Dreams of Space - Books and Ephemera: 1931

Friday, July 30, 2021

By Rocket To The Moon (1931)

To finish off my moon-laden July I have this one.

So this is an updated re-post of a book I blogged about in 2010.

https://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/2010/07/by-rocket-to-moon-19311949.html

I came across a less damaged copy of the book I took the opportunity to share this picture story. It is an early children's/young adult science fiction novel about a first trip to the moon. The author Otto Willi Gail was an early space flight thinker and writer.

The introduction to this children's book is very interesting about the author's conviction that this was a fictionalization of something that would happen some day.

The details of the story included a mysterious satellite from Atlantis orbiting the moon. An action packed story with stowaways, murders, and having to throw almost everything out of the ship to make it back to Earth. In the final scene they need to leave the ship to crash while they parachute down. The final line of the unbelievable story is below.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

By Rocket to the Moon (1931/1949)

A new look for the blog and an old book. By Rocket to the Moon is one of my favorite early fictional books about going to the moon. Especially the "technically accurate" illustrations:

Gail, Otto Willi. By rocket to the moon ; the story of Hans Hardt's miraculous flight. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co., 1931

First published in 1928 in German and published in English in 1931, this novel for older children was written by one of the most popular German science fiction writers of the time.

Closely based on the work of his friends Hermann Oberth and Max Valier, it is an accurate mirror of many of the space travel concepts being discussed by pre-war European experts.

Here is the 1949 German reprint: