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Der Traum, oder: Mond-Astronomie. Somnium sive astronomia lunaris. Mit einem Leitfaden für Mondreisende von Beatrix Langner
Anleitung für Mondreisende
Wie im Rausch schrieb Johannes Kepler 1609 in zwei Nächten diese geheimnisvolle Traumerzählung einer Reise zum Mond. In seinen letzten Lebensjahren ergänzte er sie um einen umfangreichen astronomisch-mathematischen Anmerkungsteil, erst nach seinem Tod konnte diese Schrift veröffentlich werden. Von zeitgenössischen Astronomen als »bizarr« und »seltsam« abgelehnt, steckt in ihr mehr als eine mutige Verteidigung des kopernikanischen Weltbilds. Zum ersten Mal erscheint nun diese Traumerzählung voll blühender Phantasie in einer textkritischen Übersetzung nach der Originalausgabe von 1634 vollständig auf Deutsch mit einem Essay von Beatrix Langner, in dem sie die Träumereien dieses äußerst ungewöhnlichen Mathematikers, Astronoms und Denkers des deutschen Humanismus vor dem Hintergrund der religions- und naturphilosophischen Debatten seiner Zeit nachzeichnet und deren Spur bis heute verfolgt.
Wie im Rausch schrieb Johannes Kepler 1609 in zwei Nächten diese geheimnisvolle Traumerzählung einer Reise zum Mond. In seinen letzten Lebensjahren ergänzte er sie um einen umfangreichen astronomisch-mathematischen Anmerkungsteil, erst nach seinem Tod konnte diese Schrift veröffentlich werden. Von zeitgenössischen Astronomen als »bizarr« und »seltsam« abgelehnt, steckt in ihr mehr als eine mutige Verteidigung des kopernikanischen Weltbilds. Zum ersten Mal erscheint nun diese Traumerzählung voll blühender Phantasie in einer textkritischen Übersetzung nach der Originalausgabe von 1634 vollständig auf Deutsch mit einem Essay von Beatrix Langner, in dem sie die Träumereien dieses äußerst ungewöhnlichen Mathematikers, Astronoms und Denkers des deutschen Humanismus vor dem Hintergrund der religions- und naturphilosophischen Debatten seiner Zeit nachzeichnet und deren Spur bis heute verfolgt.
271 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1634
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2183 people want to read
About the author
Johannes Kepler
252 books163 followersJohannes Kepler (German pronunciation: [ˈkɛplɐ]) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution. He is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He was also a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope), and mentioned the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei.
Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy).
During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He was also a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope), and mentioned the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei.
Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
June 3, 2023
Y’all, this story is NUTS. Johannes Kepler wrote this proto-science fiction story in 1608 (making it one of the first, if not THE first, story in the sci-fi genre) as a means of exploring complex astronomical / physical law theories he developed about celestial bodies (the moon, in particular). He was so far ahead of his time in both literary and scientific thinking, and the result is this incredible, groundbreaking artifact.
The frame of the story: an Icelandic teen is kidnapped and brought to Denmark, where he meets and is educated by Tycho Brahe (the pioneering real-life observational astronomer who was Kepler’s mentor). When the Icelandic teen makes it back to Iceland years later, he finds his mother (who is a witch) and tells her about everything he learned about the heavens. She then shares her occult knowledge of the heavens, and her particular shared interest in the moon. Mom summons an Icelandic daemon from myth who agrees to launch them to the moon so they can see it for themselves, and they go to check it out and learn about what the moon is like and what more there is to be learned about the universe from the lunar surface.
What’s so crazy about this is a) how innovative the storytelling is, and b) how many mind-bending concepts Kepler was speculating about before science had even arrived at them. Kepler was writing this 80 YEARS before Newton describes gravity (a discovery that rested largely upon Kepler’s earlier work), but in Somnium, Kepler correctly theorizes gravitation by describing the g-force caused by launch from earth. He identifies Lagrangian Points in this story 180 YEARS before Lagrange first wrote about the three body problem. He writes about temperature decrease and oxygen depletion occurring with gains in altitude way before that atmospheric knowledge was pinned down. He writes about how there is no air in space, and that humans need tech to breathe! I would argue that he even hints at a theory of evolution by describing how different environmental factors in various regions of the moon produced different life forms. It’s literally insane that Kepler was out here speculating with such far-out ideas that would later prove to be (loosely) correct.
I geeked way tf out reading this. Truly just a jaw-dropping accomplishment.
