The Moon has appeared in fiction as a setting since at least classical antiquity. Throughout most of literary history, a significant portion of works depicting lunar voyages has been satirical in nature. From the late 1800s onwards, science fiction has successively focused largely on the themes of life on the Moon, first Moon landings, and lunar colonization.
Early depictions
The Moon has been a setting in fiction since at least the works of the ancient Greek writers Antonius Diogenes and Lucian of Samosata; the former's Of the Wonderful Things Beyond Thule has been lost and the latter's True History from the second century CE is a satire of fanciful travellers' tales. It was not until Johannes Kepler's novel Somnium was posthumously released in 1634 that the subject of travelling to the Moon was given a serious treatment in fiction. Building on Kepler's thoughts, and similar speculations by Francis Bacon on flying to the Moon in his 1627 work Sylva sylvarum, Francis Godwin expanded on the idea in the 1638 novel The Man in the Moone. Across the centuries that followed, numerous authors penned serious or satirical works depicting voyages to the Moon, including Cyrano de Bergerac's novel Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon which was posthumously released in 1657, Daniel Defoe's 1705 novel The Consolidator, Edgar Allan Poe's 1835 short story "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall", the 1835 newspaper series called the "Great Moon Hoax" by Richard Adams Locke, Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, and H. G. Wells' 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon. George Griffith's 1901 novel A Honeymoon in Space takes place on the Moon and is perhaps the first depiction of a space suit in fiction. The first science fiction film, Georges Méliès' Le voyage dans la lune from 1902, depicts a lunar voyage.
Life on the Moon
By the latter part of the 1800s, it was clear that the Moon was devoid of life, making depictions of lunar lifeforms and societies lack credibility. One consequence of this was that setting stories on Mars instead increased in popularity. A number of authors circumvent the issue by placing lunar life underneath the Moon's surface, including Wells in the aforementioned The First Men in the Moon and Edgar Rice Burroughs in the 1926 novel The Moon Maid. Others confine lunar life to the past, either depicting the remnants of a lunar civilization that has since gone extinct as in W. S. Lach-Szyrma's 1887–1893 series "Letters from the Planets" (sequel to the 1883 novel Aleriel, or A Voyage to Other Worlds), Edgar Fawcett's 1895 novel The Ghost of Guy Thyrle, and the aforementioned A Honeymoon in Space, or by time travelling to the past to encounter lunar life as in the 1932 short story "The Moon Era" by Jack Williamson. Some works also place lunar life solely on the far side of the Moon. In the 1977 novel Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan, an ancient human skeleton in a spacesuit is found on the Moon, leading to the discovery that humanity did not originate on Earth.
The life that has been depicted on the Moon varies in size from the intelligent mollusks of Raymond Z. Gallun's 1931 short story "The Lunar Chrysalis" to the giants of Godwin's aforementioned The Man in the Moone. The "Great Moon Hoax" features bat-like humanoids, which according to its author Richard Adams Locke was meant to satirize the then-popular belief that the Moon was home to advanced civilizations. The earliest depiction of life on the Moon in Lucian's True History included three-headed horse-vultures and vegetable birds. The near side of the Moon in Kepler's Somnium is inhabited by the earliest human-like lunar life in fiction, whereas the far side is inhabited by serpentine creatures. Based on exobiological considerations, Kepler provided both with adaptations to the month-long cycle of day and night on the Moon. The 1938 short story "Magician of Dream Valley" by Raymond Z. Gallun portrays energy-based life on the Moon, as does the 1960 short story "The Trouble with Tycho" by Clifford D. Simak. The titular mission of the 2011 film Apollo 18 is a secret project to investigate alien life in the form of lunar rocks.