- Kurd Lasswitz
Kurd Lasswitz (de: "Kurd Laßwitz") (
April 20 ,1848 –October 17 ,1910 ) was a Germanauthor ,scientist , andphilosopher . He has been called the father of Germanscience fiction Fact|date=July 2007 He sometimes used the pseudonym "Velatus".Lasswitz studied
mathematics andphysics at theUniversity of Breslau and theUniversity of Berlin , and earned his doctorate in 1873. He spent most of his career as a teacher at theGymnasium Ernestinsium in Gotha.His first published science fiction story was "Bis zum Nullpunkt des Seins" ("To the Zero Point of Existence", 1871), depicting life in 2371, but he earned his reputation with his 1897 novel
Two Planets , which describes an encounter between humans and a Martian civilization that is older and more advanced. The book has the Martian race running out of water, eating synthetic foods, travelling by rolling roads, and utilizing space stations. His spaceships useanti-gravity , but travel realistic orbital trajectories, and use occasional mid-course corrections in travelling between Mars and the Earth; the book depicted the technically correct transit between the orbits of two planets, something poorly understood by other early science fiction writers. It influencedWalter Hohmann andWernher von Braun .Fact|date=June 2007 The book was not translated into English until 1971 (as "Two Planets ", and the translation is incomplete).His last book was "Sternentau: die Pflanze vom Neptunsmond" ("Star Dew: the Plants of Neptune's Moon", 1909). He is also known for his 1896 biography of
Gustav Fechner .A crater on
Mars was named in his honor, as was theasteroid "46514 Lasswitz".There also is a [http://www.epilog.de/Dokumente/Preise/SF/Lasswitz/Index.html Kurd Laßwitz Preis] , which has been awarded to German-speaking authors of science fiction since 1981.
External links
* [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/autoren/lasswitz.htm Kurd Laßwitz] page at the
Projekt Gutenberg-DE
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