Polite Dissent

5 Responses to “ Science Fiction Pioneer … of the Great Moon Hoax ”

1. Sean Duggan
   December 12th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
   

   Hoax that it was, it does imply a certain sense of wonder that our current generation lacks. Honestly, if you went up to the average 3rd grader and told them that we’d discovered a civilization on Mars, they’d snort and whip out their enycloapedias to prove you wrong.

   To quote from Tom Smith’s Rich Fantasy Lives:
   We’re piling up fears, but we’re out of frontiers.
   Some need to escape, but there’s nowhere.
   Can’t go to the Moon, at least any time soon,
   But an inner-space trip costs you no fare.

2. Mr. B
   December 12th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
   

   I’d never heard of the moon hoax before. Now the confabulation of Martians, seems to be entirely logical.

   The word channels/canals was originally used to describe the terrain of Mars. Later it was translated from canali to canals (red planet now has a plethora of plumbers). Combine the 1835 Moon Hoax to the 1870s “Martians have plumbing”, and it seems to explain the genesis of sci fi.

   Less than a 100 hundred years and you get Marvin the Martian trying to destroy Earth with his Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

   Bugs Bunny – HareDevil Hare, 1948

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfDIQqn5RI4

3. RAB
   December 12th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
   

   Beg to differ with Sean: if anything, I get the impression critical thinking and skepticism are underemphasized today, rather than overemphasized. Any third grader who refuses to accept a wild claim and understands that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is more than okay in my book.

   Beg to differ with the writer of this strip: that hoax would hardly be the first science fiction story, as Frankenstein for one predated it by some 17 years.

4. Carl
   December 13th, 2008 at 10:23 am
   

   Now date, oh, Kepler’s Sleep.

   That’s recent, of course. How about Lucian of Samosata’s works like “Macrobii” and others?

5. Bret
   December 14th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
   

   Heck, CYRANO DE BERGERAC wrote a moon landing story (using methods somewhat based on science) over a century before that.

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