance, when authors were beginning to build stories around new discoveries and the possibilities they suggested. Serviss is best known in this field for Edison’s Conquest of Mars, a sequel to H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, and his fiction frequently links real science with invention and adventure.
The first chapter, South Polar Gold, sets the book’s course, and the second, The Magician of Science, hints at the inventive turn the story takes from there. Because the book was written more than a century ago, the science is naturally dated, and the attitudes of the characters reflect their era. Still, the energy of the narrative and the author’s love of wonder come through clearly.
This LibriVox recording has fourteen chapters, running for about two and a half hours, and is read by volunteer Betsie Bush. It is an enjoyable short listen for readers of science fiction history, and an interesting example of how popular science and storytelling were once closely intertwined.
Public domain
Garrett P. Serviss died in 1929: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text