Art Berry lives in a world just slightly askew from the rest of us. In our increasingly wireless world of instant and constant communication, he gives his loyalty not to a state or a company or family and friends he sees regularly, but to the Eastern Standard Tribe-a largely faceless collection of people whose home time zone is the Eastern Standard Zone, who are locked in cutthroat competition with other tribes aligned with other time zones...
A. Square, a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland, where women-thin, straight lines-are the lowliest of shapes, and where men may have any number of sides, depending on their social status. Square has adventures in Spaceland (three dimensions), Lineland (one dimension) and Pointland (no dimensions) and ultimately entertains thoughts of visiting a land of four dimensions, a revolutionary idea for which he is returned to his two-dimensional world.
A daring adventure with huge dollops of geographical, technological, and scientific information, touches of humor, and a slow build-up followed by one exciting incident after another.
The Stolen Bacillis: What will happen to the Anarchist who stole the tube containing the Bacteriologist's new species of Bacteria? The Flowering of the Strange Orchid: What did Wedderburn's housekeeper discover about his new orchid? In the Avu Observatory: Was it a giant lemur that attacked Woodhouse in the Observatory in Borneo? The Triumphs of a Taxidermist: Would you trust any of this Taxidermist's work after hearing his secrets?...
At 4 a. m., a ray of light had been observed on the disc of the planet Mars in or near the "terminator"; that is to say, the zone of twilight separating day from night. The news was doubly interesting to me, because a singular dream of "Sunrise in the Moon" had quickened my imagination as to the wonders of the universe beyond our little globe, and because of a never-to-be-forgotten experience of mine with an aged astronomer several years ago.
In my position as head inspector in the FPD department at Washington, urged on by the desire, which has always been very strong in me, to investigate and understand everything which is mysterious, I naturally became much interested in these remarkable occurrences. And as I have been employed by the government in important affairs and secret missions since I was a lad, it also happened naturally that the head of my department placed In my charge this astonishing mysterious investigation.
When penniless businessman Mr Bedford retreats to the Kent coast to write a play, he meets by chance the brilliant Dr Cavor, an absent-minded scientist on the brink of developing a material that blocks gravity. Cavor soon succeeds in his experiments, only to tell a stunned Bedford the invention makes possible one of the oldest dreams of humanity: a journey to the moon. With Bedford motivated by money, and Cavor by the desire for knowledge, the two embark on the expedition.
An invasion of hostile creatures from Mars who moved across the English landscape in bizarre metal transports, using deadly heat rays to destroy buildings and annihilate all life in their path.
