Imagine, if you will, the blockbuster sci-fi epics of our modern age: sprawling space operas, intricate alien species, and technological marvels that stretch the imagination. We often think of this genre as a relatively recent invention, perhaps emerging with Jules Verne or H.G. Wells, or truly exploding in the pulp magazines of the 20th century. However, as the video above so vividly illustrates, the concept of intergalactic adventure and satirical speculation has roots stretching back far deeper, to an era of wooden ships and horse-drawn chariots.
In fact, nearly two millennia ago, a brilliant mind named Lucian of Samosata was already crafting tales that would feel strangely at home on a modern sci-fi shelf. His work, particularly “A True Story,” isn’t just an ancient curiosity; it stands as a testament to the timeless human desire to explore the unknown, challenge conventional wisdom, and poke fun at the absurdities of society, even when those societies are light-years away.
Lucian of Samosata: The Ancient World’s Premier Satirist and Sci-Fi Pioneer
Lucian of Samosata, active in the second century CE, was a prolific and wildly popular satirist whose sharp wit spared no one. He used exaggerated humor and fantastical narratives to lampoon the superstitions, religions, and political figures of his day. Unlike many ancient writers whose works have been lost to time, over eighty of Lucian’s stories have survived, a testament to his enduring appeal and the sheer volume of his output.
While his humor might sometimes be lost on a modern audience, separated by nearly 2,000 years of cultural evolution, his methods were revolutionary. Lucian wrote specifically for the educated upper-class of Greece, an audience that would have immediately grasped his often-subtle, referential jokes. However, “A True Story” transcends its immediate cultural context, emerging as the earliest known science fiction book, full of concepts that predate modern speculative fiction by centuries.
Unpacking Lucian’s Satire: A World of Travelogs and Debates
To truly appreciate Lucian’s genius, one must understand the literary landscape he inhabited. During the Roman Empire, two genres dominated the literary scene: the travelog and the debate. Travelogs, a blend of guidebook and personal journal, were immensely popular, with writers recounting journeys to distant lands and publishing their “findings.” Conversely, debates featured highly respected public figures engaging in written arguments over philosophical or political ideas, often with elaborate rhetoric.
Lucian, however, harbored a passionate disdain for what these genres had become. Travelogs, in his view, had devolved into sensationalist exercises, with authors embellishing and outright fabricating discoveries to maintain relevance and sell copies. These writers, much like some clickbait purveyors today, prioritized outrageous claims over factual reporting. Yet, Lucian saw debates as equally problematic, often becoming long-winded, overly highbrow affairs where participants bickered over trivial semantics or unknowable matters, missing the point entirely.
The Brilliant Lie: How “A True Story” Takes Aim
With these literary targets firmly in his sights, Lucian penned “A True Story” as a masterful satire, weaving together elements of both the travelog and the debate into a single, absurd narrative. He begins with a preface that would have shocked his readership: an explicit declaration that the entire book is a work of fiction. This was a bold move, as travelogs of the time meticulously claimed veracity, even when their contents were clearly fantastical.
Lucian openly mocks his contemporaries, like Ctesias and Homer, for their exaggerated tales, accusing them of ruining the publishing business by fabricating larger-than-life stories for a “stupid readership.” Yet, with a self-deprecating wit, he admits his own inability to be more truthful. He reasons that since he also wants to sell books and has no remarkable experiences of his own, he might as well lie—but with a crucial difference. He would be more noble than his competitors by openly admitting his deception. His famous line, “I confidently pronounce that truthfully, I lie. I write of matters which I neither saw nor suffered, nor heard by reports from people that I made up. Let no man therefore in any case believe these words,” serves as both a meta-commentary on storytelling and a clever challenge to his readers.
A Voyage Beyond the Pillars of Hercules: The Plot of “A True Story”
Lucian’s narrative begins conventionally enough for a travelog, with the protagonist (Lucian himself) setting sail from the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) with a crew of fifty men. Their intent is to explore the Western Ocean, a journey stocked with provisions and guided by an expert pilot. However, the mundane quickly gives way to the fantastical when, after a day and a night, they are caught in a colossal tempest that lasts for an astonishing seventy-nine days.
From Wine Rivers to Tree Women: First Encounters
On the eightieth day, the storm clears, revealing a mysterious island. While a party of thirty men guards the ship, twenty venture ashore, discovering a bronze slab indicating the presence of Hercules and Dionysus, complete with massive footprints. More intriguing still, they find a river flowing with wine, its fish causing inebriation when consumed. Following the river upstream, they encounter grapevines shaped like women, who, speaking Greek, invite the men to kiss them. The consequences are immediate and terrifying: two lust-struck voyagers embrace the “tree ladies” and are transformed into trees themselves, their fate a grim warning of the dangers of new, alien desires.
