''A Prophetic Romance: Mars to Earth'' is an

1896 Events January–March * January 2 – The Jameson Raid comes to an end, as Jameson surrenders to the Boers. * January 4 – Utah is admitted as the 45th U.S. state. * January 5 – An Austrian newspaper reports that Wil ...

utopian novel Utopian and dystopian fiction are genres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal t ...

written by John McCoy, and published pseudonymously as the work of "The Lord Commissioner," the narrator of the tale. The book is one element in the major wave of utopian and dystopian literature that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century. The story is written in a form resembling an

epistolary novel An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered ...

: it consists of a series of reports from a Martian government official, the Lord Commissioner. He has been sent to

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

by the "Chancellor Commander" of

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

, the head of that planet's unified government, to report on terrestrial conditions. (The Martians are more advanced than humans, and have explored the solar system.) The time of the story is not specified, though details in the text suggest the late twentieth century, about a hundred years after the book's publication. The Lord Commissioner travels to Earth by spaceship; he endures hallucinations due to the interplanetary "atmosphere." He lands at "Midland," the capital of the United States, and meets the president, who happens to be a woman. American society has been reformulated after a revolution around the turn of the twentieth century, when irate citizens blew up the Capitol and its congressmen. Laws must be approved by popular referendums before they take effect. The United States has expanded to include Canada and Central America. The salaries of business executives are limited. Gender equality has been achieved. Technology has made major advances, including aircraft and electric cars; there is even a "lovemeter" that detects emotions.

Vegetarianism Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. Vegetarianism may ...

is dominant, and alcohol abuse is a thing of the past. The

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

has been edited, with the bloody parts removed. Divorces are uncommon, and hard to obtain. The Lord Commissioner falls in love with an Earth woman named Loleta, a friend of the president; he decides to remain on Earth with her.

Everett F. Bleiler Everett Franklin Bleiler (April 30, 1920 – June 13, 2010) was an American editor, bibliographer, and scholar of science fiction, detective fiction, and fantasy literature. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he co-edited the first "year's best" ...

with Richard Bleiler, ''Science-Fiction: The Early Years'', Kent, OH, Kent State University Press, 1990; p. 452.

References

1896 American novels 1896 science fiction novels American science fiction novels Novels set on Mars Utopian novels {{poli-novel-stub