A Voyage to the Moon (Tucker novel)

New York resident Joseph Atterley goes on a voyage around the world following the death of his wife. He is shipwrecked off the coast of Burma, where he is taken captive and meets a Brahmin by the name of Gurameer. They enter the vessel and cut the ropes attaching it to the ground, whereupon it lifts off. The journey to the Moon takes three days. Among other things, they practice a kind of non-lethal trial by combat wherein law cases are settled by prize fights and the rules to declare a winner are unclear, their religion mandates that they walk backwards down stairs at certain times of the calendar, and physicians are engaged with theories of disease rather than treating patients. Eventually, Atterley and Gurameer return to Earth. Gurameer relates his life story to Atterley before going on further travels; Atterley returns to New York after a four-year absence, where nobody believes his story of the lunar voyage, and swears off traveling for good. == Publication history ==

(pictured in 1845) A Voyage to the Moon was written by George Tucker (1775–1861), a former three-term member of the United States House of Representatives (1819–1825) who was at the time a professor at the newly founded University of Virginia. A Voyage to the Moon was originally published in 1827 by Elam Bliss under the pseudonym Joseph Atterley. It was reprinted under Tucker's real name by Gregg Press in 1975, including an introduction by David G. Hartwell and an anonymous review originally printed in the March 1828 edition of American Quarterly Review. == Reception ==

Contemporary Upon release, the book received favorable reviews. Another anonymous March 1828 review, this one in the Western Monthly Review, likewise provided an in-depth summary and praised the talents of the author, while finding the satire occasionally too difficult to decipher; the reviewer considered the late portion of book retelling Gurameer's life story to be the best part. Both reviews likened the book to Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel ''Gulliver's Travels and found the inspiration to be obvious; the reviewer in Western Monthly Review nevertheless deemed the differences between the works to be significant enough for A Voyage to the Moon'' to be considered original. The book was also a comparative commercial success, selling a thousand copies and netting Tucker $100 (). Later Tucker's biographer Robert Colin McLean finds A Voyage to the Moon to be technically superior as a piece of writing to all of his previous works, while nevertheless finding the structure to be "no more than a casual linking together of anecdotal essays within a contrived framework". McLean comments upon what he perceives as a curious decision to conclude what he describes as "intellectual satire" with the "sentimental romance" of Gurameer's life story, writing that this was probably a gambit to broaden the book's appeal and that it appears to have been successful at that. He concludes that the book's treatment of its various subjects was timely to the point that it is now interesting mostly as a time capsule of the social and intellectual issues of the day. Science fiction scholar E. F. Bleiler, in the 1990 reference work Science-Fiction: The Early Years, finds the book's principal flaw to be an underdevelopment of otherwise good ideas throughout large portions of the text, but describes finding amusement and enjoyment in the book nevertheless. Bleiler summarizes his overall impression of the book as "pleasant". == Analysis ==

Place in science fiction history The book features one of the earliest instances of anti-gravity in fiction. It is the first anti-gravitational metal, Tucker's "Lunarium" is considered a predecessor of the "Cavorite" depicted in H. G. Wells's 1900–1901 serial The First Men in the Moon. Russell Freedman comments that following the publication of A Voyage to the Moon, "Anti-gravity spaceships dominated science fiction for the next hundred years or so". Keith Deutsch, in the 1980 book Space Travel in Fact and Fiction, credits Tucker's novel with being "the first to describe space as a bitter cold void where unprotected life could not exist". The spacecraft in the book is constructed to be airtight, has an onboard supply of breathable air in the form of tanks, and incorporates thermal insulation against the extreme temperatures of outer space. It is sometimes described as the earliest US story of interplanetary travel, though Sam Moskowitz points to George Fowler's 1813 novel A Flight to the Moon; or, The Vision of Randalthus as an earlier example. 's posthumously published 1634 novel Somnium and Francis Godwin's posthumously published 1638 novel The Man in the Moone; Bailey finds Tucker's Glonglims reminiscent of Swift's Laputan scientists. Harrison and Edwards comment that Tucker's story "may ... have been responsible" for Poe's, while Bailey writes that Poe's story "certainly owes a great deal" to Tucker's, Satire Tucker's depiction of Morosofia is a vehicle for satire. The book nevertheless also contains satire of a more everyday nature; McLean writes that this broader satire was apparently more appreciated by the reading public. Utopia In the story, the country of Okalbia is depicted as a utopia. Jared Gardner, in the 1998 book Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature, 1787–1845, writes that Okalbia is an obvious stand-in for the United States, pointing among other things to the story of its founding "in a time of religious fervour". Jessie Bernard, in a 1947 article in Social Forces, writes that much can be gleaned about Tucker's social and political views from his description of Okalbia inasmuch as it reflects his conception of an ideal society. In particular, Bernard infers a preference for agrarianism and decentralization, as well as some "isolationist leanings". On their way to the Moon, Atterley and Gurameer gaze upon the continent on Africa and discuss issues of race–in particular, whether the apparent differences between races are inherent. == See also ==