Voltaire In Space: Micromegas & Plato's Dream

The sharpest pen of the French Enlightenment, the author of Candide (1759)… and also a sci-fi writer two hundred years before the term existed. This volume brings together two forgotten gems from the 1750s, when Voltaire was at the height of his powers.

Micromegas (1752): A 39‑kilometer‑tall giant from Sirius and his smaller (but still enormous) companion from Saturn travel to Earth, where humans are nearly invisible specks. Their philosophical dialogues mock the arrogance of earthly knowledge, directly satirizing Leibniz and Alexander Pope's claim that "whatever is, is right." This first‑contact tale—complete with interplanetary travel and alien perspectives—prefigures Stanisław Lem's Solaris (1961) and Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979).

Plato's Dream (1756): Presented as a dream of the Greek philosopher, the story shows the god Demiurgos assigning lesser superbeings to create their own worlds. The result is a riot of flawed, competing designs—a direct critique of religious doctrines that claim perfect cosmic harmony. Here you'll find the ancestor of "simulated universe" and "creator‑as‑experimenter" tropes, later seen in Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker (1937) and Iain M. Banks's Excession (1996).

Rediscover the Enlightenment's fiercest mind as an uncanny prophet of science fiction.