Duchess of Margaret Cavendish Newcastle 1 hr 56 min read

A young woman, carried off by sea, passes through the pole into another world lit by many-colored stars, where she is made Empress of the Blazing World and its part-animal, part-human subjects.

Margaret Cavendish's 1666 work is a foundational proto-SF utopia, among the very first science-fiction narratives ever written. Visionary, eccentric, historically vital. Read it for a landmark of the imagination, a Restoration duchess's dazzling tale of an accessible other world and a woman who rules it absolutely, centuries ahead of its time.

In its time

Published in 1666, 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

1 hr 56 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).