Lucian's A True Story

Lucian's famous work excels as satire but underwhelms for those seeking in it an early science fiction story. Openly telling the reader it is nothing but lies, the fictionalized Lucian/narrator lists the various exploits of his crew as they sail beyond the Pillar of Hercules. They encounter fantastic beings, creatures, and places on Earth, the Moon, and the Sun while openly mocking ancient Greek epics, Herodotus, Socrates, Plato, and various Greek writers. It's a lot of fun and a great work of satire. Its irreverence and fantastic beings and adventures has clearly inspired a large number of writers over the centuries, but it is in its extreme tale of interplanetary war between the Sun and the Moon which caught the attention. 

Anyone hoping for a space opera or inter-imperial solar system conflict will be disappointed by the brevity of this conflict in the overall narrative. It is a shame, however. One could imagine a Greek "romance" like that of Achilles Tatius or Helidorus set on the Sun and the Moon, involving a series of adventures and conflicts in the solar system. Maybe a forbidden romance between a man from the Moon and a woman from the Sun, or a sequel telling the tale of the colony they form at the Morning Star. A true space opera from over 1800 years ago would have been something, although the promise of adventure on earth and the unknown continent to the west of the Atlantic are still satisfying in the rest of Lucian's short text. It is an irreverent journey suggestive of how Greek-educated writers learned to apply satire to the epics and philosophy (especially poking fun at Socrates and Pythagoras).