The first post-steampunk novel!
And so it came to pass that the Baltimore Gun Club's successful 1864 launch of a manned projectile into outer space did initiate a worldwide "space race", bolstered by the industrial and technological advances developed over the course of three regrettable "great" wars, so that by the year of our Lord 1960 Earth men maintained a bustling way station upon our own moon and had founded not-insignificant colonies upon our closest celestial neighbors, Venus and Mars. Now, the Eurmerican Confederation is taking the next tentative step into the void, sending its first wave of great exploratory craft out, out, into our awesome, sometimes terrifying, solar system. Will what we find there, so relatively close to home, expand our understanding of mankind's place in the universe? Or will it destroy us?