A True Story
The narrator opens by announcing that every word to follow is a lie, and that saying so is the only honest thing any traveler has ever done. His ship is then lifted by a waterspout to the moon, where he is conscripted into a war between the Moon and the Sun over who will colonize the Morning Star, before he returns to sea, is swallowed by a whale big enough to hold forests and towns, and reaches the island where the dead heroes live. A parody of the tall tales of Homer and Herodotus that ended up the earliest surviving voyage to the moon, and an acknowledged ancestor of Rabelais, Swift and modern science fiction.
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Lineage
- responds to ↑ The Odyssey
Attributes
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 45% · 9 shared
- 42% · 9 shared
- 42% · 8 shared
- 42% · 8 shared
- 42% · 8 shared
- 42% · 8 shared