The Cosmic Courtship
A Science Fiction Classic That Was Lost For Over 100 Years!

Reviews:

Five Star Amazon Review:
"A truly stunning piece of work ..."

Five Star Amazon Review:
"A fascinating snapshot of the early days of science fiction..
The story mixes personal flying gear and underground cities, humans on all planets of the solar system,
fairy artifacts, techno-spiritualism, sorcery ... and yet somehow, it feels fantastic but never unbelievable."

Review by Ginger Man on upstreamreviews.com:
"It's been called the American Out of the Silent Planet and it's easy to see why.
If you are a modern reader with certain preconceived notions of how people wrote a hundred
years ago and how they portrayed people, especially women, then prepare to have your mind blown.
If you are a Chris Nolan fan, or you greatly enjoyed C.S. Lewis' sci-fi trilogy, then this is for you.
... return to a simpler time, to a different way of telling stories,
unencumbered by the many silly rules we impose on ourselves."

Review by Richard Fisher at DMR:
"There is a unique thrill in being able to read a work of fiction that few alive today have read.
This forgotten proto-science fiction story is engaging and very readable.
Fans of such authors as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, and Edwin Lester Arnold will
also find many things to enjoy within The Cosmic Courtship."

Review by Nathan at Castalia House:
"Love at first sight turns into a love that transcends the cosmos in Julian Hawthorne's lost pulp romance, The Cosmic Courtship.
The prose is elevated and aspirational, ornate without being purple ...
Hawthorne sets out to explore love, both romantic and compassionate, and places it in an otherworldly realm that cleaves
closer to fairy tales than the unimaginative sciences of Hugo Gernsback.
Hawthorne's tale of a love spanning worlds is among the brightest of the noblebright stories,
highly aspirational and pure in motive and archetype, unmarred by baser desire or concern.
Hawthorne's imagination also is unbound by the later conventions of fantasy.
While the high prose and the aspirational heroes only add to the fairy tale nature, the strange creatures,
clothes woven from actual fire, lost civilizations, and angels visiting unaware add to the palpable
sense of wonder shining from the tale."

Review by Jay Dinitto at jaydinitto.com: "Hawthorne's prose is playful.
... the lines of fantasy and science in the technology used here are really blurred; the fantastical
tech just works, without needing to explain the mechanics of it."

Listing at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction:
"...one of the earliest Space Operas."

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September 8, 2021 Update

The final bonus level achieved on the Kickstarter was that I would make my original scans for
the Cosmic Courtship available once the book was availabe for sale to the public.
That finally happened just this week.
Click on the image at the top of the page to be taken to Amazon.

CLICK HERE or on the image below to go directly to the master page with access to ALL 96 pages
of the original scans AND the original four covers!

You'll find this section of my website to be fully interactive with the rest of the site.
I didn't just throw up some thumbnails and jpegs that you would have to toggle back and
forth to see.
Instead... I made each image a full-fledged webpage where you can roll from one page to the next
with ease. Enjoy! -- Michael Tierney

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July 24, 2021 Update

For those of you who missed out on the sold out Kickstarter release of Cosmic Courtship, fear not.
You don't have to pay the marked up prices on the secondary market,
as all four versions will be made available to the public in September.
Why September? That was the original release date, the books shipped early.

While they are available on Amazon, they won't link all the different versions, so here's a site
that carries all the fine Cirsova Publications, including Wild Stars, on one page:
https://shop.aer.io/Cirsova_Publishing

Remember, the pocket paperback does not include all the bonus material that is available
in the Hardcover, trade paperback, and magazine versions.
For more details, scroll down the page.

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July 14, 2021 Update

It's official--all Kickstarter orders have been shipped and are on their way!

Thank You to everyone who supported this project!

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July 3, 2021 Update

All four formats of Cosmic Romance have arrived from the printers!.
As you can see by the photos of some of the Cosmic stacks, there is a lot of shipping to be done now.



Orders will be filled in the order they were received, and packing is underway now.

But if you missed the initial offering--do not dispair. After all the Kickstarter orders have been fulfilled--
Cosmic Courtship will soon be offered on Amazon and at bookstores!

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March 12, 2021 Press Release

Cirsova Publishing is proud to announce that it has partnered with Michael Tierney and
Robert Allen Lupton to restore and reprint Julian Hawthorne's The Cosmic Courtship, a
never-before-collected pulp Planetary Romance by the son of famed American author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The Cosmic Courtship was serialized across four issues of All-Story Weekly magazine.



Mary Faust, a brilliant scientist, has developed a machine that can allow the conscious
human soul to explore the cosmos! Her promising young assistant Miriam Mayne has
accidentally transferred her consciousness to Saturn, where she falls under the
enchantment of an evil sorcerer! Jack Paladin, her love, sets out after her on a thrilling
celestial journey to the ringed planet! Swashbuckling adventure and high romance await
in Julian Hawthorne's The Cosmic Courtship!

While most are at least somewhat familiar with Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of the great
American authors, less well known is that his son Julian was an incredibly prolific writer
in his own right. Julian wrote on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from literary analysis
of his father's works to poetry to period romances and adventures. Late in his career,
Julian even dabbled in the emerging genre of Science Fiction.

The Cosmic Courtship was serialized in Frank A. Munsey's All-Story Weekly across four
issues, beginning with the November 24, 1917 issue and running through the December
15, 1917 issue. While this story has been in the public domain for some time, it has
never been collected or published elsewhere until now.

