Paul C. Gutjahr Voyage to the Moon and Other Imaginary Flights of Fancy in Antebellum America

630 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) At the same time, and largely because of this chapter, the flaws of Alternate Worlds are somewhat leavened in the third edition, even though its deficiencies persist: gaps are addressed superficially but they are still addressed. But the book’s strengths lie primarily outside of these efforts, in its expansive look at the origins of sf, and in its account of the genre’s emergence and evolution as a uniquely American subliterature in the magazine format. Gunn’s vibrant and contextual exploration of both subjects surely contributed to the first edition’s Hugo Award in 1976—under “Special Awards,” since a category for non-fiction works did not exist at the time. The book’s detailed index and appendices, including an ambitious chronology of the history of Western sf and technoscience, are impressive resources as well, but the lack of citations and of a works cited section limit its use as a tool for research. For readers seeking an account of the pulps and the Golden Age of sf from an author who lived and wrote through those eras, Gunn’s text is interesting and valuable reading. For those looking for an inclusive history that adjusts or repairs the entrenched canon of sf, this edition of Alternate Worlds will be a disappointment.—Chad Andrews, Toronto, Canada Herschel’s Moon Voyages. Paul C. Gutjahr, ed. Voyage to the Moon and Other Imaginary Flights of Fancy in Antebellum America. New York: Anthem, ANTHEM NINETEENTH-CENTURY SERIES, 2018. xxvii+244 pp. $200 hc. The Moon has been in the news lately, with China landing on the far side, a super blood moon lunar eclipse, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s seeming anticipation of both those events in his recent Red Moon (2018). It was in the news in the first half of the nineteenth century too, with John Herschel’s astronomical observations and, as Paul C. Gutjahr notes, the American publication of his [Herschel’s] A Treatise on Astronomy (1833) in 1834. Gutjahr assembles four pre-civil-war American tales of Moon voyages, along with an historical introduction, several appendices, and a list of “Suggested Further Reading.” The tales are: George Tucker’s Voyage to the Moon (as Joseph Atterley, 1827), Edgar Allan Poe’s “Hans Phall—A Tale” (1835), Richard Adams Locke’s “Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel” (1835), and J.L. Riddell’s “Orrin Lindsay’s Plan of Aerial Navigation” (1847). All are available at no cost on line, and the last one was reprinted in SFS (36.2, 2009) in a special issue “On Proto/Early Science Fiction.” The value here lies in the charming introduction that points out connections among the works, the dialog formed by their presence together, and the notes and appendices. Whether this adds up to $200 may be questionable, of course, but Anthem Press has taken the gamble. Tales of voyages to the Moon have been around for a long time and have been written in many different countries, so my first question in looking at this anthology was why it centered specifically on “antebellum America.” Technically, this descriptor applies to the four tales, of course, but are they somehow characteristically American, characteristically representative of pre-civil-war life, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line, as is suggested by “antebellum”? I was disappointed that the introduction did not address these matters. It begins instead 631 BOOKS IN REVIEW with a connection to that uniquely American religion, Mormonism, since Brigham Young apparently “preached about the Moon and its people” (xv). The introduction moves on quickly to “the plurality of worlds theory—that God presided over a host of inhabited planets in the universe” (xv), to the balloon as a device useful for imagining ambitious air travel, and to the influence of the American publication of John Herschel’s A Treatise on Astronomy upon three of the four works in the volume. Gutjahr also discusses “The explosive growth of antebellum American print culture” (xvii) and distrust of fiction in American culture. He then turns specifically to the stories themselves, identifying Atterley/Tucker’s use of “the travelogue-as-social-commentary tradition” (xviii). He sees Poe’s

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