Emanuel Swedenborg 2 hr 45 min read

A visionary describes, from things heard and seen in the spirit, the inhabitants of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and the worlds of distant stars.

Emanuel Swedenborg's 1758 treatise is a landmark of pre-modern speculation about extraterrestrial life, describing the peoples and spirits of other planets as revealed to the great mystic. Strange, earnest, historically fascinating. Read it for a founding vision of alien worlds, written a century before science fiction had a name.

In its time

Published in 1758, during the Pre-1800, voyages to the moon, subterranean worlds, and philosophical utopias, the deep roots of the imaginative tradition, from kepler and cyrano to the enlightenment.

Reading it

2 hr 45 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).