Bellona's Husband: A Romance
An 1887 novel of a backwards-aging Martian utopia.
Bellona's Husband: A Romance, a science fiction novel from 1887, was written by William James Roe under the name Hudor Genone. It imagines a Martian utopia where people age in reverse, a concept noted as likely the first of its kind in the genre.
Quick Facts
- Author
- William James Roe
- Published
- 1887
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Science fiction
- Publisher
- J. B. Lippincott & Co.
- Pages
- 332
- Country
- United States
Facts from the source article.
Synopsis
Archibald Holt invests in Professor Garrett's spaceship, an ethereal disc powered by the anti-gravity material hydrogenium. With a third man named Trip, they fly to Mars, observing that the moons Deimos and Phobos are abandoned spacecraft. On Mars they find a naked old man wandering; Garrett suspects he is left to die as population control. The Martians speak English, which Garrett fears invalidates his patent, but the language developed independently through parallel evolution. The Earthmen soon clash with a legal system demanding absolute literal truth. Holt, though married on Earth, falls in love with Bellona Harbinger and becomes engaged. The trio then learns Martians age backwards: the old man was being born, and Bellona, appearing in her twenties, is eighty and widowed. Holt is sent to find Bellona's uncle, due to be born. He locates a man whose Earth-made shoes raise suspicion. The man reveals himself as Cuban physicist Palma Zanchese, who reached Mars earlier and was mistaken for a never-aging Martian. Zanchese and Holt combine their remaining hydrogenium to power one ship back to Earth, leaving Garrett and Trip behind.
Publication history
William James Roe, who wrote speculative fiction as Hudor Genone and conventional fiction under his own name, also used the pseudonyms G. I. Cervus and Viroe. Bellona's Husband was published in 1887 by J. B. Lippincott & Co. under the Genone pseudonym and never saw a reprint through the 20th century. Roe's earlier satirical novel Inquirendo Island had appeared in 1886 from G. P. Putnam's Sons, also as by Genone, and his later novel The Last Tenet Imposed upon the Khan of Thomathoz was published in 1892 by Charles H. Kerr & Company, likewise under the Genone name.
Reception
Initial reviews were mixed. The New-York Tribune in 1887 found the work showed talent but was not free from clumsiness. Maurice F. Egan in The Catholic World called the story amusing but not carefully written. The Independent described it as occasionally humorous but judged the author a dull satirist, criticizing the moral tone and refinement, and concluding it was a skit for the smoking-room rather than the library-table. The Critic praised only the backwards-aging concept, deeming the plot coarse, disagreeable, and flat, and the general impression a long effort to be funny. The Atlantic Monthly stated that mere eccentricity is far from originality and that the bewildering fiction lacked the charm of good-natured nonsense.
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