*Why is it that I have never heard of this Ben Jonson court masque of 1621? This is a rather straightforward hard science-fiction text, and presented to the King, no less.
*It's got a bit of satire and politics in it, but mostly it's some standard can-you-top-this sense-of-wonder sci-fi riffing by Jonson.
https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/Readers/renaissance.astro/9.1.Moon.html
(...)
Chronicler. I have been so cheated with false relations i' my time, as I ha' found it a far harder thing to correct my book, than collect it.
Factor. Like enough; but to your news gentlemen, whence come they?
1 Herald. From the MOON, ours, sir.
Factor. From the Moon! which way? by sea or by land?
1 Herald. By moonshine; a nearer way, I take it.
Printer. Oh, by a trunk! I know it, a thing no bigger than a flute-case: a neighbour of mine, a spectacle maker, has drawn the moon through it at the bore of a whistle, and made it as great as a drum-head twenty times, and brought it within the length of this room to me, I know not how often.
Chronicler. Tut, that's no news; your perplexive glasses are common. No, it will fall out to be Pythagoras' way, I warrant you, by writing and read i' the moon.
Printer. Right, as well read of you, i' faith; for Cornelius Agrippa has it, in disco lunae; there 't is found.
1 Herald. Sir, you are lost, I assure you; for ours came to you neither by the way of Cornelius Agrippa nor Cornelius Drible.
2 Herald. Nor any glass of-
1 Herald. No philosopher's phantasie.
2 Herald. Mathematician perspecil.
1 Herald. Or brother of the Rosy Cross's intelligence, no forced way, but by the neat and clean power of poetry.
2 Herald. This mistress of all discovery.
1 Herald. Who, after a world of these curious uncertainties, hath employed thither a servant of hers, in search of truth: who has been there—
2 Herald. In the moon.
1 Herald. In person
2 Herald. And is this night returned.
Factor. Where? Which is he? I must see his dog at his girdle, and the bush of thorns at his back, ere I believe it.
1 Herald. Do not trouble your faith then, for it that bush of thorns should prove a goodly grove of oaks, in what case were you and your expectation?
2 Herald. Those are stale ensigns o' the stage's man i' the moon, delivered down to you by musty antiquity, and are as of doubtful credit as the makers.
Chronicler. Sir, nothing again antiquity, I pray you, I must not hear ill of antiquity.
1 Herald. Oh! You have an old wife belike, or your venerable jerkin there— make much of 'em. Our relation, I tell you still, is news.
2 Herald. Certain and sure news.
1 Herald. Of a new world.
2 Herald. And new creatures in that world.
1 Herald. In the orb of the moon.
2 Herald. Which is now found to be an earth inhabited.
1 Herald. With navigable seas and rivers.
2 Herald. Variety of nations, polities, laws.
1 Herald. With havens in 't, castles, and port-towns.
2 Herald. Inland cities, boroughs, hamlets, faires and markets....
