A Voyage to the Moon; with Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians was a satirical science fiction novel in the tradition of Jonathan Swift. Published in 1827 under the pseudonym Joseph Atterley, it poked fun at the gullible masses, fashion, useless inventions, and pompous intellectuals. Ironically, it was actually written by an intellectual-George Tucker, a professor of “mental sciences” at the University of Virginia. Tucker was a philosopher and economist whose essays, penned while he was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, had attracted the attention of Thomas Jefferson, who invited him to teach in Charlottesville. A Voyage to the Moon, the first science fiction novel about interplanetary travel, was a genre experiment undertaken at a time when Edgar Allan Poe-one of American literature’s most famous genre writers-was a student at the University of Virginia. Tucker would later publish articles in the Southern Literary Messenger, which Poe helped to edit from 1835 until 1837. Tucker also wrote a second science fiction novel in 1841, calling it A Century Hence; or, a Romance of 1941. It was not published until 1977.
Further Reading:
Robert Colin McLean, George Tucker, Moral Philosopher and Man of Letters (1961)
This Vignette Provided By
Brendan Wolfe, associate editor of Encyclopedia Virginia
