His first published science fiction story was "Bis zum Nullpunkt des Seins" (To the Zero Point of Existence, 1871) which depicted life in 2371. But he earned his reputation with his 1897 novel "Auf zwei Planeten," which describes an encounter between humans and a Martian civilization that is older and more advanced. The book has the Martian race running out of water, eating synthetic foods, travelling by rolling roads and utilizing space stations. (It was published the same year as War of the Worlds.)
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His spaceships use anti-gravity, but travel realistic orbital trajectories and use occasional mid-course corrections in travelling between Mars and the Earth. Lasswitz depicted the technically correct transit between the orbits of two planets, something poorly understood by other early science fiction writers. It was translated into English in 1971 as "Two Planets".
His last book was "Sternentau: die Pflanze vom Neptunsmond" (Star Dew: the Plant of Neptune's Moon, 1909). A crater on Mars was named in his honor, as was the asteroid 46514 Lasswitz.
Caption Left: "Dort ist meine Heimat. (There is my homeland.)." Drawing by W. Zeeden from abridged centenary edition (1948) of Auf zwei Planeten.
