Voltaire

Voltaire (1694–1778), pen name of François-Marie Arouet, was the towering wit of the French Enlightenment. For the genre he matters most for Micromégas (1752), in which colossal beings from Sirius and Saturn visit a tiny Earth and marvel at human folly, a philosophical tale that uses the alien viewpoint exactly as science fiction later would. His clarity, irony and appetite for reason echo through the genre’s satirical strand.