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.
In “The Man Who Possessed the World”, the protagonist wakes up after about eight thousand years and slowly discovers the long history of humanity of those millennia. It’s a tragic history, marked by countless wars, especially atomic wars. Carson slowly discovers the various aspects of that future history, so it’s a part of what marks the really dark tone of the novel.
Charles Eric Maine doesn’t shy away from describing a humanity that has reached incredible scientific heights on Mars that include potential immortality and yet continues to pursue domination over others. In this case, the clash is with the Earth, where there’s still an advanced civilization living underground while the areas of the surface where life is still possible are inhabited by mutants.
“The Man Who Owned the World” has a normal length by the standards of the years when it was published. There are several moments in which parts of the next eight thousand years of history are told but Charles Eric Maine manages to prevent that exposition from becoming too heavy. The result is that the pace is still fast thanks to many events and twists.
The importance of Robert Carson is explained in the course of the novel, the reason why the revived astronaut becomes a pawn considered crucial in the course of the war that continues to tear humanity apart. It’s not exactly post-apocalyptic science fiction because even on Earth, a civilization has always survived despite the atomic wars. However, the catastrophic element is important because the wars between Mars and the Earth are also fought with the use of atomic weapons.
In telling Robert Carson’s story, Charles Eric Maine focuses specifically on the Martian society in which he awakens. The development of the individual characters remains sacrificed but that’s inevitable also because the various peoples in which the humanity of that future is divided are important, not the individuals. Those divisions are taken for granted by those peoples but the protagonist sees their absurdity.
“The Man Who Owned the World” is dated in some elements such as the premise concerning the first manned mission launched towards the Moon and the Earth still at least partially habitable after millennia of atomic wars. In my opinion, those are small flaws in a novel that brutally shows the madness arbitrary divisions between human beings can lead to. For this reason, I believe it’s one of the best Charles Eric Maine novels and still a must-read today.
