Other seminal literary excerpts
Undoubtedly the writings of many individuals inspired Melies to various degrees either directly or indirectly in creating A Trip to the Moon. Some of the many possibilities are excerpted here in chronological order.One of Melies' characters was named "Nostradamus". Nostradamus' writings have often been considered as predicting travel to the moon -
Another character was dubbed "Alcofrisbas" after Francois Rabelais a.k.a. Alcofrisbas Nasier who penned the fantasies -
Verne and especially Wells were both aware of Johannes Kepler's fiction. Probably Melies, in his "dream sequence", was paying indirect tribute to -
Cyrano de Bergerac's writings were mentioned by Verne in his first moon novel. De Bergerac's work was titled simlilarly to Melies' -
Melies' Selenites lived underground. The speculation of sub-lunar life also occurred in the Verne-cited work of Bernard le Bovier de Fontelle called -
Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
Yet another character in A Trip to the Moon was named from a story by Voltaire -
The writings attributed to R. E. Raspe were popular in Melies' time. Wells was fond of Raspe and also Jonathan Swift who is alluded to in turn in -
Edgar Allan Poe was also popular in 19th century France (especially with Jules Verne). Poe took took us also to the moon with -
"Omega" was still another of Melies' astronauts. Perhaps this is a homage to the speculative fiction work of Camille Flammarion -
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