Columbus of Space

The year was 1909 and Garrett Putnam Serviss was already a respected science writer for the "Hearst" newspaper group. Serviss' reputation was such that his articles appeared in almost every major American magazine. Beginning in January of that year Frank Munsey's "All-Story" magazine began the serialisation of Serviss' epic science fiction adventure 'A Columbus of Space'. Just three months earlier, the visionary rocket pioneer, Robert Goddard, had submitted an article to "Popular Science magazine" about the possibilities of nuclear propulsion for space travel. Goddard's article was rejected, but Serviss had no such problem with his science-fiction adventure story. In August of 1926, Serviss' story was resurrected in the pages of Hugo Gernsback's "Amazing Stories" magazine. In fact, Serviss was featured in eight of the first eleven issues of "Amazing". "A Columbus of Space" is an adventure thriller written at a time when Venus was still believed to only show one hemisphere to the sun and Venusian life was still thought to be possible.