A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians is an 1827 science fiction novel by George Tucker published under the pseudonym "Joseph Atterley", the story's fictional main character who travels to the Moon using a material with anti-gravitational properties. Two different countries on the Moon are depicted: Morosofia, a vehicle for satire on contemporary issues, and Okalbia, a utopia. The book received positive reviews upon release and was a relative commercial success. The satire was found by contemporary reviewers to be at times impenetrable, while later reviewers have found it to have aged significantly.
The book's place in the history of science fiction is that of an early work from the United States, and part of established traditions of fictional lunar voyages and works of satire. In terms of specific works, it took inspiration from Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels and influenced Edgar Allan Poe's 1835 short story "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" in turn. A Voyage to the Moon contains one of the earliest instances of the anti-gravity theme and the notion that outer space is a cold and airless void. Scholars have written about what can be gleaned about Tucker's personal views from the book, in particular his depiction of an ideal society and discussion between characters about matters of racial differences.
Synopsis New York resident Joseph Atterley goes on a voyage around the world following the death of his wife. He is shipwrecked off the coast of Burma, where he is taken captive and meets a Brahmin by the name of Gurameer. Gurameer tells Atterley that he has discovered an exotic metallic substance called "Lunarium", which has the peculiar property of being repelled from the Earth while simultaneously being attracted to the Moon. Gurameer, who claims to have been to the Moon before, suggests that they travel there. Together, they construct an airtight spaceship in the form of a copper cube with iron reinforcements, and coat it with Lunarium. They enter the vessel and cut the ropes attaching it to the ground, whereupon it lifts off. While in space, they breathe from a supply of condensed air aboard the spacecraft. The journey to the Moon takes three days. Along the way, they look upon the Earth and reflect upon various social and political issues, speculate about the origin of the Moon, and experience a reversal of gravity as they come nearer to their destination.
Upon arrival, they find that the Moon has an atmosphere so thin it is not detectable from Earth, but still breathable. Their landing spot is in the country of Morosofia, inhabited by tall humans; among them is a foolish race called Glonglims. Atterley is confounded by the various peculiar habits of the Morosofians. Among other things, they practice a kind of non-lethal trial by combat wherein law cases are settled by prize fights and the rules to declare a winner are unclear, their religion mandates that they walk backwards down stairs at certain times of the calendar, and physicians are engaged with theories of disease rather than treating patients. The Earthlings then move on to the country of Okalbia, which is a kind of utopia. The Okalbians practice a form of voluntary population control, have abolished the death penalty, and have no problems arising from wealth inequality. Eventually, Atterley and Gurameer return to Earth. Gurameer relates his life story to Atterley before going on further travels; Atterley returns to New York after a four-year absence, where nobody believes his story of the lunar voyage, and swears off traveling for good.
Publication history
A Voyage to the Moon was written by George Tucker (1775–1861), a former three-term member of the United States House of Representatives (1819–1825) who was at the time a professor at the newly founded University of Virginia. It was Tucker's second novel, following his 1824 debut The Valley of Shenandoah. A Voyage to the Moon was originally published in 1827 by Elam Bliss under the pseudonym Joseph Atterley. It was reprinted under Tucker's real name by Gregg Press in 1975, including an introduction by David G. Hartwell and an anonymous review originally printed in the March 1828 edition of American Quarterly Review.
Reception
Contemporary Upon release, the book received favorable reviews. The anonymous March 1828 review in the American Quarterly Review summarized the story at length and praised the satirical elements in particular, finding them good-natured and free from maliciousness against the subjects of the satire, while lamenting the lack of footnotes or other measures to make the intentions of the author more apparent to readers. Another anonymous March 1828 review, this one in the Western Monthly Review, likewise provided an in-depth summary and praised the talents of the author, while finding the satire occasionally too difficult to decipher; the reviewer considered the late portion of book retelling Gurameer's life story to be the best part. Both reviews likened the book to Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels and found the inspiration to be obvious; the reviewer in Western Monthly Review nevertheless deemed the differences between the works to be significant enough for A Voyage to the Moon to be considered original. The book was also a comparative commercial success, selling a thousand copies and netting Tucker $100 ().
