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history of - First story to describe humans colonizing another planet?


Elon Musk has plans to colonize Mars within the next decade. This made me think: What was the first SF story to describe humans colonizing another planet? I don't want stories where humans establish a colonial presence on an already inhabited planet, but ones about colonizing uninhabited planets (in this solar system or around another star).



Answer



1928: "The Second Swarm", a novelette by Joseph Schlossel, was first published in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring 1928, available at the Internet Archive, and reprinted in Science Fiction Classics, Summer 1968, also available at the Internet Archive.


The publication date of this Spring 1928 issue is announced as April 20th on p. 3 of the preceding Winter 1928 issue, and the ISFDB also gives the publication date as April 1928. Apparently this story antedates Edmond Hamilton's novelette "Crashing Suns", part 1 of which appeared in Weird Tales, August 1928.


Thousands of years from now, mankind is exploring the nearer stars, looking for habitable planets to colonize:



When the Second Great Expedition was first planned, following the complete success of the first which had gone toward Alpha Centauri and now occupied two of the nineteen planets which revolved around that star, scouting expeditions were sent out to seven of the nearer stars to investigate. They realized that the distance of twenty-five light years from the solar system would be the absolute limit to which any expedition could be sent at the present day with any hope of success. The nearer the star, of course, the greater the chances of success in the event that the selected planet was inhabited and the inhabitants resented the invasion of man.

Blue-white Vega toward which the solar system was hurtling at the rate of one million miles a day and the giant orange-hued Arcturus in the constellation of Bootes were believed to be just at the extreme limit. Then came white-hot Formalhaut in Piscis Australis at the distance of twenty-three light years from the solar system. Next in distance was Altair in Aquila at sixteen light years from Earth. Procyon in Canis Minor was accredited with the distance of twelve light years; Sirius in Canis Major at the distance of nine light years, and 61 Cygni, the sixth magnitude star in the constellation of Cygnus, at the distance of eight and a half light years are the three nearest of the seven.

A scouting expedition of two interstellar ships was considered enough to send to each of the seven selected stars. Six interstellar ships capable of making a round trip to any distance up to thirty light years from the solar system were planned and built. A driving mechanism producing rays powerful enough to hurtle them along at two-thirds the speed of light through the utter void of space between the stars was installed in each of them. The three farthest stars of the seven was their destination. They left the Earth in the order of the distance they had to travel so that they would all return around the same period.




The main story is about the unpleasantness with the Sirians:



Had those intelligent creatures who inhabited the ringed world of Sirius not attacked and destroyed the two expeditions from Earth, man, on discovering that it was in sole possession of highly intelligent creatures, would not have dreamt of invading it, but now . . .



But there is also some peaceful colonization of uninhabited planets going on:



The first day of the year 12,001 of the New Era dawned. On the following day the Second Great Expedition was scheduled to be launched into the boundless infinity of space toward Sirius. The First Great Expedition had gone toward Alpha Centauri and met with no opposition. They had peacefully taken possession of the two worlds which their scouts had selected as the only two fit for human habitation. Their ships were not filled with weapons for destruction, but with tools for construction. To each who had braved the terrors of the unknown there had been allotted a thousand acres of the choicest land upon the surface of those worlds.



From a speech by the world president:




"Peacefully they took possession of two worlds that revolve around Alpha Centauri. On not one of those two worlds was there animal life of any description, nothing but a sort of low plant life which resembled moss and was of a deep blush color. The various domestic animals that they had taken along with them became acclimatized very easily on those planets and probably never knew that they had been transported to alien worlds, while the seeds of various kinds of plant life which man had found useful thrived wonderfully when insect life was introduced from Earth to fertilize them, better even than on their own native world which they had left behind forever."



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