Dark age & co.

Think about the superpower You declared last week that You want to have. It's year 2070 and You fully developed it and use it. Your grand-children and/or students ask You to them Your know-how. What would You tell them ? Write it (or draw it).

the Sampo — a mysterious artifact forged by the smith-god Ilmarinen, source of endless abundance.

Sampo's nature is never fully defined — part mill, part cosmic axis, part perpetual energy machine.

A myth of technology and desire: whoever controls the Sampo controls creation, prosperity, and fate.

as usual, its forging and theft ignite a cosmic struggle...

• Cosmos as a living being — created by a divine craftsman (*Demiurge*).
• Blending of ΜΥΘΟΣ and ΛΟΓΟΣ: a “likely story” (*eikôs muthos*) explaining the universe.
• Mathematical harmony as the structure of reality — geometry as sacred order.
• Creation of the human soul from cosmic ingredients — microcosm mirrors macrocosm.
• Introduction of Atlantis — mythic civilization of technological ὝΒΡΙΣ (hybris).

• Combines Jewish apocalyptic motifs with Greco-Roman symbolism — the empire recast as beast-machine.
• Cosmic imaginery: stars fall, beasts rise, heavens open.
• Mythic archetypes of dualism — light vs. darkness, human vs. inhuman, cosmos vs. chaos.
• Proto–science fiction imagination: global catastrophe, cosmic warfare, transformation of bodies and worlds.
• Influence on modern dystopia, mythologies & technologies (e.g. tech bros building their bunkers are often influenced by this narrative).
• note: added into the canon in 2nd half of 4th century (potentially due to confusion between two Johns)

• Lucian of Samostata, 2nd century AD.
• Often called the first science-fiction narrative — a voyage beyond Earth.
• Begins with a confession of lying; uses humot to expose the limits of human knowledge
• Journey to the Moon, interplanetary wars, alien societies, reproductive absurdities (pregnant men, vine women, grape-born offspring), hybrids (fish centaurs, whale villages).
• Blends Homeric myth, travel narrative, and absurd exaggeration — an early meta-commentary on storytelling itself.

• A structured journey through the cosmos — from infernal depth to celestial infinity.
• Maps medieval cosmology with mathematical precision: concentric spheres, planetary orbits, Empyrean light.
• Virgil and Beatrice as guides through knowledge systems — reason and revelation as dual navigation logics.
• Cosmic odysseys — travel beyond Earth.
• A synthesis of myth, science, and metaphysics — the medieval precursor of modern speculative world-building.