“Wonderful,” “visionary,” “cult classic” are just a few of the adjectives that best describe this little book from 1760, published anonymously and entitled Giphantie. Its anagrammatic title did little to conceal the identity of its author, a certain Charles Tiphaigne, a doctor and alchemist from Normandy. This travelogue to the land of nowhere, whose political and ecological awareness and high moral standards shine through on every page, predicts the advent of modern technologies such as photography (invented sixty years later), remote transmission of images and sound, contact lenses, and many other things.
