Moon in fiction

The Moon has appeared in fiction as a setting since at least classical antiquity. Throughout most of literary history, a significant portion of works depicting lunar voyages have been satirical in nature. From the late 1800s onwards, fictional works have successively focused largely on the themes of life on the Moon, first Moon landings, and lunar colonization.

This article is about the Moon as the subject of creative works. For the Moon in mythology and religion, see Moon (mythology).

Early depictions

The Moon has been a setting in fiction since at least the works of the ancient Greek writers Antonius Diogenes and Lucian of Samosata; the former's Of the Wonderful Things Beyond Thule has been lost and the latter's True History from the second century CE is a satire of fanciful travellers' tales.[1][2] It was not until Johannes Kepler's novel Somnium was posthumously released in 1634 that the subject of travelling to the Moon was given a serious treatment in fiction.[1][2][3] Building on Kepler's thoughts, and similar speculations by Francis Bacon on flying to the Moon in his 1627 work Sylva sylvarum, Francis Godwin expanded on the idea in the 1638 novel The Man in the Moone.[4] Across the centuries that followed, numerous authors penned serious or satirical works depicting voyages to the Moon, including Cyrano de Bergerac's novel Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon which was posthumously released in 1657, Daniel Defoe's 1705 novel The Consolidator, Edgar Allan Poe's 1835 short story "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall", the 1835 newspaper series called the "Great Moon Hoax" by Richard Adams Locke, Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, and H. G. Wells' 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon.[1][5] The first science fiction film, Georges Méliès' Le voyage dans la lune from 1902, depicts a lunar voyage.[2][5]

Life on the Moon

By the latter part of the 1800s, it was clear that the Moon was devoid of life, making depictions of lunar lifeforms and societies lack credibility. A number of authors circumvent this by placing lunar life underneath the Moon's surface, including Wells in the aforementioned The First Men in the Moon and Edgar Rice Burroughs in the 1926 novel The Moon Maid. Others confine lunar life to the past, either depicting the remnants of a lunar civilization that has since gone extinct as in W. S. Lach-Szyrma's 1887–1893 series "Letters from the Planets", Edgar Fawcett's 1895 novel The Ghost of Guy Thyrle, and George Griffith's 1901 novel A Honeymoon in Space, or by time travelling to the past to encounter lunar life as in the 1932 short story "The Moon Era" by Jack Williamson. Some works also place lunar life solely on the far side of the Moon.[1][3][5] In the 1977 novel Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan, an ancient human skeleton in a spacesuit is found on the Moon, leading to the discovery that humanity did not originate on Earth.[1][2][5]

Moon landings

Following the end of World War II, several stories appeared depicting science fiction authors' visions of the first Moon landing. Among these were Robert A. Heinlein's 1950 short story "The Man Who Sold the Moon" about an entrepreneur seeking to finance the endeavor, Lester del Rey's 1956 novel Mission to the Moon, and Pierre Boulle's 1964 novel Garden on the Moon where the first Moon landing is by Japan and intentionally a one-way trip such that no method of returning astronauts to Earth needs to be devised. One of the last such stories was William F. Temple's 1966 novel Shoot at the Moon; following the actual first Moon landing by Apollo 11 in 1969, stories of fictional first Moon landings fell out of favour to be replaced by stories of lunar colonization.[1][3][5]

Colonization of the Moon

Colonization of the Moon is depicted in Murray Leinster's 1950s Joe Kenmore series starting with the novel Space Platform, Larry Niven's 1980 novel The Patchwork Girl, and Roger MacBride Allen's 1988 novel Farside Cannon, among others.[1][2] Lunar colonies are sometimes humanity's last refuge when the Earth is no longer habitable, as in Arthur C. Clarke's 1951 short story "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth" where the Earth has succumbed to nuclear holocaust and Stephen Baxter's 1998 novel Moonseed where the Earth is destroyed by an alien nanotechnology from the Moon itself.[2][3][6] The residents of lunar colonies seek independence from Earth in the 1931 novel The Birth of a New Republic by Jack Williamson and Miles J. Breuer, the 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, and the 1992 novel Steel Beach by John Varley.[3] The Moon is terraformed in a handful of works including the 1991 novel Reunion by John Gribbin and Marcus Chown.[1][3]

References
  1. Stableford, Brian M. (2006). "Moon, The". Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 310–313. ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8.
  2. Altner, Patricia (2005). "The Moon". In Westfahl, Gary (ed.). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Themes, Works, and Wonders. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 535–537. ISBN 978-0-313-32952-4.
  3. Westfahl, Gary (2021-07-19). "The Moon". Science Fiction Literature through History: An Encyclopedia [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. pp. 456–458. ISBN 978-1-4408-6617-3.
  4. Martin, Catherine Gimelli (2016). "Sailing to the Moon: Francis Bacon, Francis Godwin and the First Science Fiction". Literature in the Age of Celestial Discovery. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. pp. 109–132. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-56803-8_6. ISBN 978-1-349-88743-9.
  5. Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). "Moon". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 2021-09-28.
  6. Clute, John; Langford, David; Sleight, Graham (eds.). "Baxter, Stephen". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (4th ed.). Retrieved 2021-11-25.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.