The frame of the story: an Icelandic teen is kidnapped and brought to Denmark, where he meets and is educated by Tycho Brahe (the pioneering real-life observational astronomer who was Kepler’s mentor). When the Icelandic teen makes it back to Iceland years later, he finds his mother (who is a witch) and tells her about everything he learned about the heavens. She then shares her occult knowledge of the heavens, and her particular shared interest in the moon. Mom summons an Icelandic daemon from myth who agrees to launch them to the moon so they can see it for themselves, and they go to check it out and learn about what the moon is like and what more there is to be learned about the universe from the lunar surface.
What’s so crazy about this is a) how innovative the storytelling is, and b) how many mind-bending concepts Kepler was speculating about before science had even arrived at them. Kepler was writing this 80 YEARS before Newton describes gravity (a discovery that rested largely upon Kepler’s earlier work), but in Somnium, Kepler correctly theorizes gravitation by describing the g-force caused by launch from earth. He identifies Lagrangian Points in this story 180 YEARS before Lagrange first wrote about the three body problem. He writes about temperature decrease and oxygen depletion occurring with gains in altitude way before that atmospheric knowledge was pinned down. He writes about how there is no air in space, and that humans need tech to breathe! I would argue that he even hints at a theory of evolution by describing how different environmental factors in various regions of the moon produced different life forms. It’s literally insane that Kepler was out here speculating with such far-out ideas that would later prove to be (loosely) correct.
I geeked way tf out reading this. Truly just a jaw-dropping accomplishment.
August 17, 2012
The Goodreads rating system is not really equipped to handle the complexities of capturing my response to this book, so let me add a few additional ratings: Story (2/5); Pacing (2/5) Novelty or audacity based on contemporary peers (5/5); Perceived effect on subsequent literature (5/5).
Authors like Asimov and Sagan, Carl have allegedly referred to Somnium as the first work of Science Fiction. That's pretty high praise, but I can't really argue with their conclusion. Kepler goes into obsessive detail about astronomy from a lunar perspective, including how Earth would look from the moon, how the occlusion of the sun would appear from a lunar perspective, how days and seasons would function if one lived on the moon, the motion of the moon in relation to Earth and the sun, etc.
Somnium was published posthumously by Kepler's family, and it makes one wonder whether it was a guilty pleasure kept private by the author to avoid embarrassment and humiliation from his peers, or whether he would have refined the work and published it with pride. The ending is incredibly abrupt, and Kepler's notes on the text are obsessive and dense enough to comprise four times the length of the story itself.
The writing is certainly tedious and dated enough to dissuade many, but lovers of history or science fiction should find a great deal of satisfaction in experiencing perhaps the first attempt at using fiction to illustrate scientific principles.
Authors like Asimov and Sagan, Carl have allegedly referred to Somnium as the first work of Science Fiction. That's pretty high praise, but I can't really argue with their conclusion. Kepler goes into obsessive detail about astronomy from a lunar perspective, including how Earth would look from the moon, how the occlusion of the sun would appear from a lunar perspective, how days and seasons would function if one lived on the moon, the motion of the moon in relation to Earth and the sun, etc.
Somnium was published posthumously by Kepler's family, and it makes one wonder whether it was a guilty pleasure kept private by the author to avoid embarrassment and humiliation from his peers, or whether he would have refined the work and published it with pride. The ending is incredibly abrupt, and Kepler's notes on the text are obsessive and dense enough to comprise four times the length of the story itself.
The writing is certainly tedious and dated enough to dissuade many, but lovers of history or science fiction should find a great deal of satisfaction in experiencing perhaps the first attempt at using fiction to illustrate scientific principles.
August 10, 2022
This is probably not the first work of science fiction ever written, but it does gets bandied about as being so by some enthusiasts. I don't care very much about the distinction which mainly comes down to how you define your scifi. However, pondering that question is how I came to find out about the book, during the first lecture of TTC's 'How Great Science Fiction Works' by Gene Wolfe.
Wolfe notes that if 'Somnium' fits your definition of scifi simply by virtue of being about a journey off of this planet, then it is indisputably not the first of its kind. It also contains a bit of the supernatural which would tend to disqualify its being classified as scifi for many readers. Much of a muchness, wouldn't you agree? I'm here because reading a work of fiction about a trip to the moon that was written in 1634 sounds fun no matter what you label it.
The story was in fact Kepler's attempt to pass on his scientific findings in a way that was accessible to the general reader and for that at least we must applaud the effort. Similar to how Edwin Abott Abott's 'Flatland' provided a way to imagine the fourth dimension (and beyond) but this story is about imagining the motions of the celestial bodies as seen from the surface of the moon.
