Works
His first published science fiction story was "Bis zum Nullpunkt des Seins" ("To the Zero Point of Existence", 1871), depicting life in 2371, but he earned his reputation with his 1897 novel Two Planets, which describes an encounter between humans and a Martian civilization that is older and more advanced. The book has the Martian race running out of water, eating synthetic foods, travelling by rolling roads, and utilising space stations. His spaceships use anti-gravity, but travel realistic orbital trajectories, and use occasional mid-course corrections in travelling between Mars and the Earth; the book depicted the technically correct transit between the orbits of two planets, something poorly understood by other early science fiction writers. It influenced Walter Hohmann and Wernher von Braun. The book was not translated into English until 1971 (as Two Planets, and the translation is incomplete). A story from Lasswitz's Traumkristalle served as the basis for The Library of Babel, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges.
His last book was Sternentau: die Pflanze vom Neptunsmond ("Star Dew: the Plant of Neptune's Moon", 1909). He is also known for his 1896 biography of Gustav Fechner.
A crater on Mars was named in his honour, as was the asteroid 46514 Lasswitz.
There also is a Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis, an award for German-speaking authors of science fiction since 1981.
Read more about this topic: Kurd Lasswitz
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience enable us to follow Jesus’ example. Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of love, and clothe religion in human forms. Whatever materializes worship hinders man’s spiritual growth and keeps him from demonstrating his power over error.”
—Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910)
“The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)