science fiction

Being a devoted lover of travelling, partly on account of the agreeable dissipation of mind it produces, but more especially the dignity and consequence derived from breathing the air of foreign lands, I have been seriously aggrieved at this lamentable exhaustion of novelty, and more than once, like Alexander, sat down and wept that there were no more worlds to explore. The planets and other heavenly bodies most especially attracted my attention, and of these the Moon, which is at the bottom of so many sublunary influences, and without whose aid the adepts of Natural Philosophy would be so often at a loss to account for various phenomena, appeared to me the most interesting. […]