Armata: A Fragment. Second Edition

London: John Murray..., 1817. 8vo, 215 x 133 mms., pp. [ii], 210. BOUND WITH: The Second Part of Armata. London: John Murray..., 1817. 8vo, 215 x 133 mms., pp. [ii], vii, 209 [210 blank]. 2 volumes in 1, with the author's name on the title-page of the first volume, bound in contemporary half calf, marbled boards, gilt rules on spine, red leather. A very good copy IN 1817 THE YOUNG Scottish advocate, Thomas Erskine, in later life to become Lord Erskine and British Chancellor of the Exchequer, published a speculative utopian fiction, Armata, in which a ship sailing from New York to China is driven by storms into unknown waters and finds itself traversing a narrow and dangerous channel that connects the South Pole to a hitherto unsuspected satellite of Earth called Armata. This planet "had a ring like Saturn, which, by reason of our atmosphere, could not be seen at such an immense distance, and which was accessible only by a channel so narrow and guarded by surrounding rocks and whirlpools, that even the vagrancy of modern navigators had never fallen in with it." This story is probably the first serious attempt by a Scottish writer to produce what we would now call science fiction, and, although Erskine has a problem matching the wind-powered sea transport and the geographical and scientific knowledge of his time to the new concept of interplanetary travel, he was clearly possessed of the speculative cast of mind, the capacity for imaginative visualisation of future and alternative possibilities, that is an indispensable characteristic of the science fiction writer as we know him or her today. Scottish Review of Books Thomas Erskine, first Baron Erskine (1750 - 1823) was a Whig politicial and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Shortly before his death in 1823 he "published Armata, a political romance in two parts, which attempted to distil his life's wisdom about liberty and corruption, care for animals, and moderate law reform into allegory, following the models of Utopia and Gulliver's Travels (ODNB). The reference to him in the online Scottish Review of Books gives a good summary of the novel but describes his as young when he wrote it: "IN 1817 THE YOUNG Scottish advocate, Thomas Erskine, in later life to become Lord Erskine and British Chancellor of the Exchequer, published a speculative utopian fiction, Armata, in which a ship sailing from New York to China is driven by storms into unknown waters and finds itself traversing a narrow and dangerous channel that connects the South Pole to a hitherto unsuspected satellite of Earth called Armata. This planet "had a ring like Saturn, which, by reason of our atmosphere, could not be seen at such an immense distance, and which was accessible only by a channel so narrow and guarded by surrounding rocks and whirlpools, that even the vagrancy of modern navigators had never fallen in with it. This story is probably the first serious attempt by a Scottish writer to produce what we would now call science fiction, and, although Erskine has a problem matching the wind-powered sea transport and the geographical and scientific knowledge of his time to the new concept of interplanetary travel, he was clearly possessed of the speculative cast of mind, the capacity for imaginative visualisation of future and alternative possibilities, that is an indispensable characteristic of the science fiction writer as we know him or her today."