Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin
Entry updated 16 September 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1857-1935) Russian scientist and author. He began investigating the possibility of Space Flight in 1878. In his monograph Free Space (1883 chap) he suggested that Spaceships would have to operate by jet propulsion. His consideration of some of the practical difficulties led to a paper entitled "How to Protect Fragile and Delicate Objects from Jolts and Shocks" (1891). In 1903 he published the classic paper "The Probing of Space by Means of Jet Devices", proposing that space travel could be achieved using multistage liquid-fuelled Rockets; a 1911 paper proposed the Ion Drive for spacecraft. He wrote a good deal of didactic sf, mostly for young readers, in order to popularize his ideas. All of this is collected, along with several essays by or about Tsiolkovsky, in a volume edited by V Dutt, Put' k zvezdam (coll 1960 USSR; trans by various hands as The Call of the Cosmos 1963 USSR [for vts see Checklist]). The sf stories include the novelette On the Moon (written 1887; 1893), whose protagonists find themselves on the Moon caught in an educational dream; Grezy o Zemle i nebe i effekty vsemirnogo tjatotenija ["Dreams of Earth and Sky"] (coll of linked stories and essays 1895), the most fictional section of which features an encounter with the Alien inhabitants of the asteroid belt; and a full-length novel, Vne zemli (1916 Priroda i Lyudi; exp 1920; trans Kenneth Syers as Beyond the Planet Earth 1960), an account of the building and launching of a Spaceship by an international group of scientists, who begin the construction of Space Habitats in high orbit, and who then begin to explore the solar system itself, with a view to its colonization.
Tsiolkovsky was the first great pioneer of space research and the first real prophet of the myth of the conquest of space which has played such a vital role in modern sf. The inscription on the obelisk marking his grave reads: "Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space." [BS/JC]
see also: Agriculture; Colonization of Other Worlds; Fantastic Voyages; Generation Starships; History of SF; Hollow Earth; Prediction; Russia; Space Elevator; Space Stations; Transportation.
Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky
born Izhevskoe, Russia: 17 September 1857
died Kaluga, USSR: 19 September 1935
works (selected)
- "Na Lune: Fantasticeskaja povest" ["On the Moon"] (1893 Vokrug nrs 10-11) [novella: mag/]
- Grezy o Zemle i nebe i effekty vsemirnogo tjatotenija ["Dreams of Earth and Sky"] (Moscow: A N Gončarov, 1895) [coll of linked stories and essays: binding unknown/]
- Vne zemli (Kaluga, USSR: Izdanie Kaluzhskogo obshchestva izucheniia prirody i mestnogo kraiia, 4-ia ovetskaia tipografiia, 1920) [first appeared 1916 Priroda i Lyudi: binding unknown/]
- Vne zemli: Nauchno-Fantasticheskikh Povest (Moscow: Izd-vo "Sovetskaiia Rossia", 1958) [not known if this edition varies from 1920 publication: binding unknown/]
- Beyond the Planet Earth (New York: Pergamon Press, 1960) [trans by Kenneth Syers of the above: hb/]
- Vne zemli: Nauchno-Fantasticheskikh Povest (Moscow: Izd-vo "Sovetskaiia Rossia", 1958) [not known if this edition varies from 1920 publication: binding unknown/]
- Put' k zvezdam: Sbornik Nauchno-Fantasticheskikh Proizvedenii (Moscow: Akademiya Nauk SSSR, 1960) [coll: includes Dreams of Earth and Sky above, and Beyond the Planet Earth above as "Out of the Earth": hb/]
- The Call of the Cosmos (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1963) [coll: trans by A Shkarovsky, and others, of the above: edited by V Dutt: hb/uncredited]
- The Path to the Stars: Collection of Science-Fiction Works (near Dayton, Ohio: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Translation Division, 1966) [coll: vt of the above: pb/]
- The Science Fiction of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (Seattle, Washington: University Press of the Pacific, 1979) [coll: cut vt of the above: "edited" (a false claim) by Adam Starchild: unauthorized reprint with correspondingly unauthorized cuts: pb/]
- The Call of the Cosmos (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1963) [coll: trans by A Shkarovsky, and others, of the above: edited by V Dutt: hb/uncredited]
- Collected Works of K. E. Tsiolkovsky (Washington, District of Columbia: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1965) [coll: fiction/nonfiction: published in two volumes: trans from various sources: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry