W. H. Rhodes 38 min read

A San Francisco sensation of 1871: a man claims the power to set the very oceans ablaze, holding the world to ransom with a secret that could burn the seas.

W. H. Rhodes's 1871 story is a pioneering work of American science fiction, a classic of early speculative journalism-fiction. Sharp, prophetic, historically vital. Read it for a founding tale of the mad-scientist-with-a-doomsday-device tradition, a California curiosity that anticipated a century of world-menace SF.

In its time

Published in 1871, during the 1870s, under the sea and around the moon.

Reading it

38 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).