And who thought self-centred hyperbole was limited to rap artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries?
This proclamation by an anonymous author comes a good century earlier, forming the opening lines of the science-fiction novella The Great Romance.
Yet perhaps the scribe of an obscure book first published in Dunedin and Ashburton in 1881 and now republished in its entirety was on to something.
Certainly, others believe in its significance.
With its themes of interplanetary colonisation, space flight, telepathy and, wait for it, love and sex between man and extra-terrestrial, The Great Romance is being hailed as a milestone in the field of science-fiction literature.
"Technological sophistication combined with a relatively not-too-turgid prose style that is commonly found in many scientific romances of the late 19th century make for a remarkable read," Dr Dominic Alessio, editor of the republished work, writes in his extensive introduction to the book.
Penned by an unknown author who used the pseudonym "The Inhabitant", the two-volume science-fiction novella has attracted glowing reviews since being recently republished by University of Nebraska Press.
Los Angeles Times reviewer Ed Park described The Great Romance as a "slim, oddly proportioned book, a hybrid of utopian and space exploration narratives that reaches out to grasp the reader's hand, unexpectedly and vigorously, from the equally remote milieu of late-19th-century New Zealand . . .
"The unfinished masterpiece is as strong a myth as literature holds."
Publishers Weekly claimed: "This may have been the first time that anyone described space suits, air locks or the difficulties of landing on an asteroid or entering a planetary atmosphere . . .
"This reprint will be of considerable interest to specialist scholars of science fiction, if not the casual reader."
Dr Alessio, an associate professor of history and the director of the study abroad programme at Richmond (the American International University) in London and vice-chairman of the New Zealand Studies Association, is not surprised at some of the recent statements surrounding the book's literary value.
Having started researching The Great Romance in the early 1990s, he believes the book to be "far ahead of its time".
"The first time I read volume one, maybe it didn't sink in. It was only when I read volume two a couple of times . . . I thought, 'oh my God'.
"In terms of colonisation, the history of New Zealand, the history of science fiction, this is as important as volume one, if not more," he says.
In The Great Romance, main character John Hope awakes after a 193-year induced sleep to discover a utopian world on Earth where citizens communicate via telepathy and, largely because of this ability, crime is a thing of the past.
Later, aboard the spaceship Star Climber, Hope travels to Venus as part of a colonisation mission.
In a case of fact imitating fiction, the book itself has also slumbered, relatively undisturbed, for more than a century.
Speaking via telephone from his London home, as his own bedtime comes and goes and midnight approaches, Dr Alessio recalls how his excitement on learning of the first volume was amplified by news a second volume, presumed lost, had been found in the mid-'90s - in Dunedin.
Colleague Lyman Tower Sargent, whose research into New Zealand utopian works includes publishing a bibliography on the subject, was in the Hocken Library where "someone pointed it out" among a series of pamphlets in Dr Thomas Hocken's collection.
"I wrote to the Hocken. They sent it over to me," Dr Alessio explains.
"I thought, 'hang on; this is interesting as well'.
The Great Romance was published as two separate volumes in 1881.
The first comprised 55 pages, the only known original of which is held in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
The second instalment is just 39 pages long.
Melbourne-based science fiction researcher Murray MacLachlan has a theory on how the volumes ended up in different places.
Dr Thomas Hocken, in Dunedin, and Alexander Turnbull, in Wellington, took a co-operative approach to building their great collections, he says.
"Where there were two editions, I suspect the southerner took one and the North Islander the other," he says.
Both volumes were published by the Otago Daily Times, with the first also produced by the Ashburton Guardian.
The copy of volume one has two title pages, one listing Dunedin as the place of publication, the other Ashburton.
Dr Alessio believes separate versions were produced to capitalise on different advertisers.
"It is dual-published. Maybe it is some sort of co-production.
"I've never seen a book which has these publishing offices mentioned at the same time."
In terms of international literary criticism, it would be fair to say The Great Romance remains relatively obscure.
Though volume one is described in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "New Zealand's first space story" and both volumes rate brief inclusions in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, which states The Great Romance exhibited "considerable scientific acumen", there is no listing of either volume in the National Library of New Zealand, the British Museum, the British Library or the United States Library of Congress catalogues.
Dr Alessio points out volume one was included in A. G Bagnall's National Biography of New Zealand to the Year 1960.
More recent academic examinations of both volumes' contents include articles in the journals Science Fiction Studies, Kotare and ARIEL.
"Sexual relations with aliens; free love among men and women; time travel; telepathy; world-shattering weapons of mass destruction ... the first-ever discussion of off-world colonisation by humankind; an urbane encounter with a friendly and intelligent nonhumanoid species; as well as the earliest mention of spacesuits, spacewalks, airlocks, shuttle craft, and planetary rovers: these are just a handful of the cutting-edge features to be found in volumes 1 and 2 of The Great Romance ," Dr Alessio states in his introduction to the book.
On the phone, the academic follows up by pointing out the author's sophisticated examination of the technical problems surrounding space flight, including how to deal with muscle fatigue (exercise), meteors (they are blown up with a Star Wars-like cannon) and boredom (experiments are conducted).
There is also mention of space suits ("40 years before the British Interplanetary Society was experimenting with them") and faster-than-light travel ("Einstein came up with that idea in, I think, 1905").
"The author also has the first force-field in science fiction. He is aware that when a spaceship enters an atmosphere it is going to cause friction and heat - they compensate by having cooling devices on this ship.
