Garrett P. Serviss
The Second Deluge is a science fiction novel by Garrett P. Serviss, who climbed Matterhorn in order "to get as far away from terrestrial gravity as possible." It tells the story of a devastating flood across the entire earth, and of Cosmo Versal, a modern day Noah who faces public ridicule and disbelief towards his predictions and his Ark project.
"Oh, to think that all that beauty, all those great palaces filled with the master-works
...Just as Christopher Columbus's journeys to the new world changed human civilization forever, so too would the power to travel freely across the universe alter the parameters of our collective existence. Garrett P. Serviss's tale of a group of intrepid explorers who harness what they call "inter-atomic energy" to travel from Earth to Venus is a fun, fast read.
Though he first gained acclaim as a popular lecturer and public speaker who traveled the country teaching audiences about astronomy, author Garrett P. Serviss also produced a body of engrossing science fiction. Edison's Conquest of Mars was heavily influenced by H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, and it's packed with interstellar action and adventure.
Long before figures like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson simplified astronomy for popular consumption, Garrett P. Serviss was traveling the United States with an early version of a PowerPoint presentation to teach people about eclipses, the orbit of the planets, and other celestial concepts. This basic introduction to the subject is simple and enjoyable enough to ensure that science-phobes or young readers won't be turned off.
For thousands of years, human civilization has pegged its currencies and barter systems to stores of precious metals. What would happen if our interstellar explorations uncovered infinite stores of gold, silver, platinum, and more? That's the thought-provoking premise of The Moon Metal, a tale from Garrett P. Serviss, an astronomer and science-fiction pioneer who blazed trails in both fields in the early twentieth century.