Voltaire wrote a proto-science-fiction novella in 1752 that almost nobody in the indie games space has read, and that sits directly in the lineage between Lucian, Kepler, and modern space-exploration games. Micromegas tells the story of a giant from Saturn who visits Earth and finds humanity both ridiculous and oddly endearing. This piece from the team at Tyrian Games covers what the novella is, why it's in HAWKER's reference library, and how it connects to the broader renaissance and Enlightenment sci-fi canon.
TL;DR
- Voltaire wrote Micromegas in 1752, a short novella about a giant from Saturn visiting Earth.
- The novella is technically Enlightenment rather than renaissance, but it sits in the same speculative-fiction tradition as Lucian, Kepler, Cyrano, and Cavendish.
- Micromegas uses a visitor-from-outside perspective to satirise human pretensions and philosophical disputes.
- HAWKER's reference library includes Micromegas alongside Kepler's Somnium and Lucian's True History as source material for the game's "scientist visits strange world" tonal register.
- The novella is public domain and available in multiple English translations, including on Project Gutenberg.
What Micromegas actually is
Micromegas is a short prose fiction by Voltaire, published in 1752 but drafted earlier in his career. The title character is a being from a planet orbiting Sirius (not literally Saturn, though he visits Saturn en route to Earth), about 8 leagues tall, roughly 120,000 feet. He's been exiled from his home world for philosophical impiety, which gives Voltaire occasion for a satirical jab at intellectual censorship.
On his travels, Micromegas meets a Saturnian about 6,000 feet tall, and the two of them travel together to Earth. When they arrive, they initially can't perceive Earth's inhabitants at all, because we're too small. Eventually, with a diamond-lens microscope borrowed from the Saturnian's necklace, they discover that the Earth has intelligent life in the form of a whale and a group of tiny humans aboard a ship returning from a scientific expedition to the Arctic.
Micromegas and the Saturnian pick up the ship for closer observation. They're astonished to discover that the tiny humans are capable of speech, mathematics, and philosophy. The conversation that follows is the novella's philosophical core. The humans demonstrate impressive empirical science, then immediately descend into theological and philosophical disputes about questions that Micromegas considers childish. He's amused and horrified at the same time.
Before departing, Micromegas presents the humans with a book containing "the secret of all things." They open it eagerly. The book is blank. The novella ends.
Why Micromegas matters
Four reasons the novella is worth knowing for game developers and speculative-fiction writers.
The visitor-from-outside perspective is one of speculative fiction's most durable devices. Micromegas uses it as satire, but the technique transfers. Modern games that use the visitor perspective include Outer Wilds (the player discovers the solar system from outside its history), Return of the Obra Dinn (the player is the outside observer on a ghost ship), and Pentiment (the player-protagonist is an educated outsider in a medieval Bavarian town). Voltaire's 1752 version is one of the earliest sustained uses.
The scale-shift technique opens specific design possibilities. Micromegas' enormous size relative to humans creates both humour and poignancy. Games that play with scale (Spiritfarer's tiny characters on a vast boat, The Witness's tiny player on a huge island, Tunic's fox on a continent) draw on the same impulse. Voltaire's specific trick (literally microscopic humans seen through a giant's lens) is a specific kind of scale-play that games rarely attempt.
The blank-book ending is one of speculative fiction's great structural jokes. The setup promises ultimate revelation; the payoff denies it. This ending shape has been copied many times without attribution, and modern games occasionally use versions of it. Inscryption has an ending moment that shares some DNA. Outer Wilds' final revelation is the opposite move (the revelation is real) but it's structurally aware of the Micromegas template.
Voltaire's tone is specifically useful for games. He's dry, sympathetic, and sceptical. The Micromegas narrator isn't above the characters, but he's not impressed by them either. This tonal register is hard to hit in games and valuable when achieved. Disco Elysium approaches it. Most games don't.
Where Micromegas sits in the lineage
The novella is usually grouped with Enlightenment rather than renaissance speculative fiction, but the distinction is loose. The genre runs from Lucian's True History (circa 150 CE), through Kepler's Somnium (1608, published 1634), Cyrano de Bergerac's The Other World (1657), Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World (1666), and into Voltaire's Micromegas (1752) and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726).
Each of these texts uses a visit-elsewhere-and-describe-what-you-see structure. Each has a philosophical or satirical argument running underneath the travelogue frame. Each is public domain. Each is short enough to read in an evening. Together, they constitute what we at Tyrian Games have been calling "renaissance sci-fi" in our reference library, though a stricter scholar would split the tradition across genres.
Reading the full lineage gives you a specific writerly education. Lucian is pure satire with plausible-sounding detail. Kepler is serious scientific speculation with a narrative frame. Cyrano is philosophical satire with elaborate invention. Cavendish is feminist utopia with a courtly author's touch. Voltaire is dry Enlightenment mockery with a human undertone. Swift is social satire with a monstrous imagination. Six different registers for "traveller meets elsewhere" across 1,600 years.