Into the Cosmos: The Moon Kingdom and the Sun War
Escaping the island, the ship is soon caught in a giant whirlwind, pulling the entire vessel out of the water and thrusting it into outer space. For seven days, they sail through the cosmos, assuming space still had winds, a charming anachronism that highlights the story’s ancient origins. On the eighth day, they reach the Moon, a world teeming with cities. Here, Lucian’s party is intercepted by the Hippogypenes, or Vulture Dragoons, a moon police force riding massive birds. They are arrested and brought before King Endymion, a human ruler who, thankfully, also speaks Greek.
Endymion reveals that the Moon Kingdom is locked in a fierce intergalactic war with the Sun Kingdom over the colonization of Venus. King Phaeton of the Sun had sent his own forces, the Ant Dragoons, to Venus first, escalating tensions. Lucian and his men, with nothing better to do, agree to join the Moon’s war effort, receiving armor and giant vultures as mounts.
The Absurdities of Ancient Space Warfare
The next day, a truly epic space battle unfolds. A hundred thousand Moon soldiers, supported by almost a million galactic allies, face off against the Sun’s army. The video offers a vivid glimpse into Lucian’s imaginative bestiary:
- **Moon Army:** Includes grassplumes (large birds with lettuce wings), Vulture Dragoons, and archers riding elephant-sized fleas. Adding to the spectacle, island-sized spiders, including one named Owlett Son of Fairweather, weave a massive web in space to serve as a makeshift battlefield. This peculiar detail, the naming of a spider, likely served as a subtle jab at contemporary authors who inserted arbitrary information to lend false credibility to their tales.
- **Sun Army:** Comprises dragoons riding two hundred-foot-long ants, massive mosquitoes, men who hurl poison radishes, soldiers wielding asparagus spears and mushroom shields, and puppycorns (representatives of the Dog Star) fighting atop winged acorns.
Lucian further satirizes military accounts by detailing the Sun army’s poor management, noting slingers from the Milky Way who failed to show up and cloud centaurs who arrived only after the battle concluded. Phaeton’s disproportionate fury, unleashing a firestorm on the slingers’ homeworld, is another jab at the random, often illogical details found in traditional travelogs. The Moon Kingdom achieves a “glorious victory,” with so much blood flowing that the clouds are “dyed red, as they do when the sun is setting.”
Prisoners of the Sun and a Peculiar Peace Treaty
Following the battle, Lucian and two companions are captured by the belated cloud centaurs and transported to the Sun, where they meet King Phaeton. In a desperate attempt to divide the warring kingdoms, Phaeton orders the construction of a massive cloud wall to separate the Sun from the Moon. However, Endymion, moved by pity for his kingdom, seeks a peaceful resolution. After two days of intense deliberation, a treaty is forged:
- The Sunites agree to dismantle the cloud wall and release prisoners.
- The Moonites agree to leave the stars unconquered.
- Both kingdoms pledge mutual aid against future attacks.
- Endymion promises an annual tribute of ten thousand gallons of dew to Phaeton.
- Venus is declared a joint colony for both kingdoms.
Upon their release, Lucian and his friends receive a hero’s welcome on the Moon. Endymion, eager for them to stay and join the colony, even offers his son’s hand in marriage—a proposal Lucian declines, emphatically stating, “There are no women on the moon.”
Moonite Marvels and Technologies
During a week-long stay on the Moon, Lucian describes the bizarre physiology and customs of its inhabitants, further highlighting his satirical intent to invent any outlandish detail for a “travelog”:
- **Reproduction:** Moonites are not born of women. Up to age twenty-five, each is a “wife,” and thereafter a “husband.” They become pregnant and carry children in the calf of their leg, rather than the belly.
- **Physical Traits:** They are born with only one toe on each foot. Honey serves as snot, and milk replaces sweat. Their bellies function as pockets, and their clothes are made of glass. Their eyes are removable, and their ears are crafted from leaves.
- **Diet:** Flying frogs are a delicacy, plucked from the air and eaten fried.
- **Technology:** The Moon also boasts a remarkable piece of technology: a giant plane of glass suspended over a shallow well, capable of telegraphing events happening on Earth. Lucian famously uses this to spy on his family, quipping, “If you think that I am lying, go there yourself, and you will see that I am telling the truth”—a clear mocking of other authors’ desperate claims of authenticity.
