Beynon (John, pseud. John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, aka John Wyndham) Planet Plane

London, Newnes, [1936].

First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6.

Wyndham’s third book and second science fiction novel. Written as John Beynon, it was serialised the same year in The Passing Show as Stowaway to Mars, abridged again in 1937 in Modern Wonder as The Space Machine, cut differently for a 1953 paperback, and finally restored in 1972 as Stowaway to Mars “by John Wyndham”.

The plot: it is 1981, a million-pound prize awaits the first interplanetary flight, and a British millionaire launches the rocket Gloria Mundi from Salisbury Plain, bound for Mars. Once clear of the atmosphere the crew discover a stowaway, a woman, Joan Shirning, to their considerable period-typical consternation, carrying a strange tale of a machine of Martian origin. On Mars itself the book turns unexpectedly thoughtful: a dying race, and the machines destined to outlast it, a theme Wyndham was rehearsing fifteen years before anyone was paying attention. He revisited the story in the novella Sleepers of Mars (1938).