Across The Zodiac by Percy
Greg (Born 1836, died December 24 1889) is an interesting historical
reproduction pertaining to the period prior to 1923. Across The Zodiac, written
in 1880 is a good science fiction that can be treated as a predecessor of the
genre that evolved later named as sword and planet. The title could seem to be
misleading to some at first instance who would be thinking it as something
related to zodiac, sun sign, moon sign, astrology etc.
The story revolves around
secret societies, romance and military combats with excellent amount of
characterization, sequencing, and script. Overall it is an interesting thriller.
The story belongs to the latter part of 19th century where a man decides
to chalks out to his way to travel from earth to a planet supposed to resemble
earth known as Mars. The man manages to reach at Mars and strangely finds there
existence of a society that resembles to those at earth but varied from them in
many aspects.
The two negative points of
this book are – one, the title that is confusing and misleading; two – the storyline
which is damn slow. It takes ages (and pages) to read about a small instance
that could be finished in half a paragraph which has been written in such a
descriptive manner. Overall, if you have patience and persistence to afford and
manage to get through the slowness and boredom while reading this book; you are
bound to find it interesting enough to crossover.
