Two Planets

Author: Kurd Lasswitz

One of the problems with having to rely on translation to the whole other world of science fiction out there, is that it can be terribly hit and miss. For instance, Kurd Lasswitz is one of the seminal figures in German sf, lending his name to the premier German science fiction award. He occupies roughly the same position in German sf as his younger contemporary, H.G. Wells, does in English language sf. And yet Lasswitz has not been well served by translation.His best novel, Auf Zwei Planeten, was published in 1897, a year before The War of the Worlds which it echoes in interesting ways. The Martians are an older civilisation, but they are running out of food. Their journey to Earth is made in spaceships powered by anti-gravity devices, but they follow realistic trajectories with mid-course corrections that clearly fed into the imaginations of early readers like Wernher von Braun. It is clearly a major work of science fiction that deserves to be at least as well known as Wells's novel. Yet it was not translated into English until 1971, and even then the translation is incomplete.Why it's on the listTwo Planets isn't on the list because of the quality of the translation, but because this is an example of how important translation is in our knowledge of science fiction.