A Honeymoon in Space

About the book

Lord Redgrave's remarkable vessel, the Astronef, makes travel beyond Earth possible and gives his marriage to Zaidie an unconventional honeymoon. Moving among imagined worlds, the couple encounters environments and forms of life that offer contrasting possibilities for civilization, development, and decline. Scientific speculation combines with romantic adventure, and discussions between the travelers help interpret each new spectacle. The book's freedom of movement rests on a technology whose power also has implications for affairs on Earth. Griffith's planetary societies reflect the evolutionary ideas, social assumptions, and imperial outlook of his period as much as astronomical curiosity. The journey is therefore both an extravagant excursion through space and a series of projections about what human progress might mean.

• Planetary exploration
• Imagined civilizations
• Technology and power

Why read it

Read it for an early space romance whose planetary variety reveals the expectations and anxieties of its own era.

English text