Later Tucker's biographer Robert Colin McLean finds A Voyage to the Moon to be technically superior as a piece of writing to all of his previous works, while nevertheless finding the structure to be "no more than a casual linking together of anecdotal essays within a contrived framework". McLean comments upon what he perceives as a curious decision to conclude what he describes as "intellectual satire" with the "sentimental romance" of Gurameer's life story, writing that this was probably a gambit to broaden the book's appeal and that it appears to have been successful at that. He concludes that the book's treatment of its various subjects was timely to the point that it is now interesting mostly as a time capsule of the social and intellectual issues of the day. Science fiction scholar E. F. Bleiler, in the 1990 reference work Science-Fiction: The Early Years, finds the book's principal flaw to be an underdevelopment of otherwise good ideas throughout large portions of the text, but describes finding amusement and enjoyment in the book nevertheless. Bleiler summarizes his overall impression of the book as "pleasant".
Analysis
Place in science fiction history
The book features one of the earliest instances of anti-gravity in fiction. It is the first anti-gravitational metal, the first example of anti-gravity being treated as a matter of science rather than a supernatural phenomenon, and the first time anti-gravity was used for space travel in science fiction. Tucker's "Lunarium" is considered a predecessor of the "Cavorite" depicted in H. G. Wells's 1900–1901 serial The First Men in the Moon. Russell Freedman comments that following the publication of A Voyage to the Moon, "Anti-gravity spaceships dominated science fiction for the next hundred years or so".
It is also one of the earliest examples of attempting to portray space travel realistically in terms of the actual conditions of outer space. The notion that space is a vacuum (or void) was not general knowledge at the time, even among scientists. Keith Deutsch, in the 1980 book Space Travel in Fact and Fiction, credits Tucker's novel with being "the first to describe space as a bitter cold void where unprotected life could not exist". The spacecraft in the book is constructed to be airtight, has an onboard supply of breathable air in the form of tanks, and incorporates thermal insulation against the extreme temperatures of outer space. Inasmuch as it deals with these considerations, Harry Harrison and Malcolm Edwards, in the 1979 book Spacecraft in Fact and Fiction, deem it "the first reasonable spaceship design".
A Voyage to the Moon inhabits an early position in the history of American science fiction literature, being described as "a central precursor" by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and a "prototype" by Peter Leighton in the 1960 book Moon Travellers: A Dream That Is Becoming a Reality, and by some accounts constitutes the country's first science fiction novel. It is sometimes described as the earliest US story of interplanetary travel, though Sam Moskowitz points to George Fowler's 1813 novel A Flight to the Moon; or, The Vision of Randalthus as an earlier example. It also contains what might be the first depiction of artificial enclosures for space farming in fiction.
In terms of antecedents, J. L. Hilton, in a 2005 article in Akroterion, identifies the novel as belonging to several literary traditions that were already well-established at the time. One of these is the speculation about conditions on the Moon that had earlier appeared in works like Johannes Kepler's posthumously published 1634 novel Somnium and Francis Godwin's posthumously published 1638 novel The Man in the Moone; J. O. Bailey writes about the lunar voyage tradition that Tucker "add[ed] to the established patterns several features of importance" including the use of anti-gravity and the notion that space is a cold and airless void. Another is the satirical tradition of works like Swift's Gulliver's Travels and the various stories about Baron von Münchhausen. Many others have also compared the book to Gulliver's Travels; for instance, James Fieser describes A Voyage to the Moon as "modeled after Swift's Gulliver's Travels" and Joel Nydahl writes in the 1980 book America as Utopia that it is "obviously derivative" of Swift's work. Nydahl further comments that A Voyage to the Moon comes the closest of all the American works of satirical utopian fiction to matching the quality of Gulliver's Travels—James Fenimore Cooper's 1835 novel The Monikins being the only possible contender. I. F. Clarke views Tucker's Lunarium as akin to the lodestone that keeps Swift's flying island of Laputa airborne, while Vesselin M. Budakov in the 2020 book Swiftian Inspirations more modestly considers it a "slight allusion". Bailey finds Tucker's Glonglims reminiscent of Swift's Laputan scientists.
Edgar Allan Poe's "Hans Pfaall" (1835)