Having solicited suggestions on nineteenth-century literature, I've temporarily shelved them in favor of reading Lewis Carroll: Complete Works. (Note that this is not Dodgson's complete works; e.g., his treatise on determinants is not included...) I'm currently reading "Sylvie and Bruno", where I ran across the following passage, which struck me as... hmm, not prescient, exactly, but unexpected in a story published in 1889.

( Free Fall )

"The Universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine."

And now: furry lobsters.

The European Southern Observatory has identified a star only slightly larger than Jupiter - and hence smaller than some of the extrasolar superjovians that have been detected in the last several years. Apparently stars of this class are very difficult to distinguish from planets, and they may be rather common.