Richard Adams Locke 1 hr 13 min read

In 1835 a New York paper astounded the world with sober reports of life on the Moon, man-bats, unicorns, temples, supposedly seen through a mighty new telescope, the most famous hoax of its age.

Richard Adams Locke's 1835 'Moon Hoax' is a landmark of proto-science-fiction journalism. Ingenious, audacious, historically vital. Read it for the celebrated Great Moon Hoax that fooled a nation, a straight-faced account of a lush, inhabited lunar world, an early masterpiece of speculative writing that helped invent the modern hoax and the scientific romance alike.

In its time

Published in 1835, during the 1830s, poe and the german romantics.

Reading it

1 hr 13 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).