Cirsova Publishing has taken on this exciting project with the aim of preserving this
story for posterity and ensuring that it is not lost to future generations.
Fred A. Small Cover Restored by Michael Tierney

Michael Tierney is a pulp historian and archivist who has written extensively on Edgar
Rice Burroughs, having created the massive four volume Edgar Rice Burroughs 100 Year
Art Chronology, and is currently working on another Art Chronology about Robert E.
Howard. He has been involved in the comic book industry for 40 years, owning two of
the oldest comic book stores in Central Arkansas until switching to mail-order only in
2020. He is also an accomplished science fiction writer and artist, having worked on his
Wild Stars saga since the 1970s. Michael not only made his pulp library available for this
project, he provided the photographic images of these rare magazines so that a
manuscript could be produced. He has also lent his years of experience digitally
restoring damaged pulp art to restore the original cover by Fred W. Small to create a
unique cover for this edition.

Robert Allen Lupton is a prolific author, pulp historian, and commercial hot air balloon
pilot. He has published nearly 200 short stories across numerous anthologies, including
the New York Times Best Selling Chicken Soup For the Soul series, and has published
several anthologies and novels. His most recent novel, "Dejanna of the Double Star" was
published in December 2020. Robert has been an active Edgar Rice Burroughs historian,
researcher, and writer since the 1970s, including at ERBzine, where several of his articles
and stories are published. Robert has painstakingly recreated the text as it was originally
published from the digital images provided from Michael's collection.

Cirsova Publishing has been publishing thrilling adventure science fiction and fantasy
since 2016. They have published nearly 20 issues of their flagship publication, Cirsova
Magazine. Additionally, they have published a number of anthologies, a fully illustrated
edition of Leigh Brackett's Planet Stories-era Stark adventures, Jim Breyfogle's
Mongoose and Meerkat, and the 35th Anniversary Editions of Michael Tierney's Wild Stars.

This collected edition of The Cosmic Courtship will be released later in 2021.
Click this link to go directly to Cirsova's solicitation.

Collaborator Robert Allen Lupton wrote a nice artcile about the process of bringing
this project together, which can be read here.

And here is a link to an article about Cosmic Courtship by Paul Hair on theloftusparty.com website.

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Style Section of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Newspaper May 16, 2021

Sean Clancy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette wrote a nice article about the Cosmic Courtship project, with photos by Cary Jenkins.


Click on the image or this link to read his article.

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The Bonus Material you will find listed includes "Scenes of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Romances"
essay, reproduced from its original appearance in the 1884 issue of Century Magazine.



Michael Tierney has reproduced and restored the original
pages for the enjoyment of modern readers. What follows is a sampling of some of the fine
ink illustrations that accompany the article by Julian Hawthorne.

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Who is Michael Tierney?

Michael Tierney has been involved in comics and the publishing industry since the 70s. Owner and proprietor of both The Comic Book Store and Collector's Edition, Michael was a Finalist for both the Star*Reach Comics Retailer of the Year Award in 1985 and the Will Eisner Spirit of the Comics Retailer of the Year Award in 1999, has been an Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide Advisor since the 1990s, and is a staple of Central Arkansas' comic scene. A former journeyman printer and printing division manager, he's written, published, and at times even penciled, inked, and printed his own comics. He is currently writing, lettering, and coloring Edgar Rice Burroughs' Beyond the Farthest StarTM online, and his four volume Edgar Rice Burroughs 100 Year Art Chronology was published by Chenault & Gray in 2018.

Michael has been a regular contributor to Cirsova Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, who released the 2019 35th Anniversary set of Michael's Wild Stars comics and books. Cirsova Publishing is a Central Arkansas semi-pro publisher of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Its flagship publication, Cirsova Heroic Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine was a 2017 Hugo Awards finalist for Best Semi-Pro Zine.

They also published Michael's posthumas collaboration with Edgar Rice Burroughs on Young Tarzan in 2019.



For Information:
Michael Tierney/Little Rocket Publications: www.thewildstars.com
Cirsova: www.cirsova.wordpress.com / Twitter: @cirsova

Michael Tierney's bibliography can be found here!

Released Summer 2018 in a Cirsova Special magazine edition, the debut of Wild Stars 3: Time Warmageddon boasted three covers!
The main edition featured a front cover by Tim Lim and a back cover by Mark Wheatly.
Mark Wheatley provided a wraparound cover for the variant edition.
There was also a third version in hardcover, which featured a Mark Wheatly wraparound dust wrapper --
in virgin format without text!



All three editions were limited to Kickstarter orders only, making them instantly out-of-print upon release.
Click on this link or any of the pictures for more details.

2019 was the 35th Anniversary of the WILD STARS!

A New Wild Star Was Born!
Wild Stars IV brought the whole family for the 35th Anniversary Event!

Click on any of the images above to connect with their Amazon listings.

The Wild Stars 35th Anniversary Omnibus hardcover is available for order on Lulu.
This 726-page, 8 1/2" x 11" hardcover features an incredible wraparound cover by Anton Oxenuk,
and contains everything from the first 35 years in the history of the Wild Stars!

The Wild Stars universe continued to grow in 2021, when
Wild Stars 5: The Artomique Paradigm was serialed in three parts.
The Spring issue featuring Part One of Wild Stars 5: The Artomique Paradigm had six different editions:
The main cover by Anton Oxnuk is available in both paperback and hardcover.
The Genzoman variant cover is availabe in paperback with the traditional trade text,
and as a virgin cover in hardcover.
Publisher Alex Alexander's Chen cover is available in both paperback and hardcover.

So to recap, here are the paperback covers (Note: The Chen cover is NOT Artomique Paradigm related),
click on any paperback cover to be taken directly to Amazon:


Here are the hardcover editons:


But the story of the Wild Stars actually began long before even the celebrated anniversary date of 1984

To learn full history of the Wild Stars, travel back in time to the early Seventies!