Percy Greg

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Percy Greg (7 January 1836 Bury – 24 December 1889, Chelsea), son of William Rathbone Greg, was an English writer.{{cite book |last1=Butterworth |first1=L. M. Angus |title=Lancashire Literary Worthies|date=1980|publisher=W. C. Henderson and Son Ltd. |page=70| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K3EkAAAAMAAJ&q=percy+ |access-date=26 November 2014}}

His Across the Zodiac (1880) is an early science fiction novel, said to be the progenitor of the sword-and-planet genre. For that novel, Greg created what may have been the first artistic language that was described with linguistic and grammatical terminology.Ekman, F: "The Martial Language of Percy Greg", Invented Languages Summer 2008, p. 11. {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20080908113936/http://www.glossopoeia.org/ Richard K. Harrison]}}, 2008 It also contained what is possibly the first instance in the English language of the word "astronaut".{{or?|date=September 2024}}

In 2010,a crater on Mars was named Greg[http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/14743 Greg Crater data] from the International Astronomical Union in recognition of his contribution to the lore of Mars.Blue, Jennifer, "[https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/HotTopics/index.php?/archives/396-Six-New-Names-Approved-for-Features-on-Mars.html Six New Names Approved for Features on Mars]" 21 June 2010

Percy Greg used the pseudonym 'Lionel H. Holdreth' when writing for George Jacob Holyoake's freethinking periodical, The Reasoner, in the 1850s, and he edited the paper for a while in 1859 when Holyoake was ill.Obituary in Manchester Guardian, 30 December 1889; see also more generally, Edward Royle, Victorian Infidels (Manchester UP 1974), p. 311 and passim.{{Short description|English writer}}