Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Trips to the Moon
    Trips to the Moon
    Trips to the Moon
    Ebook154 pages2 hours

    Trips to the Moon

    By Thomas Francklin, Lucian of Samosata and Henry Morley

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 2004

    Related to Trips to the Moon

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Samuel Pepys Would Have Been Huge on the Internet

      May 29, 2019

      Pepys’s fragmentary, digressive, contradictory, messy diary foreshadows our own individual self-fashioning. In Pepys we see Facebook; we see Twitter. The post Samuel Pepys Would Have Been Huge on the Internet appeared first on The Millions.

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Deep Humanity Of Books

      Jul 27, 2023

      The Deep Humanity Of Books
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ten Ways to Lose Your Literature

      Jan 25, 2021

      Just as all literature is haunted by the potential of oblivion, so all lost books are animated by the redemptive hope of their rediscovery. The post Ten Ways to Lose Your Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      28 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On...

      Feb 18, 2021

      It’s time for a book clear out. I’ve been avoiding this moment for some years, but (and I’m sure many readers feel the same) our house is sagging under a lifetime’s accumulation of history books, especially from second-hand bookshops. Arlington and L

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Poetry of Subversion: On ‘Shakespeare in Swahililand’

      Aug 25, 2017

      Shakespeare was often handmaid to the subjugation of people by English colonialists, who used the playwright as evidence of British superiority, while at the same time he was used by people across Africa in their own striving for national self-determ

      7 min read

    • Article

      Necrolog

      Mar 23, 2023

      Folklore and the world of forteana lost a rising star with the untimely death of Kai Roberts following a short illness. He was the son of my friend and long-time FT contributor Andy Roberts. I first met Kai when he was just four years old at his home

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Leiden Amun Papyrus

      Aug 22, 2022

      The Leiden Amun Papyrus
      5 min read

    • Article

      Marking Time

      Oct 7, 2021

      From the Age of Discovery to Our Digital Era Kären Wigen & Caroline Winterer eds University of Chicago Press 2020 Hb, 231pp, £34, ISBN 9780226178590 Although we tend to think of maps as a way of representing space, we actually use them for much more,

      8 min read

    • Article

      Classical Corner

      Feb 25, 2021

      Classical Corner
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Big Idea: Could The Greatest Works Of Literature Be Undiscovered?

      May 30, 2022

      When the great library at Alexandria went up in flames, it is said that the books took six months to burn. We can’t know if this is true. Exactly how the library met its end, and whether it even existed, have been subjects of speculation for more tha

      4 min read

    • Article

      Different Focus

      May 12, 2023

      Different Focus
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Devil Strides Our Countryside

      Jan 26, 2023

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Jeremy Harte Reaktion Books 2022 Hb, 296pp, £15.99, ISBN 9781789146509 One of the most beloved of Doctor Who stories has long been 1971’s “The Daemons”. Over the cou

      15 min read

    • Article

      Was Arthur historical?

      Dec 3, 2020

      Man or Myth Tony Sullivan Pen & Sword 2020 Hb, 246pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781526763679 Perhaps no figure blurs the line between myth and history as much as King Arthur. Was there an historical Arthur, and if so how much does he resemble his literary counte

      8 min read

    • Article

      After Death We Go…?

      Nov 5, 2020

      A History of the Afterlife Bart D Ehrman Oneworld 2020 Hb, 352pp, £20, ISBN 9781786077202 Many Christians believe that their doctrines sprang fully-formed from the Jewish origins of Christianity. But if this were so, many beliefs would be very differ

      8 min read

    Reviews for Trips to the Moon

    3.5/5

    7 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      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 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.

    Book preview

    Trips to the Moon - Thomas Francklin

    :z1^book_preview_excerpt.htmlZ]Fv+Dhɒ` `Kڕ44" P$)*[|ۧ}?_s"9/`XR7Yu~{έ~}YbNϟ]tcPMޅ0z΍3CooO'LիyCm㩲/B?Tߚumk;\].| ɛ]zasP\*5'[ce% \:BՄ4ᳶ+c|-Ʌ!UL)سs՛KCurgTOs^*G_Ckՠ>Ѥ75v;C'KvDl^r\;>q?|`5.pɡɓTޚ4޸Nޥա|ǻwOyyW>cuw+}#v4QMՋp6٦Cub} >k>^7C/^{VW_޾ǡ>P%,IM T=s1Sڥ)AV]W_PǯsG}N|{8Uun1x//ܾ*Y6$ >.QC*Sy, ){ hPf2xE뻪-:۔|Q, ԨM<ΪŰ/uႼaMK--,tＧ}ga'`l(TO *A>y~6g0JPQ.a-Ti[Tck!wGI Zztesh;ߙi,SM\) KYnsXqt!+1 + ']y4q7?qc8,qlFqC[.Pʑϒ,Z3EOԃ_ߦѺV2 bG4!G@F4ʊٽKdjS W 8T4g{;=Lj)cE88Ć=]o/ݽ<oaK4G)N%*=ҕL(|= crv@ "^lBۂ! ]x KS.5;54<e S0e9YJ!l莻jQ-d/`(iȇDXUH]_L5}FQlis;xh\1%֢،ќzّr!ѵm4Q/ uH7a?f/!yK-ъvB3u LaS޲!Zw<(] ة (ىE1\(A6bR$fz>yHEb=VĠ-"*ҕJjnÒre&4@+[ Jr'GT ~*blDHa?wpizO`bR 3mg]j&b8)+[hl#48@ñAXgkV;'0vw墢 {yA$1? FҮF%ᕼԿ2/`[z Y`7SYzsbR_9dT6b.yXˏ p=F?D.M32*˽\SP+21"d/X'8?#сU@wfĖ^nNN\CX^A.QL ;aMmQSXݏnm ,k9\حvc/Ljk%T2-'e>K\u"ENnR2fA/wަGgt f0@sVT.J3gZreS 9<+ZҖv.7uh8,T+J!{dT^:|Cя!N`Ubr@՞$d⎣71:Qf-90ƼfVq9M/ys C%$ڨm-f3Yʭʣ+yQڈF 9jA'8+VBv~gN漆JPn9Q=}&`P.KOt!rIZqHGt9K,LPGk׻c_G9{87k(y}qZVQJPAW eWB~4!P5y3Mzٌ O^8I|XQضWݺ3Ϝ$JLtZO<=rc&&mX h dpZr$Rދ||7lʩ6:xpɠi5FF7HгPycۼaL&6&XۦI8\n~RH(3_ >7b3b xN{U5&p2hyIjiRǪ^6Iw9c~?rs :!3zCYLyl |9h(E(RRdǬݵlIw1:^Ѡ1afVޒצgaBf05Z3l׿|PJT2^xoDUT p4ue({ǛiϩydU HQIJ8Ue2r_|QqdUl]㑿pJJ32JEDT^$6Q.8J5 MWWe9ٵ&)L"[$)/l+n&YfclN3~8K':EMe:V(n *mI20[Թf}/6DBt.XO)g_4W[2 XXi0g,RZܝJn"~hE5N2x\cq:J?
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1