of Samosata Lucian 2 hr 6 min read

A ship is caught up by a whirlwind and flung all the way to the Moon, where its crew finds warring kingdoms of the Sun and Moon, in the very first voyage-to-the-Moon story ever written.

Lucian of Samosata's second-century satires, here translated, are the earliest surviving tales of space travel. Witty, fantastical, foundational. Read it for the ancient roots of science fiction, Lucian's uproarious True History and Icaro-Menippus, tall-tale voyages to the Moon and the heavens that gleefully parody the fabulists of his day, and that stand at the very fountainhead of the whole genre.

In its time

Published in 1887, during the 1880s, lost races and dying earths.

Reading it

2 hr 6 min read (a novella, a full arc in one sitting or two).