"When the spaceship comes in to land on a planet, it actually uses the planet's atmosphere and rotation to decrease or increase speed.
"This is really advanced," Dr Alessio says.
"This is the first book in science fiction that talks about the colonisation of outer space by humans. There is nothing earlier.
"H. G. Wells talked a little bit later about Martians coming to colonise Earth but that is the other way [round]."
The anonymity of the author (see story at right) merely adds to the fascination of the work's sci-fi and utopian themes, he says.
"If this guy lived in Ashburton or Dunedin, how is it he is so clued in? How has he come up with these ideas? He didn't develop them, but the fact is they are there ...
"Another possibility is this guy read up on these discoveries via correspondence with major European astronomers.
"I don't know. What does it say about New Zealand? I don't think New Zealand and Australia were that disconnected. They were quite clued up with what was going on in Europe.
"From what I've read of some criticisms of New Zealand culture in the late 19th century, there was a sense it was a bit backward. But I don't think it was so backward.
"If this book came out of America, it would still be important. It just makes it interesting that we don't know who [wrote it].
"But it is from a distant part of the world ... That adds to the mystique."
Having read plenty of science fiction as a teenager growing up in Canada, Dr Alessio has continued to look into the genre.
The recipient of a Commonwealth Scholarship, he attended Victoria University, Wellington, from 1989-1993, where he completed a PhD on aspects of colonialism.
Part of that research involved looking at utopian idealism.
It's a topic with much resonance in 19th-century New Zealand.
"I was looking at the image of New Zealand being sold to attract tourists and migrants in the late 19th century ...
"I thought of looking at some of the utopian literature. New Zealand has a bit of a history of it," he explains, referring to former prime minister and Otago Daily Times founding editor Sir Julius Vogel's 1889 novel Anno Domini 2000: A Woman's Destiny and Samuel Butler's 1872 book, Erewhon, recognised as one of the more important utopian texts of the 19th century.
A key theme of The Great Romance is the relationship between a colonising force and the inhabitants of another land.
It doesn't take much of a leap to connect that with European-Maori relationships in late 19th-century New Zealand.
"New Zealand was one of the few colonies where it was OK for Britons and natives to get together. In South Africa, there were laws against it, even before apartheid.
"In the United States . . . it just wasn't done; in India, they legislated against it. In Australia, it wouldn't be accepted in official circles.
"In New Zealand, that wasn't the case."
Yet there is another reason to regard The Great Romance as significant.
Dr Alessio believes the book provided the framework for Edward Bellamy's hugely influential 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887.
"Looking Backward was, until the 1960s, probably one of the most important utopian texts you'd read . . .
"It sold almost as many copies as the Bible in the late 19th century - and that's saying something.
"It advocated nationalisation; it kick-started the Labour Party in Australia and New Zealand; the Russian Revolution; H. G. Wells, Tolstoy, all these world-famous writers.
"At first, I thought it [The Great Romance] was in response to Edward Bellamy. Then it hit me - it was written years before.
"It's the same plot: this guy falls asleep deliberately; has a wonderful future; falls in love with a woman, Edith, the same as in Bellamy's story."
However, The Great Romance is not the only text mentioned as an influence on Looking Backward.
Bellamy's biographer, Arthur E. Morgan, has suggested the author borrowed ideas from John Macnie's 1883 dystopian work The Diothas.
Dr Alessio contends Macnie was the mechanism by which the ideas of The Great Romance's anonymous scribe filtered to Bellamy.
"Bellamy's biographer says that Looking Backward was taken from John Macnie's The Diothas.
His argument is 'same plotline, same character, same descriptions'.
Now, the same character names etc that are in The Diothas are in The Great Romance .
"The Diothas has a lot of New Zealand connections - he talks of 'Maoria'; the hero comes from the North Island. This guy Macnie knows about New Zealand.
"If Bellamy's biographer can say that Bellamy took his ideas from Macnie, then it's not impossible to think that Macnie took his ideas from The Great Romance ...
"My personal opinion is this is the most likely link."
Despite the recent good press surrounding The Great Romance, including Author Magazine likening its rediscovery to someone "finding a long-forgotten book called Pride and Prejudice, an Otago Daily Times review of 1882 was not quite so complimentary.
"It exhibits an exuberant fancy, and an adroitness in avoiding obvious difficulties, that redeem it from absolute inanity, though the absurdities of its plan and the impossibilities of its details render it a fair mark for ridicule . . ." the reviewer wrote.
Dr Alessio's response? "The book isn't a great read; it's a good read . . . For 19th-century standards, I think it is equal to Edward Bellamy, who has been celebrated as quite a good writer.
I don't think some of the Jules Verne stuff is great, nor is H. G. Wells. I'm not saying this is better than Wells, but I'd say it is about equal to his middle-of-the-road work.
"It is riddled with commas and poor sentences, so we did some light editing to make it more accessible."
That 1882 review also suggests The Great Romance comprises more than two volumes: "As there is yet more to come, we can only faintly guess what the whole will be ..."
Dr Alessio hopes this to be the case.
"From my point of view, if there is a volume three out there it is likely it is going to come from your neck of the woods ... No-one ever thought there would be volume two, but it was found.
"As American media is picking up, this is one of the more important 19th-century science-fiction texts.
"It's great for New Zealand as well. I'm not a Kiwi, but the thing is to take ownership of it, to celebrate this really remarkable achievement."
