The Other World (1657)
Although best known as a character in the play named after him, Cyrano de Bergerac was very real. The Other World is the pithy name for A Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon. Inadvertently using a rocket ship—the first in fiction, according to sci-fi-luminary Arthur C. Clarke—to travel to the moon, Dyrcona meets its four-legged, technologically advanced inhabitants. Although the protagonist discusses science and philosophy with the aliens, Cyrano spends a lot of time making fun of religion, which is why the book wasn’t published until after his death, and presumably why a manuscript of the book’s sequel—A Comical History of the States and Empires of the Sun—has never been found.
