Micromegas is a six-hundred-and-fifty-year-old, thirty-nine-kilometre-high giant from the planet Sirius who can speak a thousand languages and has been expelled from his homeland for writing a heretical tract. On Saturn he befriends the local secretary of the Academy of Sciences ? a comparative dwarf, being only two kilometres high ? and the two decide to travel to earth together, where they will make startling discoveries about human nature.At once a story-length Bildungsroman and a philosophical tale, ?Micromegas? is a classic Enlightenment text, and is accompanied in this volume by thirteen other pieces ? including ?Plato?s Dream? and ?Memnon? ? all in a new translation by acclaimed French specialist Douglas Parmée.