The depiction of Moonite society and biology serves as a fantastic vehicle for social commentary, exaggerating human quirks and challenging conventional norms through the lens of the utterly alien.
Return to Earth… and Beyond: Whale Bellies and Blessed Isles
After their lunar explorations, Lucian and his men are guided back to Earth. Their return journey is equally packed with the peculiar, including a visit to Lamptown, a city inhabited by floating, sentient lamps. Each lamp bears the name of a person on Earth and reports on its assigned human to a magistrate each evening. If a lamp fails its duty, its flame is extinguished forever. Lucian finds his own lamp and inquires about his family, but the sheer weirdness of Lamptown prompts a swift departure.
They also pass by Cloud Cuckoo Town, a reference to Aristophanes’ famous play, before finally reaching Earth. Their tranquil sea journey, however, is cut short when a monstrous whale, an incredible one hundred eighty-seven and one-half miles long, swallows their ship whole. Inside the whale’s belly, they discover an entire hidden world, complete with forests, animals, and even other civilizations of fish-people, all engaged in their own perpetual wars. After nearly two years of living inside the colossal beast, Lucian and his crew escape by setting the internal forests on fire, causing the whale’s death and allowing them to sail out through a crack in its mouth.
The Island of the Blessed and Plato’s Absence
The adventures continue, taking them through a thirty-day ordeal on frozen ice, a hunting expedition on a desert island, a voyage through a sea of milk, and even an island made entirely of cheese. They encounter the “cork feet,” who can walk on water, before finally reaching the Island of the Blessed. This central city is portrayed as an afterlife kingdom of gold with emerald walls, where Lucian meets historical and mythical figures such as veterans of the Trojan War, Pythagoras, Homer, and other philosophers and politicians.
Here, Lucian’s satire sharpens further, as he recounts gossip about figures like Socrates and Diogenes. Perhaps the most famous detail is the observation that “Plato was not there. It was said that he was living in an imaginary city under the constitution and laws that he himself wrote.” This “spicy” remark is a direct, witty jab at Plato’s idealistic Republic, implying that the philosopher was so committed to his theoretical constructs that he literally inhabited them. After six months and an intervening rebellion on the island, Lucian and his party are compelled to leave, with the demigod Rhadamanthus promising his eventual return and pointing out six more great islands that lie between them and their homeland.
Lucian’s Enduring Legacy: The Original Space Opera
The rest of “A True Story” describes parts of this journey through the remaining islands, fraught with horrors and further loss of crew. The narrative abruptly concludes mid-voyage, with Lucian promising to tell “What happened on that island… in the next book.” The narrator humorously reveals that, to the chagrin of at least one ancient Greek scholar who scrawled a frustrated note in the margins of a surviving copy, Lucian never actually wrote a sequel. This final touch underscores Lucian’s satirical genius: not only does he mock his contemporaries for their fabrications, but he also playfully deceives his readers, leaving them hanging, much like a modern serialized adventure.
Lucian of Samosata’s “A True Story” isn’t merely an ancient text; it’s a vibrant, imaginative, and incredibly prescient work that truly stands as the earliest science fiction. It’s a testament to the fact that the human imagination has always yearned for the stars, even before telescopes and rockets made them tangible. Lucian’s satirical space opera, filled with intergalactic warfare, bizarre alien life, and ingenious social commentary, continues to resonate, reminding us that storytelling, in its most profound and absurd forms, has always been a vehicle for exploring our world and ourselves, even when navigating the fantastical moonscapes or the belly of a leviathan.
Probing the Absurd: Your Questions on the Lost 2nd Century Space Opera
What is “A True Story”?
“A True Story” is an ancient text written by Lucian of Samosata, considered the earliest known work of science fiction. It’s a satirical tale filled with imaginative adventures like space travel and alien encounters.
Who was Lucian of Samosata?
Lucian of Samosata was a Greek writer active in the 2nd century CE, known for his sharp wit and satirical stories. He often used fantastical narratives to poke fun at the superstitions and figures of his day.
Why is “A True Story” considered early science fiction?
It describes concepts like space travel, life on the Moon, intergalactic war, and encounters with alien beings, long before modern science fiction emerged. These imaginative elements make it remarkably similar to later works in the genre.
What kinds of adventures happen in the story?
The protagonist voyages to the Moon and participates in a war between the Moon and Sun kingdoms. He also encounters bizarre creatures, travels inside a giant whale, and visits an island of the blessed.
What was Lucian’s main goal in writing “A True Story”?
Lucian wrote it as a satire to mock other ancient writers who fabricated unbelievable tales in their travelogues and philosophical debates. He explicitly stated from the beginning that his entire story was a lie.