Part 1 of 5 · freeIntroduction
Science fiction does not begin with spaceships. For centuries, people imagined journeys to the Moon, strange societies and artificially made beings. In the 2nd century, the Greek author Lucian of Samosata wrote his True Story: its narrator travels to the Moon and meets surprising creatures there.
It is not yet science fiction in the modern sense. Lucian exaggerates, mocks, and wields satire to laugh at human ideas. But his tale already asks the essential question: what would the world look like if reality worked differently? Something changed the day people began to believe that science could explain nature and reshape the future.
The rest is in the Sophia app.The remaining parts, the open-book quiz and the full glossary. Free to start; Premium unlocks everything.
- 2The telescope changes the question
- 3Frankenstein gives the genre its shape
- 4A name that came much later
- 5A way of thinking about change
Open-book quiz8 questions whose answers are in the text.
Glossary6 terms explained in a tap.
30 languagesThe same course, from French to Japanese.
