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",
Saula (fictional planet) Saula (fictional planet) Saula is a fictional planet described in ""An Attempt to Escape" ("Попытка к бегству")" by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. This planet is a part of the so-called Noon Universe and presents a world in an early feudalistic stage (opposite to e.g. late feudalism of Arkanar). The planet was named after Saul (Savel) Repnin, one of the space explorers who discovered it in 2141 AD. Saula is the second planet (out of four) of EN-7031 solar system, about one and a half times further from its sun than Earth is from ours. The day and night cycle on