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AUF KÜHNER FAHRT ZUM MARS. EINE KOSMISCHE ERZÄHLUNG.
Hannover: Norddeutsches Druck- und Verlagshaus, 1928. Octavo, pp. [1-2] 3-30 [31] [32: ads], original pictorial light gray-green wrappers printed in black, stapled. First edition, preceded by an offprint. A famous story first published as a six-part serial in six issues DER RAKETE (15 Juli --15 Dezember 1927) as "Die Fahrt ins All. Eine Kosmische Phantasie" (a 24-page paperbound offprint by Verlag "Die Rakete" titled AUF KUHNER FAHRT ZUM MARS. EINE KOSMISCHE PHANTASIE was done in 1927). The story was first published in English as "A Daring Trip to Mars," WONDER STORIES, July 1931. Tipped into this copy as a frontispiece is a photographic portrait of Valier, printed on a sheet of coated stock, captioned "Max Valier / Der Erfinder des Raketenantriebs" which is boldly signed by Valier below the caption [we believe these photographs were used by Valier for publicity purposes]. See Bloch (2002) 3187 (citing the 1927 offprint).
RAKETENFAHRT ... 2. Auflage Zugleich 6. Auflage von VORSTOSS IN DEN WELTENRAUM EINE TECHNISCHE MÖGLICHKEIT.
München und Berlin: Verlag R. Oldenbourg, 1930. Octavo, pp. [i-ii] iii-viii 1-240, 61 illustrations and diagrams in the text, original pictorial yellow cloth, front and spine panels stamped in red, top edge stained red. Sixth edition, revised and enlarged. The fifth edition of DER VORSTOSS IN DEN WELTRAUM (1924), published in 1928, was extensively revised and enlarged. This sixth edition (the second edition under this title) was published in 1930. Both the fifth and the sixth editions were issued in cloth and in wrappers. The foremost first-generation western European publicist who was a moving force in the organization and promotion of rocket societies, in this case the Austrian groups and the German Rocket Society, was Max Valier (1893-1930). Valier's biographer traces his first thoughts of rockets and space travel back to his school days at Innsbruck University in 1913 -- 1914. His reputation as an authority on space travel was firmly established by the time of his first major astronomical work, DER VORSTOSS IN DEN WELTRAUM, published in 1924. Valier's career ended in 1930 when he was killed while experimenting with a liquid-propellant engine for a rocket car. Valier's role as chief rocket publicist in western Europe was assumed by Willy Ley, who from the appearance of his first book, DIE FAHRT INS WELTALL in 1926, was the preeminent astronautical author-lecturer for forty years (adapted from Winter, Prelude to the Space Age, the Rocket Societies: 1924-1940, p. 24). Ciancone 223. Hübner 700. Interlibrum 339. Ley, Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel, revised edition, 1957, p. 508.