Trips to the Moon

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a work of classical literature, claimed by some as the first ever science fiction novel. Indeed, it does start rather well, with our hero unwittingly drawn to the Moon where he finds himself embroiled in a space war between the inhabitants of the Moon and the Sun over the colonisation of Venus (strictly Ἑωσφόρος, Lucifer) which seems very close to much more recent tropes of sf narrative. But apart from that particular shaft of forward thinking, it's a fairly standard odyssey tale of going to strange places, seeing strange things and meeting strange people, and I think it is better to let classical scholars hang onto it as a mildly imaginative outlier in classical literature than for sf show more fans to spuriously (and unnecessarily) claim classical legitimacy for the genre starting here. show less

Trips to the Moon translated from the Greek by Thomas Franklin is available free on-line from Gutenberg Project, but I chose to buy the kindle version in the Ron Miller series and what I got for my money was an introduction by Ron Miller some details of other books in the series, an essay on the reasons for publishing the collection and then the identical translation by Franklin that appears at Gutenberg. The notes to the text are also by Franklin, but there is no quick link to them on my kindle version. Ron Miller informs us that Franklin's translation which dates from 1781 is still the best around although Franklin did take the opportunity to "clean" it up a little.

Lucian died sometime after AD180, but there is no agreement on when he show more wrote the texts included in Trips to the Moon, but they can lay claim to being some of the earliest science fiction, however there is very little science in Lucian's fiction. He was writing at a time when the earth was believed to be the centre of the universe and the stars, the planets, the moon and the sun were all a relatively short journey away suspended in the heavens. All that was needed was the power of flight to get to them and Lucian envisaged a giant wave taking a boat on it's crest and giving it the power to reach the moon, but Lucian was a renowned satirist and so how much of this should we believe. Perhaps not very much if his introduction is anything to go by.

I turned my thoughts towards falsehood, a species of it, however much more excusable than that of others, as I shall at least say one thing true, when I tell you that I lie, and shall hope to escape the general censure, by acknowledging that I mean to speak not a word of truth, Know ye therefore that I am going to write about what I never saw myself, nor experienced, nor so much as heard from anybody else, and, what is more, of such things as neither are or can be. I give my readers warning, therefore, not to believe me.

This is a prelude to his "True History" written in the first person where the speaker and his ship's crew journey to the moon, become involved in a war with the sun, get set back onto the ocean are swallowed by a whale where they live for eighteen months and become involved in more fighting with the various inhabitants living inside the whale. After escaping from the whale by burning a wood that is growing inside of it and killing the beast, they then set off on a tour of some wonderful islands, which get evermore fantastic and include the blessed Isle thinly disguised as heaven and then an island depicting hell. The story verges on the very silly with much of the satire lost for me.

The True History is preceded by a shorter text "Instructions for writing History" wherein Lucian bemoans the state of current history writing. He says that there is no attempt to discover the truth of events as most historians see themselves as poets who fantasise and write panegyrics to please the patrons of their works. This is a well argued piece of writing which still reads well today and coming just before Lucian's own "True History" ensures the irony is not lost.

The final text is "Icarus Menippus - A dialogue" again written in the first person and featuring a trip to the moon and to Jupiter. This time the speaker flies to the moon by attaching to himself the wings of a vulture and an eagle. He finds the moon upset because of all the philosophers talk about it, The moon cannot sleep in peace because of all the conjecture and asks the speaker to fly to Jupiter where Jove the king of the Gods will be able to sort things out. This turns out to be a delightful little tale where the object of the satire is the human race and particularly the philosophers.

My eyes glazed over a little reading parts of "The True History" but I enjoyed the other two shorter texts. I applaud Ron Miller's idea to make available early texts associated with science fiction, which individually are cheap to buy, however in this instance you might just as well read the text free online; if you can live without Millers introduction. A three star read. show less