In Amilec (1753), Charles-Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche conceived the concept of journeys through the Solar System. His extrapolation of the manner in which human seeds are used to populate other planets may seem primitive, but it is a fascinating prediction of what will eventually become cosmology and embriology. In 1760, Tiphaigne sent his characters to explore the secret land of Giphantie located deep in Africa, where a race of secret supermen live in majestic isolation watching a medium remarkably similar to television. Finally, in 1761, in The Empire of the Zaziris, Tiphaigne predicted...