The Farsighted Astronomers

By Norman Sperling

who taught astronomy for 31 years at the University of California, Berkeley, and at other universities.

Written with John Westfall

(1938-2018), astronomer and Professor of Geography, San Francisco State University.

Featuring illustrations by Sheldon Carpenter.

© 2025 Norman Sperling. All rights reserved. To be notified when the following versions are ready, email normsperling@gmail.com: Paperback PoD 978-0913399-30-9; hardback PoD 978-0913399-31-6; Ebook 978-0913399-32-3; audiobook 978-0913399-33-0. BISACs FIC028020 hard-science fiction, FIC028060 Steampunk, and SCI004000 astronomy.

Lady Astronomers Discover a Comet Bound for St. Petersburg, and Shove it Aside.

About This Book

In 1881, lady computers at Harvard Observatory discover a tiny comet and figure out that it will demolish St. Petersburg in 1908. They alert the observatory director there, who tells Tsar Alexander III, who gives them a blank check to save the capital of the Russian Empire.

Recruiting the most effective astronomers and engineers, they work out the details. Cannons and rockets wouldn’t work. They invent ways to concentrate heat on the comet, turning its ice into steam, propelling it away.

They steam around the world to use rare opportunities. Lenin tries to screw up their project, so Nature would destroy the capital of oppression. The comet, diverted from St. Petersburg, clobbers Tunguska.

This novel is Alternative History, Hard-Science Fiction. Almost all the characters were real. They all act in character, using the science and engineering and social ways of their time. Every device could have been built back then. No magic is invoked.

Steampunk fans will enjoy the many realistic inventions and contraptions, from a giant infrared ray gun to a windbreak of flapping flags. History buffs will love the authentic events. Appeals: Astronomy, Feminism, Victoriana, Makers, Slide Rules, Stamps.

50,000 words. Sumptuously illustrated.

Table of Contents

The Personalities

0 Ground Zero

1 What Was That?

2 Going, Going, Gone

3 Not Precisely 3

4 Converging on St. Petersburg

5 The Krupp Works: Calling in the Big Guns

6 Jules Verne: Net Force

7 Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: Spaced Out

8 Alexander Ulyanov: Explosive Potential

9 Charles S. Peirce: When Push Comes to Shove

10 Steam Rising

11 To Send a Message

12 Eclipses and the Electric Telegraph

13 Sawai Pratap Singh

14 Reflected Success

15 Engineers Versus Deserts

16 WynnSingh, 1893

17 Security and Insecurity

18 Flagstaff, 1896

19 Welsbach’s Great Infrared Ray Gun

20 Getting Warmer

21 Gear in the Sand, Sand in the Gear

22 Their Final Shot

23 Afterwards

Appendix: The Telegraph Code

Fandom and Crowd-Sourcery

Pose yourselves! Steampunk costumers may inquire about illustrating characters and scenes. Especially:

Tella Wynn, the heroine, American woman, 30ish
Sawai Pratap Singh, Rajput Indian man, 30ish
Telegraph clerk/spy (minor role), namable, any age/race/gender plausible in 1880s-90s Russia.
Other illustrations craved: a Steampunked sliderule; and Welsbach’s Great Infrared Ray Gun (ch 19).
Other forms of illustration might work. Email me about your idea.

People whose submissions are accepted receive by-line credits, and their choice of 3 free paperbacks using their pictures, or 10 free Ebooks using their pictures.

The Farsighted Astronomers would make splendid videos, articles, podcasts, etc. Who would be the right producer or the right author? Describe what you propose and offer, in an email to normsperling@gmail.com .