Now, having discovered such wonderful things as the Gutenberg Project and Librivox, I must admit that I thought a 400 year old story would be a lot easier to find than it eventually was. That 400 year old copyright is wayyy past expiry so where are all the public domain copies? Well the original Latin text is public domain, no question, but the various translations that have been published all appear to have current copyright. Darn it. You can find a copy of one of those for about $30 on Book depositry, which is pretty good but...
The copy in English that I was able to read is from from a 1962 thesis by a Reverend Normand Raymond Falardeau. The actual story itself is less than 30 pages long but is followed by about 90 pages of the translated footnotes. The following link should direct you to the page where a pdf of the thesis is publicly available:
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/h...
The story is framed as a dream that the author had after reading the bohemian legend of the Libyan Virago, "so celebrated in the art of magic." The dream tells a story about a boy called Duracotus.
Duracotus, lived in Iceland and would visit Mount Hekla with his late mother around the time of St John's annual feast, a time when the sun was visible for 24 hours of the day. By his mother's account, Duracotus' dad may have been a fisherman who had fathered Duracotus at 147 years old before dying 3 years later. His mother earned her living by selling pot-pourri to sailors and one day when she had accidentally sold a pouch which Duracotus had tampered with, she offers the boy to the defrauded sailor in lieu of a refund.
The story is one that Duracotus had been forbidden to write when his mother was alive, apparently she would claim the restriction was to protect him from ignorant people but I suspect a little guilt may have been a more likely deterrent. It was her abandonment after all that led to Duracotus' story in the first place.
I've got to be honest, this is a 400 year old, 30 page story... so this is much more background than I was expecting. This reminds me of a backstory for a dungeons and dragons character! Probably not going to feature much in the events of the story other than to describe how the character got here in the first place and to define the character's personality, (alignment), but you can see how much passion the player put into their character.
The captain drops the 14 year old Duracotus off on Tycho Brahe's party island and he returns to collect the boy a few weeks later but Brahe and his students have grown fond of the lad's company and decide to keep him. This turn of events is much to Duracotus' delight who is ecstatically learning all that he can from his new hosts.
Spending whole nights studying the moon often reminded Duracotus of his mother "since she frequently conversed with the moon" and he decides to return home 5 years later. Duracotus notes that his return and the fact of having learned enough to be able to support himself, "put an end to her continual sorrow for having abandoned her son in a fit of rage."
Sweet old mum gets a bit clingy and never leaves his side again until her death, she also takes great pleasure comparing what Duracotus has learned with that knowledge which she has herself discovered as true. She believes now that she can pass on her arcane talents to her son and die happy. Classic!
Enter the witchcraft. Or at least the paranormal. Mum claims that while the brighter and warmer European nations have plenty of science nerds figuring things out the hard way, their dark and cold home boasts spirits who talk familarly with the people, passing on much of the same wisdom at a lesser cost. In particular, one spirit whom she tangos with can transport her in a blink to far off places and can describe for her any place which she cares to ask about. Naturally, Duracotus says "right on" and suggests that they have their very own excellent adventure.
When the time of year and the alignment of the planets and the crescent of the moon are all as required for the ritual, mummy summons up the beast. And my favourite part about it is that as well as having an expected hoarse voice, the summoned daemon has a lisp! Juth fabuluth!
Enter the Daemon from Lavania, (native name for the moon), located some 50,000 German miles above the Earth. That's a fucking good estimate actually because a German mile was a bit more than 7.5km.... 50,000 x 7.5 = 375,000km and the average distance to the moon is ~ 384,000km. Do the maths later on when the circumference of the moon is given in German miles and that's only off by about 400km too, alright I'm impressed but you don't have to be. We were here for a story after all.
Lavania is a bit of an exclusive club and the Daemon explains the types of hardy folks who can safely make the journey. Germans are no good, too soft, but Spaniards are fine. Interestingly, women are said to be generally more suitable to make the rough journey from being harder workers for all of their lives, unlike many of the men of the time.
Anyway, this review is nearly a thesis and we're only a handful of pages in. So I'm going to cut back on the details, you get the gist. The Daemon of course facilitates an imaginary trip to the moon that Duracotus takes with mother dear.
Alright just one more detail... the trip apparently takes 4 hours, which is fast, just shy of 100,000kph - damn that's fast! Still, I shouldn't pick nits but.... I thought we were going places in the blink of an eye, so pffft, not impressed!
