A VOYAGE INTO TARTARY (1689) ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION

A VOYAGE INTO TARTARY (1689) – The real author of this work is unknown. It is a fictional encounter with a lost race, advanced technology and more. It’s possible that the writer wanted anonymity due to his then-blasphemous attitudes toward religion.

Ostensibly the travel memoirs of Heliogenes de L’Epy, A Voyage into Tartary details the author’s desire to experience the world first-hand and his subsequent expedition to the east. He and his companions visit Rome and Naples, then Athens and Constantinople.

From there the expedition proceeds further inland, where various calamities rob L’Epy of his fellow travelers. He struggles onward and luckily stumbles upon the isolated city of Heliopolis, located near what we in the 21st Century know as Samarkand. 

The inhabitants of Heliopolis speak ancient Greek, so our scholarly narrator is able to converse with them. He learns that they are the descendants of Greek people from the time of Alexander the Great. After Alexander’s death and their unhappiness with his successors, roughly 12,000 Greeks left their home region and traveled eastward into a land they called Tartary.

Arriving at a fertile plain, the explorers settled in, using all the knowledge of their culture to construct the circular city called Heliopolis. Over the centuries, their society’s advances in science, math, agriculture and philosophy made their metropolis a high civilization advanced beyond all others. 

After bad experiences with some of their evolving technology, the people of Heliopolis adopted values which led to a culture devoted to learning and pacifism. A man named Misargyre organized Heliopolitan society, education and religion.

Their abandoned technology is referred to as their “curiosities” and is displayed in a museum. L’Epy describes the wonders therein.

The museum contained advanced printing presses beyond what even the outside world of 1689 possessed, futuristic guns, mirror-weapons that shot beams of fire, and flying machines. There were also microscopes and telescopes, and L’Epy used the latter to observe signs of life on the moon, including forests and what were either vehicles or unknown animals.

The building housing “curiosities” also contained hybrid creations – half-human, half-animal and all preserved in crystal via chemical means. Despite all these wonders, Heliopolitan culture had moved away from “extraneous” use of science to embrace a simpler lifestyle more in keeping with nature.

Misargyre had long ago redirected their society’s religious beliefs toward reverence – but not worship – of the sun. The new belief system saw the sun as the source of all life on Earth and after death Heliopolitans were cremated, with the animating warmth (souls) of their bodies returning to the sun.

The honored Misargyre was also credited with establishing Heliopolis’ government consisting of an elected legislative body of 300 people, both men AND women. Those 300 elected an almost separate Higher House of 30 of their members, and from those 30 the oldest member held executive power.

Education was available to both sexes, and roles in society were dictated by age. Children under 7 lived with their parents and received primary education. From 7 to 18 those children attended schools teaching the classical disciplines. Children could enter the trades if they left school.

Men from 19 to 30 and women from 18 to 25 worked in government-assigned jobs. After those ages, men and women were free to pursue individual enterprises and businesses as well as marry. The public treasury funded everyone, so material excess was heavily disapproved of. 

Reason was considered the guiding principle of Heliopolis. Lawyers were forbidden, as were any caste distinctions outside of those within the elected body of 300.

Among the advanced science that the people of Heliopolis considered conducive to their value system was medicine, chemicals and pharmaceutical treatments. Surgery was unneeded, as were doctors, with Heliopolitan science long advanced to the point where every adult knew what cures they needed.

The city even produced chemicals that could make the minds of the elderly as sharp and clear as when they were much younger.

L’Epy gave his Heliopolitan hosts his copy of the New Testament, which they dismissed as mythology just like they did the Old Testament. The people of Heliopolis attended rituals at the Temple of the Sun and sang holy songs but rejected all other aspects of religion, including clergy members.

After a few years of living in Heliopolis, L’Epy decided to return to the outside world and revisit his former homelands of France and England. His accounts of the remote city were scoffed at, but our narrator managed to make his living as an Apothecary using what little he could remember about Heliopolis’ pharmaceuticals.

BALLADEER’S BLOG

A Voyage into Tartary is a slog to get through, even for someone like me who usually loves diving into these “ancient” works of science fiction. The opening half of the book reads like a standard travelogue of the day, with nothing of larger interest until the narrator reaches Heliopolis.

The author may have meant that to help “protect” them from reprisals from religious authorities, but if so, it worked too well. For more than a century A Voyage into Tartary was apparently just skimmed and classified as an account of travels in the east, of which countless other examples already existed.

Eventually, handwritten notes by scholars who bothered reading the entire work resulted in it being classed as fiction, and slowly a greater awareness of the book’s full contents spread.

At any rate, if you’re a masochist by all means read A Voyage into Tartary in its entirety. Otherwise, you can simply enjoy this review’s breakdown of the interesting parts.

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