Edison's Conquest of Mars attempt at fiction, the book was published serially in the "New York Journal". Serviss went on to write other science fiction stories, arguably making him the first American to write science fiction professionally. An early example of what would later be called space opera, "Edison's Conquest of Mars" was also a particularly literal "Edisonade". The book contains some notable "firsts" in science fiction: alien abductions, spacesuits (called "air-tight suits": see Spacesuits in fiction), aliens building the Pyramids, space battles, oxygen pills, asteroid mining and disintegrator rays. The book is set following the abortive Martian attack depicted in "Fighters from Mars",
Mars to Stay article by Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State University) and Paul Davies (Arizona State University) from the book "The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet" summarizes their rationale for Mars to Stay: [Mars to stay] would for years of rehabilitation for returning astronauts, which would not be an issue if the astronauts were to remain in the low-gravity environment of Mars. We envision that Mars exploration would begin and proceed for a long time on the basis of outbound journeys only. In November 2010, Keith Olbermann started an interview with Derrick Pitts, Planetarium Director at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia,