In the late 1620s, Francis Godwin wrote The Man in the Moone, a significant early science fiction work mentioning extraterrestrial language. The story depicts a utopian society of Lunars whose language comprises tunes and sounds beyond written expression. In the 19th century, storytelling and science converged as scientists proposed methods for communicating with extraterrestrials, including a massive mathematical illustration proposed by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1820. This interaction between science and fiction has continued to explore extraterrestrial languages, generating numerous theories and stories.
The difficulty of that language is not to be conceived, because it consists not so much of words and letters, as of tunes and uncouth sounds, that no letters can express.
Originally conceived in fiction, the idea of extraterrestrial language and the quest to understand it were adopted by scientists.
The first serious proposal for communicating with aliens came in 1820, as a wave of industrialisation swept through Europe.
Science and science fiction have interrogated the notion of extraterrestrial language in tandem, spawning a tangled web of theories and stories.
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