The novel “The Man Who Owned the World”, also known as “He Owned the World”, by Charles Eric Maine was published for the first time in 1961.

Robert Carson is an astronaut who is supposed to be the first man to reach the Moon. Unfortunately for him, a small meteorite hits one of his rocket’s thruster power systems, an extremely unlikely event. The result is that his rocket is sent off course and, when even the desperate attempt to use the retrorockets to correct the course fails, Carson is doomed to die in space.

When Robert Carson awakens, he finds himself in an unknown place, attached to machines. After a long series of treatments, he regains his strength and is told that he’s on Mars, where he was taken after being found wandering in space. The science developed by humans living on Mars is even capable of reanimating the dead, an extremely complex operation accomplished in his case because he’s a really important man.