Why Hawker uses Voltaire
HAWKER's design library includes Voltaire's Micromegas alongside Kepler's Somnium, Lucian's True History, Marie de France's Lais, and Le Braz's folklore compilations. We don't claim to draw on Voltaire as directly as we do on Le Braz. But the tonal register matters.
Specifically, one of HAWKER's most important worldbuilding beats is that the Laustic are aliens from Austica, visiting Earth and observing humanity from the outside. The Hawker wiki entry for Ankou opens with what are explicitly journal entries written by an alien scientist documenting first contact. "Our home is dying. We must prepare another. Our crew is one of a handful of pathfinder vessels." The voice of those journal entries is consciously Voltaire-adjacent. Dry. Observant. Slightly baffled by humans. Capable of compassion but inclined to philosophical distance.
We couldn't write that voice from modern sci-fi templates. Modern sci-fi tends toward hot urgency or technical realism. Micromegas' cool, Enlightenment-register observation was the specific tonal reference we needed. Players who read the Hawker wiki's lore entries for Ankou and Malgven are encountering the Voltaire voice translated into our world. Most won't know. A few will notice.
A first-hand Hawker design note
One of the specific passages in Micromegas that influenced HAWKER's writing is the moment where the Saturnian companion becomes temporarily defensive about his planet's intellectual traditions when Micromegas mocks them. The Saturnian is a smaller giant ridiculing even smaller humans, but he's still prickly about slights to his own kind. Voltaire's comedy is that hierarchy flows both up and down, and people at every scale are equally ridiculous.
We wanted that beat in Hawker. Our Laustic characters debate each other about the humans with the same register. Ramzel dismisses humans as inferior. Malgven defends them. Ankou abstains. Each of them is, from Voltaire's perspective, equally ridiculous in their certainty. The argument structure is Micromegas. The content is our own.
One playtest moment in late 2025 confirmed the approach was working. A tester finished the game's ichor-ducats lore entry (explaining how the humans repurposed alien reagent as currency) and said it reminded her of reading a Voltaire encyclopedia entry. Neither of us had mentioned Voltaire. The register had landed without needing the attribution. That's the goal. Players don't need to know Voltaire to receive the tone he taught us to write in.
How to read Micromegas
The novella is short, roughly 30 pages in most modern editions. Four readings are worth knowing.
The original French is on Wikisource. For readers who handle French comfortably, this is the most direct access.
Project Gutenberg has older English translations, including a version of Voltaire's shorter works that includes Micromegas. The Gutenberg English is 19th-century and shows its age, but it's free and readable.
Penguin Classics includes Micromegas in several of its Voltaire collections, usually alongside Candide and Zadig. The Penguin translations are modern and readable.
Roger Pearson's Oxford World's Classics Candide and Other Stories includes Micromegas in a recent translation that captures Voltaire's specific tone well. If you're going to buy one book, this is the one we'd recommend.
Reading the full Micromegas takes about an hour. Reading it alongside Kepler's Somnium and Lucian's True History gives you, in three short texts and maybe five hours total, the entire western speculative-fiction tradition before the 19th century novel.
FAQ
What is Micromegas?
A 1752 novella by Voltaire about a giant from Sirius who visits Earth. It's one of the earliest sustained works of speculative fiction in French.
Is Micromegas science fiction?
Contested. It's proto-science fiction by most definitions, using speculative elements to make philosophical arguments. Stricter definitions would call it satirical fiction with speculative elements.
Is Voltaire's work public domain?
Yes. Voltaire died in 1778. All his works are in the public domain. Modern translations may have their own copyrights, but the French originals and 19th-century English translations are free.
Does HAWKER reference Micromegas?
Yes. HAWKER's design library includes Micromegas as a tonal reference for the Laustic alien-observer voice, alongside Kepler, Lucian, and other renaissance-adjacent sci-fi.
How does Micromegas compare to Gulliver's Travels?
Both use scale-shift satire. Gulliver is earlier (1726) and more elaborate. Micromegas is shorter and more philosophically focused. Swift is funnier. Voltaire is drier.
What should I read after Micromegas?
Kepler's Somnium for the proto-sci-fi antecedent. Cyrano de Bergerac's The Other World for the 17th-century Moon voyage. Cavendish's Blazing World for feminist utopia. All are public domain.
Spoiler wall
Everything above keeps to the demo-line worldbuilding for Hawker. The Laustic origins as visitors, the Ankou journal voice, and the reference to Voltaire as a tonal influence are all part of our public framing. Specific late-game lore-fragment contents and the full ichor-ducats entry sit behind this wall.
Closing
Voltaire wrote a proto-science-fiction novella in 1752 that almost no indie game has borrowed from, and that sits in the same lineage as Lucian and Kepler. Public domain, short, philosophically rich. HAWKER uses its tonal register for the Laustic observer voice. Other studios working in speculative fiction have the book waiting for them.
Next read: Kepler's Somnium, or Lucian's True History.
Further reading
For related context see Breton folklore in modern games.