On a lark to the planets A sequel to "The wonderful electric elephant" — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Guide Who Is Also a Planet

The excerpts introduce Mercury not as a distant sphere but as a character—a guide who can speak and who fears his leave will expire if the travelers delay. This personification of a planet is handled with matter-of-factness: Mercury says he “feared he should not be able to accompany them longer unless they returned to the heavens immediately.” The travelers treat him as a valued companion, with Ione declaring, “no other guide would be acceptable to us after having been led by you.”

This choice collapses the distance between astronomical object and sentient being, yet the narrative never pauses to explain the transformation. The reader is simply expected to accept that a planet can take human-like form and negotiate travel itineraries. The effect is a world where the cosmic and the conversational coexist without friction.

The Prince’s Afterthought on Power

Midway through the excerpts, a political subplot emerges that is notably grounded for a space fantasy. The Prince, traveling with the party, decides not to return to Siam because his reappearance would force his brother to abdicate the throne. He says, “I care nothing for the throne so why not let them still think me dead and allow my brother to live in peace?”

This moment introduces a tension between personal desire and political consequence. The Prince initially thought only of “the pleasure it would give the Princess and myself to surprise and see them once more,” but later realizes the disruption his return would cause. The captain approves the decision, noting it would have been “too bad to shorten the aerial trip of the Princess.” The episode suggests that even in a story of interplanetary larks, the authors are attentive to the real-world implications of power and succession.

Earthly Interlude: Paris as a Known Quantity

Before the celestial journey resumes, the travelers spend a week in Paris. The narrator declines to detail the visit, stating, “those who have been in Paris can imagine and those who have not may hold it in anticipation.” This is a striking narrative choice: after pages of invented planets and magical elephants, the story treats a real city as too familiar to describe.

The Paris episode is summarized briskly—visiting theatres, Versailles, the Louvre, shopping, dining—and the travelers return “pretty well tired out.” The contrast is sharp: the unknown planets receive vivid, color-coded descriptions, while a known Earth city is handled with a shrug. This suggests the book’s primary interest lies in the invented, not the actual, and that the author trusts readers to fill in the blanks for the mundane.

Readers approaching On a lark to the planets should be prepared for a narrative that shifts between detailed astronomical color and abrupt ellipses. The excerpts show a story willing to pause for a moral dilemma about a throne, then skip an entire week in Paris with a wave. The tone is consistently light, but the logic is not always consistent: the same book that personifies Mercury also includes a “book of directions” for the balloon. This mix of whimsy and practicality is the story’s defining texture.

I remember how Harold and Ione’s balloon-elephant drift felt less like adventure than like a quiet question about leaving things behind. That same ache surfaced later in Beyond the stars — Themes and Context, where the longing isn’t for far places, but for the familiar ones we’ve already changed. Strange, how two books can share one heartbeat.