Lucian of Samosata

Lucian of Samosata was an Assyrian-Syrian writer who grew up speaking Syriac on the banks of the upper Euphrates before mastering classical Attic Greek rhetoric. Traveling widely throughout Greece, Italy, Gaul, and Egypt, he became the supreme satirist of antiquity, turning his biting wit against philosophical dogmatism, religious superstition, and pompous intellectuals.

His famous masterpiece, A True Story (Verae Historiae), is celebrated by modern literary critics as the world's earliest science fiction work, describing space travel to the Moon, interplanetary warfare between extraterrestrial beings, and encounters with fantastical lifeforms. His Dialogues of the Dead and Dialogues of the Gods inspired European masters from Erasmus to Jonathan Swift.