A Habitable World is a tragicomic period adventure inspired by the career of the scientist- mathematician, writer, cleric and dreamer who started the space race—in seventeenth-century Oxford. Haunted by the death in war of his best friend, Oxford scholar John Wilkins is convinced that “a habitable world” exists—on the moon. Wilkins convinces fearsome dictator Oliver Cromwell to give him money to plant England’s first lunar colony, then must figure out how to get there. Meanwhile, France’s de facto ruler Cardinal Mazarin sends a spy to stop Wilkins before his scientific revolution destroys the rule of kings: Anne Gosson, the “best lockpicker in France” and sister of Wilkins’s late friend. To build and launch his “lunar chariot, “ Wilkins must win over the dictator, the Oxfordians, and Anne, but also overcome his more dangerous assumptions about the workings of a mysterious world—his own. "