The name Anders Celsius will be familiar to readers from his invention of the universally - used temperature musical scale . But Celsius ( 1701 - 1744 ) was much more than that : he was a prof of astronomy , he run on parallel - appraise expeditions , he gave early on warning about the thaw of the Arctic meth detonator … and he compose science fiction .
Swedish rooter writerAhrvid Engholmtells the tale atEuropa SF . In 1735 Anders Celsius , publish an essay about astronomy , speculated the following , as translated by Engholm :
When uranology has reach out so far that we are indisputable of the status of the inhabitants of the planets ; and physics is so forward that we find way to travel from Earth to the planet , they none - the - less begin to make war in the air and patronage and sail on the planet , and thus they want to conquer each other . Later Earth will be count as a united realm in opposing e.g. the Kingdom of Mars . They will then find out how to make coalition with each other , e.g. Mercury , Venus and Tellus , on one side , and on the other side Mars , Jupiter and Saturn . But as Jupiter and Saturn has conquered so many small realm on their satellites ; Mercury , Venus and Tellus would then likely obligate the inhabitants of the Sun to be on their side to keep the balance in the Solar system , and instead they now have Europa . By the style , if science would become as advanced that we could merchandise with other world-wide systems , e.g. Sirus , our organisation would then once again be considered as one Kingdom , and then war set about between different systems , and so on ad infinitum . But since you may not go between system in shorter time than a few hundred age , medicine should be meliorate so that people could become as onetime as during the time of the Patriarchs .
Who did originally remember you could voyage the seas , so you could n’t see see commonwealth ? Who think you could begin to do engagement on weewee ? Now we have little belief in that people in due meter could sail and battle in the air . It could be possible that flesh and skin would become transparent . If one in the hereafter could envisage such multitude and animate being , it would become a possibility for an excellent novel – medicinal drug would then make people long - hold out .
reckon that the first work of proto - scientific discipline fabrication in Sweden was only write in 1734 ( Olof von Dahlin ’s “ The Story of Erik the Goth ” ) , this would seem to make Celsius a genuine original — he had none of the Gallic proto - sf stories and novel to go on , and based his conjecture purely on his own imagination .
More atEuropa SF .
jess nevinsScience
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