The title 'True History' is is used very much in the sense of Barney Stinson's catch phrase 'true story'. The reading experience is something like tall tales of Baron Munchausen (the temptation to do a parody review was too strong) -there is same humor caused by the obvious nature of the lies. Except unlike Baron Munchausen, our narrator doesn't do great things, great things keep happening to him.

A lot of the things in here are now science-fiction elements - flying ships, aliens, liquid air etc. In that way, it is quite ahead of its age. FOr example, sun and moon are treated as bodies having aliens - which is probably not true but far better than most writers of his time who treated them as individual gods. That is why I read it. I thought it was (oldest) science fiction. Most of world is reading 'The Martin' - I'm only 2200 years behind.

However I'm not sure if it is science fiction. The expressed aim is satirizing famous Greek tall-tale tellers like Homer. Narrator's journey is a beck-benchor's parody of all that was ancient Greek including of famous Greek personalities like Socrates (who is constantly playing fool), Aristotle, Homer, Ulysses, Helen (she runs away - again) etc. It is good to see that ancient Greeks weren't without sense of humor.