The Castaways of Eros

by Brian M. Stableford (Adapted by, Translator), Théo Varlet

Aurore Lescure, the first woman astronaut, who starred in The Xenobiotic Invasion, returns in this ground-breaking novel about the first successful interplanetary flight to the planetoid Eros. There, the intrepid explorers discover that evolution on Eros has taken a different turn than on Earth, producing a species of intelligent dinosaurs... The notion of a Japanese-financed rocket piloted by a French female astronaut was a radical one in 1932, when this daring and original novel was written. With The Castaways of Eros, Theo Varlet hoped to promote the potential of rocket technology to launch a "Space Age" of interplanetary colonization. Sadly, the advent of WWII and his untimely death in 1938 put an end to that dream, leaving only this remarkable roman scientifique as a witness to a future that never was.

244 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2013

About the author

Brian Michael Stableford was a British science fiction writer who published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published under the name Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford. He also used the pseudonym Brian Craig for a couple of very early works, and again for a few more recent works. The pseudonym derives from the first names of himself and of a school friend from the 1960s, Craig A. Mackintosh, with whom he jointly published some very early work.

Reviews

[William Oarlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aurore Lescure and Gaston Delvart return in this sequel to "The Xenobiotic Invasion".

Funding by Japanese millionairess Madame Simodzuki results in a successful landing on the planetoid Eros where dwells (in an artificially sustained environment) a civilization of reptilian ruled survivors of a long lost planet.

Very sadly the revolutionary rhetoric of a fanatical female spy (this novel's sweep at violent and destructive Russian Communism as the previous novel's glorious sneering at American Capitalism) results in tragic extinction.

[Steve Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first part of this book dragged and I had a hard time focusing. Only a couple references to Fritz Lang (Woman in the Moon) and Jules Verne's Moon novels broke the spell of general disinterest for a few seconds.

However, once the adventurers finally made it to Eros, things picked up considerably. There were passages in the chapter called "The Film of Ektrol" which, in my opinion, bordered on brilliant.

When I say "adventurers", that's not to say that The Castaways of Eros was strictly an adventure story. The book had its share of political and sociological subtexts.