To Mars Via the Moon: An Astronomical Story

In 1911, when the dream of space travel was still fantastical speculation, Mark Wicks imagined a voyage to Mars with the rigor of an engineer and the wonder of a dreamer. Narrator Wilfrid Poynders, alongside companions John Claxton and Kenneth M'Allister, construct the Areonal, an ingenious spacecraft, and launch into the void, first touching the Moon's cratered face before continuing onward to the Red Planet. The narrative pulses with early twentieth-century optimism: science will carry humanity to the stars. Wicks embeds real astronomical observations into his adventure, rendering the Moon and Mars with what was then cutting-edge speculation. The result is neither mere boys' adventure nor dry treatise but something rarer: a vision of cosmic possibility rendered with genuine curiosity about what lies beyond Earth's cradle. For readers who wonder what spacefaring looked like before it existed, this is a time capsule of imagination.