6 - First Contact: Martians, Sentient Plants, and Swarm Intelligences

Summary

AS THE PIONEER of German SF, Kurd Laßwitz has had a lasting influence and his work contains many of SF's major tropes. His magnum opus Auf zwei Planeten (1897), published at the same time as H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, was enormously influential in Germany, but it was only translated into English in 1971. Laßwitz firmly believed in the civilizational power of technology, and he sought to align moral, ethical, and technological progress. For this reason, he abhorred the ruthless use of technological superiority for corrupt motives. Highly critical of the German Empire's colonial and imperial ambitions and policies, he imagined what it would be like if the “civilized” nations of Europe would suffer the fate they were subjecting others to: that of being colonized by technologically and allegedly ethically superior beings.

Auf zwei Planeten reached high circulation figures in Germany, especially after World War I. Full of astonishing technological predictions, it inspired several generations of German scientists, among them Hermann Oberth, the pioneer of German rocketry, and Wernher von Braun, who worked on the German V2 rockets in the 1940s and the American space program in the 1960s. Laßwitz's vision of a space station in geostationary orbit provided the blueprint for the International Space Station. Yet in spite of its popularity, the novel was considered “too democratic” by the National Socialists and no longer printed.

Laßwitz imagines a whole civilization built on a technology that is able to control gravity, with armed and armored Martian airships that can reach any point on the planet in a matter of hours. Auf zwei Planeten thus takes a global viewpoint: following the moment of first contact, when three German scientists in a balloon expedition to reach the North Pole are rescued by Martians who have built a base there, it soon becomes clear to the explorers that the Martians are planning to conquer Earth. The Martians, coming from an older civilization, have a keen sense of their own superiority. This attitude is partly based on their observation of the Eskimos, the only humans they have encountered so far. The Martians believe that if the rest of humanity is on the same cultural level as the Eskimos, they are justified in taking control and using the planet’s resources for their own benefit.