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Jules Verne fits the bill as well:
20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Journey to the Center of the Earth
From Earth to Moon and Back
Mysterious Island

And many more. 😉

If you're looking for more: in the discussions section of our group, Jim has summed up a lot of books for every era. You'll find them under "What this folder is for".

Afshaan wrote: "Kelly wrote: "Rip Van Winkle was written - what - 70 years before The Time Machine? There's lots of time travel stories before H.G. Wells, but he was the first to have a character build a machine t..."

Even Mark Twain had a time travel story: Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Katie wrote: "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World I feel like this book fits the bill."

That could be of interest, but I wouldn't classify that as "fiction" of any sort because the author is presenting the ideas as facts and is not telling any kind of character-driven story.

There is an ebook of “The Science Fiction of Jack London�� which compiled several stories and novellas and a novel which can be categorized as “proto-sf��. And I just started reading it.

I've read some of those stories, Steven. I hope you enjoy them.

We've discussed what the first SF story was from several angles, but today I got an email from Cracked.com that introduced a new (to me) contender. I was wondering if anyone here has read Lucian's A True Story.

The email I got reads in part:
...A True Story, by Syrian writer Lucian of Samosata, is the oldest alien story we've been able to track down (excluding religious texts, which may or may not count). You might also say it's the oldest sci-fi story of any kind, or even the oldest novel—other contenders come from around the same time, and we're not totally sure when each of them were written.

"This is not a true story," says the opening of A True Story. As you can see, people back then were still figuring out exactly how novels worked. In fact, the bizarre tale that followed aimed to make fun of other stories from the period that were sold as nonfictional travelogues, but which were outlandish and false.

The story starts with the characters traveling into space, landing on an island with a river made of wine, and meeting plant women who want to have sex with them. Two of the crew give in to temptation and are then permanently bound to the plants at the crotch. Their friends have to abandon them.

We next shift to known space landmarks, with the characters landing on the Moon. The Moon and the Sun are at war, each trying to conquer Venus. The story details various alien races (Cenchrobolians, Scorodomachians, Psyllotoxotans, Anemodromians) and enough space combat to make your eyes glaze over. The Moon has Moon Spiders on its side, naturally, but the Sun people build a wall of clouds to permanently leave the Moon in shadow. This forces the Moon to surrender, and the Moon King is fine with the outcome and gives his son to the narrator in marriage. The narrator isn’t into that, but it's all the King can offer, since the Moon has no women.

The space section is just one part of the novel. The characters land back on Earth and have more adventures...

Don’t forget Other Worlds by Cyrano De Bergerac, the real guy, not the one with a large probiscus of a nose for any bird to pirch on. In his proto-sf, the character used his rockets strapped to his arms and legs, then took off to the moon. And there are humanoid aliens there.

Yes, Cyrano's work (early 17th century) has come up in discussion. Have you read it? I've only read about it. We've read Micromegas (mid 18th century) as one of our short stories, but Lucian's A True Story predates those by 1500 years. It also seems to be more SF than many other proto SF stories, at least in this summary by Cracked.com. They've been known to stretch a point pretty far, though.

I think I’ve read one or two chapters of it. That’s how I know about his rockets strapped to his limbs. Realistically, I doubt you’d want to wear them for a take-off. You’ll get deep fried. 😉