Release date is 2025-12-15

Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

A fishing trip on the planet Mars by F. H. Sidney is a short science fiction story written in the early 20th century. It imagines an Earth angler whisked to Mars for a canal-side sporting excursion among exotic wildlife and advanced technology.

The narrator, failing to catch fish on Earth, is mysteriously drawn skyward by a Martian telescope-magnet and lands in a laboratory atop a Martian building. There he meets John Hopkins, a once-missing Earthman who has become a leading citizen on Mars, and Astrol, the inventor of the device. Hopkins explains Martian life—wireless electricity powers everything, English has been adopted, equal suffrage thrives, and predators have been eliminated—then treats his guest to a banquet, an airship tour, and a day of “radio rifle” fishing along crystal canals teeming with giant trout, leaping salmon, and flocks of birds beside herds of miniature bison and moose. After a final feast, the narrator is sent gently back toward Earth, awakens by his riverside spot, and realizes the marvelous visit was a dream he decides to keep to himself. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: San Francisco: Overland Monthly, co., 1919