Escape from Earth

Escape from Earth is a utopian novel by HG Stuckmann. It was published (with 253 pages) in 1950 by Waldheim-Eberle Verlag in Vienna .

The plot

The nameless first-person narrator is friends with the natural scientist Professor Heinz Schütz, of whom he is referred to as a "bald head" in view of his bald head. The novel begins in August 1989 with a visit from Kahlkopf to the professor, who discovered a celestial body approaching the earth during his research at the Mount Palomar Observatory. On February 14, 1992, according to his calculations, this object (which he calls "Amblystoma" after the zoological name for the axolotl in his aquarium) will trigger a catastrophe due to its proximity and the resulting gravitational influence on the sea and the earth's crust. A technician (engineer board) is taken into trust. He is supposed to build a four-person spaceship for the escape from Earth to Venus . The fourth person is "Tox", a young Polynesian whom Professor Schütz found and raised as a baby.

Everything is going as planned. Shortly before the devastation of the earth, the spaceship takes off and reaches Venus. This offers the image of the earth in the Mesozoic Era , but the Triassic , Jurassic and Cretaceous appear in different regions at the same time. The four refugees explore the area, find a fossilized human skeleton that they believe to be a resident of Mars who landed a long time ago, and begin looking for his spaceship. However, engineer Bord, who shies away from the dangers of the Mesozoic fauna, withdraws to his own spaceship beforehand.

On the way, the three remaining adventurers are driven far away on a raft trip on a river after crocodiles have destroyed the oars. On the way back, Tox is killed by a dinosaur that night . The other three arrive safely back on earth, where the catastrophe is over. But the northern hemisphere is devastated. Kahlkopf therefore withdraws to the South Seas and learns from a map that Professor Schütz wants to visit Venus again alone with the spaceship. However, he does not return from there and remains missing.

The chapters

Preface
Amblystoma
The test drive
The last Christmas
The end of a civilization
Escape from Earth
The salt marsh
The primordial sea
Martier's petrified grave
The land of the giants
The tiger dragon
Seven days downstream
The sixteenth night
memory

The illustrations

The work contains 16 smaller line drawings and 8 full-page images in grayscale. Heinz Schütz is named as the illustrator (including the cover design). In the novel, the eponymous professor expresses the intention to illustrate the future work of the author.

The author

Hans Gerhard Stuckmann (born September 15, 1921 in Frankenthal , Pfalz) was an engineer in Vienna . No other works by him can be proven.