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=                         Across_the_Zodiac                          =
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                            Introduction
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'Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record' (1880) is a science
fiction novel by Percy Greg, who has been credited as an originator of
the sword and planet subgenre of science fiction. It is the first
science fiction novel set primarily on Mars. It contains the first
documented use of the term "astronaut", here the name of a spacecraft.


                                Plot
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The book details the creation and use of apergy, a form of
anti-gravitational energy, and details a flight to Mars in 1830. The
planet is inhabited by diminutive beings; they are convinced that life
does not exist elsewhere than on their world, and refuse to believe
that the unnamed narrator is actually from Earth. (They think he is an
unusually tall Martian from some remote place on their planet.)

The book's narrator names his spacecraft the 'Astronaut'.


                           Novel concepts
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The book contains what was probably the first alien language in any
work of fiction. His space ship design also featured a small garden,
an early prediction of hydroponics.


                             Influence
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The same title was used for a later, similar book--'Across the Zodiac:
A Story of Adventure' (1896) by Edwin Pallander (1869-1952) (the
pseudonym of UK biologist, botanist and author Lancelot Francis
Sanderson Bayly). Pallander copied some elements of Greg's plot; in
his book, gravity is negated by a gyroscope.


                              See also
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* 'Annals of the Twenty-Ninth Century'
* 'A Journey in Other Worlds'
* Mars in fiction


                           External links
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*
[https://archive.org/search.php?query=title%3AAcross%20the%20Zodiac%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts
'Across the Zodiac'] at Internet Archive (scanned books original
editions color illustrated)
*


License
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License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Across_the_Zodiac