The Man in the Moone (1638)
After Domingo Gonsales gets stranded on an uninhabited island, he assembles a device that can harness a flock of geese and fly him away. After a few misadventures, his contraption brings him to the moon where its native inhabitants don’t speak any human language, but are, thank goodness, good Christians. They live in an unearthly paradise, although Domingo later learns this is because they swap out their bad Lunar kids for good Earth kids when necessary. This novel, written under a nom de plume by Church of England bishop Frances Godwin, a historian, linguist, and scientist, used recent discoveries in astronomy and cosmology to underpin his novel.
