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The 6 Most Important Sci-Fi Ideas (Were Invented by a Hack)

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells is credited as one of the most influential science fiction books ever written, having introduced ideas like super-advanced aliens coming to Earth and said aliens hating the shit out of us and trying to wipe us out. Even though it was published as a novel all the way back in 1898, it’s seen as the blueprint for every alien invasion blockbuster released more than a century later. This article isn’t about that book.

In the same year, a writer named Garrett P. Serviss crapped out an unauthorized sequel to Wells’ book called Edison’s Conquest of Mars, in which famed inventor Thomas Edison turns the tables on the aliens from The War of the Worlds by flying to Mars and killing all of them with his revenge boner — it’s the Victorian-era equivalent of shameless straight-to-DVD crapfests like Transmorphers and Titanic II.

Also, it was one of the most revolutionary sci-fi novels ever written.

That’s right — many fundamental elements of science fiction as we know it can be tracked back to this cheap knockoff, not the classic it was ripping off. Like …

#6. The First Mention of Ray Guns and Handheld Disintegrators

Surely such an idea must have originated in an era where, at the very least, revolvers were no longer considered cutting-edge technology, right? Wrong: Back in 1898, Edison’s Conquest of Mars described the Martians as carrying “hand engines, capable of launching bolts of death of the same character as those which emanated from the knobs of their larger machines.” So, rather than coming up with new weapons, Serviss had simply taken the giant mounted heat cannons used by the aliens in The War of the Worlds and made them smaller, accidentally inventing one of the most classic staples of science fiction.