On Lucian, Irenaeus, and Extraordinary Changes to Our Literary Conversations

Depiction of a scene from Lucian’s fantastical second-century A.D. stories.

There is some sweet sorrow in remembering that one of our earliest known science-fictional contexts is preserved only in half-measure. I say “sorrow” for all that was lost, obviously—but I also call that sorrow “sweet”, for the comfort that even patchy literary histories can brin…