Mellonta Tauta

Literal: Things of the future

by Edgar Allan Poe

Release: February 1849
Format: Short Story
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

So just how did those letters from the year 2848 make their way back to Poe if not for time travel?

— Michael Main

To the Editors of the Lady’s Book:—

I have the honor of sending you, for your magazine, an article which I hope you will be able to comprehend rather more distinctly than I do myself. It is a translation, by my friend, Martin Van Buren Mavis, (sometimes called the “Toughkeepsie Seer,”) of an odd-looking MS. which I found, about a year ago, tightly corked up in a jug floating in the Mare Tenebrarum—a sea well described by the Nubian geographer, but seldom visited now-a-days, except for the transcendentalists and divers for crotchets.

DEBUT

“Mellonta Tauta,” in Godey’s Lady’s Book, February 1849.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Groupings

Cited in Worlds Enough and Time, edited by Gary Westfahl ()

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY: We haven’t yet mapped out the time travel itinerary.