I would have preferred not to assign a star value to this book because to do so would be rather like, to paraphrase Henry James, passing moral judgment on a grasshopper. "Journey to Mars" by Gustavus W. Pope is one of those early sci-fi books which is still heavily indebted to one of its parent genres, utopian fiction. For this reason, enjoyment of this novel cannot be based on contemporary standards for commercial fiction - one has to have cultivated either a predilection for quaint literary curios of this kind (like myself) or an encyclopedic interest in the history of sci-fi/fantasy literature in order for "Journey to Mars" to be rewarding reading. When compared to some of works of the author's better known contemporaries - Jules Verne, H.G. Wells - Gustavus Pope's writing is decidedly quaint. There is much sententious moralizing in the vein of Victorian bourgeous piety, characters are invariably stereotyped according to race and gender, and the central conflicts of the "plot" all amount to a hackneyed melodrama. John Munro's "A Trip to Venus", written around the same time, and also still steeped in the utopian fiction tradition, is a much better example of this kind of literature. Still, based on its own standards, which were appreciated by popular audiences in its time, I give "Journey to Mars" four stars for a number of merits. The utopian/alien world of Mars is vividly created on the page, as are the descriptions of the Antarctic continent at the novel's beginning, and the final catastrophe which spells Mars' doom. The soap opera dialogue is entertainly florid, and the faux Hellenic-Sanskritic nomenclature of the Martians is amusing without being ridiculous-sounding. Less easy to stomach are the chapters containing slapstick humor, some of which add interminable chunks of lard to the storyline (the scenes in which Lady Chumivant poses as a young sailor lad in order to help the narrator escape from prison are particularly dreadful). But, again, this was considered aesthetically acceptable by the audience for which this book was written, so there's little point in criticism. The publishers really deserve credit for being willing to offer a novel like this (i.e., one whose appeal is so strictly academic) for sale in the first place.
