Some critics consider The Man in the Moone, along with Kepler's Somnium, to be one of the first works of science fiction. M." promises "an essay of Fancy, where Invention is shewed with Judgment". In his opening address to the reader the equally fictional translator "E. The story is written as a first-person narrative from the perspective of Domingo Gonsales, the book's fictional author. Godwin's astronomical theories were greatly influenced by Galileo Galilei's Sidereus Nuncius (1610), but unlike Galileo, Godwin proposes that the dark spots on the Moon are seas, one of many parallels with Kepler's Somnium sive opus posthumum de astronomia lunari of 1634. Although Copernicus is the only astronomer mentioned by name, the book also draws on the theories of Johannes Kepler and William Gilbert. The work is notable for its role in what was called the "new astronomy", the branch of astronomy influenced especially by Nicolaus Copernicus. It was first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales.
Long considered to be one of his early works, it is now generally thought to have been written in the late 1620s.
The Man in the Moone is a book by the English divine and Church of England bishop Francis Godwin (1562–1633), describing a "voyage of utopian discovery". The Man in the Moone or A Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales
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