Daniel Defoe's 1705 Fantasy about Chinese Mapmakers on the Moon

摘要

Daniel Defoe is best known for writing Robinson Crusoe (1722), a fictional account of a castaway marooned on an island. An earlier book by Defoe, The Consolidator or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon (1705), tells an even more fantastic tale. The main character of The Consolidator, recounting a supposed recent visit to China, claims to have learned there that the Moon is inhabited by people, the Lunarians, to whom the Earth appears as their Moon. The Lunarians are just like Earth people, but their civilization is more advanced. They have traveled between the Moon and the Earth over a long period of time and have shared their technological marvels with the Chinese. The narrator says that he took the opportunity, while in China, to visit the Moon, journeying in a feather-covered rocket ship called the Consolidator. There he met a Lunarian philosopher, who showed him many fascinating things. These included special magnifying glasses that enable the Lunarian people to view the Earth and to perceive the iniquities and absurdities of human life and governments.