Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds

Lore & Background

Wladislaw Somerville Lach-Szyrma, a Polish-English curate, author, and historian, published Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds in 1883. The novel is an expanded version of his earlier work A Voice from Another World, which had appeared in 1874. A sequel series, 'Letters from the Planets', was published in nine parts between 1887 and 1893 in Cassell's Family Magazine.

The story follows the protagonist Aleriel, who lands on Mars and buries his spacecraft in snow to prevent it from being disturbed by any Martian. The novel portrays Venus and Mars as utopias, Jupiter and Saturn as primitive, and the Moon as desolate. A new edition was published in 2015, containing the same text with a new introduction by Richard Dunn (Royal Museums Greenwich) and Marek Kukula (Royal Observatory Greenwich).

Reader's Guide

Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds holds significance as a Victorian science fiction novel that was once thought to be the first published work to apply the word 'Martian' as a noun. Although it is now known that the word had been used in that way as early as 1869, the novel remains an early example of interplanetary fiction and reflects the speculative interests of its era. The book's depiction of Venus and Mars as utopias, Jupiter and Saturn as primitive, and the Moon as desolate illustrates the imaginative cosmology of late 19th-century science fiction. The 2015 republication with an introduction by curators from the Royal Museums Greenwich and the Royal Observatory Greenwich underscores its continued interest for historians of science and literature. The sequel series 'Letters from the Planets', published in Cassell's Family Magazine, extended Lach-Szyrma's fictional universe. The novel's legacy lies in its contribution to the development of planetary romance and the vocabulary of science fiction.

Did You Know?

• The novel was previously thought to be the first published work to use 'Martian' as a noun, but the word had been used that way as early as 1869.
• The protagonist Aleriel buries his spacecraft in snow on Mars to prevent it from being disturbed by any Martian.
• A new edition was published in 2015 with an introduction by Richard Dunn and Marek Kukula.

The Author Behind the Voyage

Wladislaw Somerville Lach-Szyrma occupied a fascinating intersection of cultures and professions when he penned Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds. A Polish-English curate by vocation, he was also an author and a historian, a combination that gave his fiction a grounded, almost scholarly texture uncommon in Victorian speculative writing. His dual heritage and ecclesiastical career suggest a mind comfortable with both the sacred and the speculative, and it is no surprise that his science fiction carries a certain moral and philosophical weight. The novel, published in 1883, was not his first foray into imagining other worlds; it grew directly out of an earlier text he had produced a decade before. Lach-Szyrma's background as a historian likely informed his approach to world-building, treating alien civilizations with the same care a scholar might apply to distant human cultures. His work stands as a reminder that the roots of science fiction stretch well beyond the better-known English-language pioneers of the genre, reaching into the literary output of a Polish-English clergyman navigating the intellectual currents of the late Victorian period.

From Seed to Sequel: A Publication Arc

Aleriel did not appear fully formed in 1883. It was, in fact, an expanded and reworked version of a text Lach-Szyrma had published back in 1874 under the title A Voice from Another World. That nearly decade-long gap between the two publications suggests the author spent considerable time refining his vision of interplanetary travel before committing to a full-length novel. The story did not end with the 1883 volume either. Between 1887 and 1893, a sequel series called Letters from the Planets ran in nine installments in Cassell's Family Magazine, a popular periodical of the era. This serial format would have brought Lach-Szyrma's solar-system adventures to a broad reading public who might never have purchased a standalone novel. The fact that he returned to the same universe for nearly six years of serialized storytelling indicates both his own investment in the world he had built and a receptive audience hungry for more. The publication history of Aleriel thus traces a path from a modest 1874 text, through a substantial 1883 novel, to a multi-year magazine serial, mapping an author's sustained commitment to speculative fiction across the 1880s.

A Solar System of Contrasts

One of Aleriel's most striking features is the way it assigns a moral and civilizational character to every body in the solar system. Mars and Venus are presented as utopias, societies that have achieved a kind of elevated harmony. Jupiter and Saturn, by contrast, are depicted as primitive, suggesting civilizations still in an early stage of development. The Moon is rendered as utterly desolate, a barren and lifeless place. This tiered cosmology gives the novel a structure almost like a moral taxonomy of worlds, each planet embodying a different stage or quality of existence. The protagonist's arrival on Mars is marked by a small but telling detail: he buries his spacecraft in the snow so that it will not be disturbed by any Martian who might stumble upon it. This gesture of concealment, of leaving no trace, hints at a respect for the alien inhabitants and their world. It also introduces the word Martian as a noun, a usage that was long believed to be a first in published literature, though later research has traced the term's use back to 1869.

Enduring Footprint in Science Fiction

Aleriel's place in the history of science fiction has shifted over time. For many years, the novel was credited as the first published work to use the word Martian as a noun, a distinction that gave it a special place among early space-fiction texts. That claim has since been complicated by the discovery that the term had appeared in that grammatical role as early as 1869, predating Lach-Szyrma's 1883 publication. Nevertheless, the novel retains its significance as a Victorian-era work of interplanetary travel fiction that predates many better-known titles in the genre. In 2015, a new edition was published, preserving the original text while adding a fresh introduction written by Richard Dunn of the Royal Museums Greenwich and Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory Greenwich. The involvement of these two institutions signals a renewed institutional interest in the book's place in the broader narrative of astronomical and scientific imagination. Today, the novel is also available in public domain form through the Internet Archive and as a free audiobook on LibriVox, ensuring that readers and listeners well into the twenty-first century can still encounter Lach-Szyrma's vision of a solar system populated by utopias, primitives, and desolation.