Born in County Down, Robert Cromie  (1855-1907) published his science fiction novel A Plunge into Space in 1890 at the age of 35. The text does pretty much what it says on the tin and follows an expedition to Mars and while it doesn’t feature in our project’s corpus, it is perhaps a good example of Irish fin de siècle sci-fi   – one that shares some similarities with H. G Wells’ later work.