Renaissance to 19th century Licensed under :: by () @
Renaissance to 19th century
Destination 1: The Moon
Activation
Think about different means how You could put / get Your self on the surface of the moon.
Somnium
A witchcraft invocation within a book within a dream — nested speculation.
Journey to the Moon seen through "Demon's" eyes.
Somnium manuscript leaked: Kepler’s mother accused of witchcraft.
Scientifically valid insights (Lagrange points, eclipses from Moon perspective, Privolva / Subvolva, planet size variation, size of the Moon)
Somnium translates Kepler’s Three Laws (Elliptical orbits, Equal areas in equal times, Harmonic Law) into narrative form
The Man in the Moone
One of the earliest space-travel tales in English literature.
Domingo Gonsales reaches the Moon using trained geese.
Describes lunar inhabitants and societies with utopian curiosity.
Reframes divine ascent as mechanical flight — from miracle to method.
Echoes Kepler’s *Somnium* but replaces demons with invention.
Marks the shift from celestial myth to speculative science fiction.
The Engine
"Having fastened about a dozen of my strongest Gansas unto a kinde of Engine I had framed, after they had raised me from the ground, they continued soaring upward and upward, till I could no longer discern the Earth..."
Gulliver’s Travels
A voyage through impossible worlds to expose human absurdity.
Each land a mirror — scale, reason, and custom turned upside down.
Laputa’s scientists: intellect detached from reality.
Brobdingnag: moral clarity through altered scale.
Houyhnhnms — rational horses who reveal mankind as the true beast.
Satire becomes proto-anthropology: humanity seen through alien eyes.
Micromégas
A cosmic satire on scale, knowledge, and human vanity.
Blends Enlightenment rationalism with speculative cosmology.
Micromégas — a giant from Sirius, eight leagues tall, traveling the universe in search of wisdom.
Encounters microscopic humans on Earth — astonishment reversed.
Anticipates first-contact narratives: beings of reason meeting beings of ignorance.
The universe as laboratory for humility...
Voltaire: the 1st one to introduce the alien perspective, the 1st one to "play it big".
L’An 2440
An Enlightenment dream of Paris six centuries in the future.
Imagines social reform through reason, education, and moral progress.
First modern utopia set in a specific future year.
A rational paradise: no clergy, no monarchy, science guided by virtue.
Blends prophecy, urban planning, and moral philosophy — proto–science fiction of progress.
