Edison's Conquest of Mars

In the wake of catastrophic Martian invasion, humanity finds its savior in the most unlikely of heroes: Thomas Edison. The famed inventor rallies the world's scientists, constructing electric spacecraft and disintegrator rays in a desperate gambit to strike back at the alien aggressors on their home soil. What follows is a thrilling journey across the void of space, where Edison and his crew engage in the first space battle ever written, mine asteroids for fuel, and ultimately unleash a catastrophic flood upon Mars to end the war. Serviss, writing himself into the narrative as a professor consulted by Edison, weaves real historical figures, Kelvin, Röntgen, Queen Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II, into this audacious tale of human triumph over extraterrestrial menace. Originally published in 1898 as a sequel to the serialized War of the Worlds, this novel invented the space techno-thriller decades before the genre existed. It gave the world its first space battle, its first hand-held energy weapon, its first functional spacesuit, and its first alien abduction. This is science fiction's forgotten origin story: the moment humanity stopped hiding from the stars and decided to conquer them instead.