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— CH. 1 · ANCIENT LUNAR VOYAGES —

Solar System in fiction

~5 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
6 sections

  • In the year 160 CE, a Cynic philosopher named Menippus attached bird wings to his arms and flew toward the Moon. He sought a better vantage point to resolve the question of the Earth's shape. This journey appeared in Lucian of Samosata's dialogue Icaromenippus. Another story from the same era, True History, described a ship swept to the Moon by a whirlwind. The all-male lunar inhabitants there were at war with the Sun's people over the Morning Star. These tales emerged when ancient Greeks viewed the Moon as part of the earthly sky rather than the divine heavens. Speculation about lunar habitation existed in nonfiction writings by Philolaus and Plutarch. Antonius Diogenes wrote Of the Wonderful Things Beyond Thule, which included a foot journey reaching the Moon by going northwards. That work is lost, known only through a summary in Photius's Bibliotheca published in 870. The earliest surviving examples remain Lucian's two stories from the early second century.

  • Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543, proposing that planets revolve around the Sun instead of the Earth. Johannes Kepler wrote Somnium between 1593 and 1630 to explain this heliocentric model. His draft described intelligent life on both sides of the Moon adapted to month-long day-night cycles. A daemon facilitated the voyage in his narrative, yet the book treated lunar conditions with scientific accuracy for its time. Francis Godwin followed with The Man in the Moone, published posthumously in 1638. He used migratory birds to reach the Moon and discovered a utopia there. John Wilkins added practical travel considerations to his 1640 work The Discovery of a World in the Moone. Cyrano de Bergerac published Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon in 1657. It featured the first fictional rocket as a device for space travel. These authors moved away from supernatural realms toward material worlds qualitatively akin to Earth.

  • Giordano Bruno was executed in 1600 partly because he believed other celestial bodies were inhabited like Earth. Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle published Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes in 1686 to popularize the idea that stars might have planetary systems. Christiaan Huygens released Cosmotheoros posthumously in 1698, describing beings essentially human on other planets. Margaret Cavendish wrote The Blazing World in 1666, satirizing the Royal Society while describing another planet joined to Earth at the North Pole. Gabriel Daniel's A Voyage to the World of Cartesius appeared in 1690, using a lunar voyage to show René Descartes's ideas produced absurd results. Samuel Brunt's A Voyage to Cacklogallinia from 1727 satirized the South Sea Bubble through a trip to the Moon. Trips to the Moon served as vehicles for satire of the British political system during this period. Authors invariably imagined other planets would have humanlike inhabitants rather than truly alien societies.

  • Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli announced linear structures called canali on Mars during its opposition in 1877. Percival Lowell popularized the notion that these vast engineering projects were built by an advanced Martian civilization between 1895 and 1908. Percy Greg published Across the Zodiac in 1880, featuring anti-gravity dubbed apergy. John Jacob Astor IV followed with A Journey in Other Worlds in 1894, visiting Jupiter and Saturn. Kurd Lasswitz's Auf zwei Planeten and H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds both appeared in 1897. These novels introduced the concept of alien invasion of Earth. Lasswitz's Martians initially had benevolent intentions before acting as occupying colonial powers. Wells's Martians were utterly inhuman and bent on conquest. Edgar Rice Burroughs began his Barsoom series with A Princess of Mars in 1912. His version of Mars was inhabited by exotic plants and creatures including several sentient races. This depiction drew inspiration from Lowell's speculations while ignoring scientific niceties about canals.

  • Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories magazine in 1926 to begin the pulp era of science fiction. Wonder Stories Quarterly bore the text Interplanetary Stories above its title from Spring 1931 onward. Two-thirds of stories in these issues were interplanetary tales according to bibliographer E. F. Bleiler. Mars alone appeared in more than 10% of early works compiled between 1926 and 1936. Venus featured in around 7% of those same catalogued stories. Writers placed life underground or inside hollow moons to circumvent the apparent deadness of lunar surfaces. Fritz Lang released Frau im Mond in 1929, depicting deep lunar valleys containing air pockets capable of sustaining life. P. Schuyler Miller wrote Dust of Destruction in 1931, continuing this trend. Pluto became relatively popular after its discovery in 1930 as the outermost planet. Giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn were erroneously portrayed as solid bodies until the late 1950s. Colonization themes emerged as acts of utmost desperation in Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men published in 1930.

  • The success of Apollo 11 in 1969 marked the end for stories about fictional first Moon landings. Advances in planetary science rendered previous notions of Solar System conditions obsolete during the Space Age. The planets only appeared sporadically as settings throughout the 1970s. Extrasolar locations became favored instead by writers seeking new frontiers. A resurgence toward terraforming themes occurred at the end of the century. Games use Solar System locations infrequently as interchangeable exotic background elements. Stories about additional moons of Earth largely fell out of favor with the advent of the Space Age. Willem Bilderdijk described a small moon orbiting inside Earth's atmosphere in his 1813 novel A Short Account of a Remarkable Aerial Voyage. Mary Platt Parmele wrote Ariel, or the Author's World in 1892 where the second moon evaded detection by staying on the sun-facing side. These concepts faded as real-world astronomy provided more accurate data about our cosmic neighborhood.

Common questions

What ancient Greek story featured a Cynic philosopher named Menippus flying to the Moon in 160 CE?

Lucian of Samosata's dialogue Icaromenippus described Menippus attaching bird wings to his arms and flying toward the Moon. This journey appeared in Lucian of Samosata's work from the early second century.

When did Nicolaus Copernicus publish De revolutionibus orbium coelestium proposing planets revolve around the Sun?

Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. The book proposed that planets revolve around the Sun instead of the Earth.

Who announced linear structures called canali on Mars during its opposition in 1877?

Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli announced linear structures called canali on Mars during its opposition in 1877. Percival Lowell later popularized the notion that these vast engineering projects were built by an advanced Martian civilization between 1895 and 1908.

Which magazine launched by Hugo Gernsback began the pulp era of science fiction in 1926?

Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories magazine in 1926 to begin the pulp era of science fiction. Two-thirds of stories in issues like Wonder Stories Quarterly from Spring 1931 onward were interplanetary tales according to bibliographer E. F. Bleiler.

What event marked the end for stories about fictional first Moon landings in 1969?

The success of Apollo 11 in 1969 marked the end for stories about fictional first Moon landings. Advances in planetary science rendered previous notions of Solar System conditions obsolete during the Space Age.

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All sources

68 references cited across the entry

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