"How long those shadows of Earth are which we inhabit on the moon in a compact manner."
The rest of the story is just what we would now call an info dump. It is a thought experiment, comparing perspective on the moon with that on Earth, in regards to movement of the sun and of all six(!) planets, against the fixed background stars. It defines what a day looks like on the near and far sides of the moon and how that varies from the poles to the equator. It defines a year and a month and a day, on the moon.
All of this part is at least based on the scientific measurements of Kepler's time and it's great but unfortunately given in language as descriptive as the 'Principia Mathematica' which is to say (sorry Bert), it's a little dense. I think if I really cared to follow it and understand it I'd be making a lot of drawings.
When describing how the view of the Earth changes for inhabitants of the near-side (Subvolvans) on their Earthlit lunar nights Duracotus notes that "The figure is difficult to explain." But he has a crack at describing it for us anyway:
"We perceive something like the front of a human head, cut off at the shoulders, bending over to kiss a little girl clothed in a long robe while her arm stretches backward and lures a leaping seducer."
Wow. I'm going to say well done for having a go at that description. No doubt based on a 17th century map of the known world, I wonder if there's an Astronaut who has seen anything at all resembling this pareidolia.
The easiest part for me to grasp was the comparison of eclipses as seen from Earth or the moon and that made the final section of this gigantic info dump much more tolerable.
The story ends with some imaginations of what life is like on the moon. The far side is described as more porous, I want to presume from being exposed to a greater amount of impacts, and the dwellers on that side, (Privolvans), use these pockmarks to hide in cave networks from the blistering sun. The water is continuously shuffled around the surface to keep some temperature at all times in the unlit parts. Plants sprout, fruit and die within the space of a lunar day.
And then, the narrator quite suddenly wakes up and Duracotus' story is over.
Is this a recommendable story? Not really, but a little bit. You probably won't love it. There are better ways to get an idea of what it's like on the moon, there's an app which basically lets you walk around on the surface, like "Google Moon" instead of "Google Earth." (I'm not certain but I think it was called "World Wide Telescope" if you want to check that out). The story isn't written in an engaging prose, the plot is minuscule and the characters are just kind of hilarious. But I liked it and you might too. It'll probably only appeal to science history fans and super nerds. But for a pretty quick read, it is fun to check out.
We should probably also bear in mind that this was published posthumously and may have eventually been made into a more compelling narrative if Kepler had lived to finalise it before publication.
Wolfe notes that if 'Somnium' fits your definition of scifi simply by virtue of being about a journey off of this planet, then it is indisputably not the first of its kind. It also contains a bit of the supernatural which would tend to disqualify its being classified as scifi for many readers. Much of a muchness, wouldn't you agree? I'm here because reading a work of fiction about a trip to the moon that was written in 1634 sounds fun no matter what you label it.
The story was in fact Kepler's attempt to pass on his scientific findings in a way that was accessible to the general reader and for that at least we must applaud the effort. Similar to how Edwin Abott Abott's 'Flatland' provided a way to imagine the fourth dimension (and beyond) but this story is about imagining the motions of the celestial bodies as seen from the surface of the moon.
Now, having discovered such wonderful things as the Gutenberg Project and Librivox, I must admit that I thought a 400 year old story would be a lot easier to find than it eventually was. That 400 year old copyright is wayyy past expiry so where are all the public domain copies? Well the original Latin text is public domain, no question, but the various translations that have been published all appear to have current copyright. Darn it. You can find a copy of one of those for about $30 on Book depositry, which is pretty good but...
The copy in English that I was able to read is from from a 1962 thesis by a Reverend Normand Raymond Falardeau. The actual story itself is less than 30 pages long but is followed by about 90 pages of the translated footnotes. The following link should direct you to the page where a pdf of the thesis is publicly available:
https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/h...
The story is framed as a dream that the author had after reading the bohemian legend of the Libyan Virago, "so celebrated in the art of magic." The dream tells a story about a boy called Duracotus.
Duracotus, lived in Iceland and would visit Mount Hekla with his late mother around the time of St John's annual feast, a time when the sun was visible for 24 hours of the day. By his mother's account, Duracotus' dad may have been a fisherman who had fathered Duracotus at 147 years old before dying 3 years later. His mother earned her living by selling pot-pourri to sailors and one day when she had accidentally sold a pouch which Duracotus had tampered with, she offers the boy to the defrauded sailor in lieu of a refund.
The story is one that Duracotus had been forbidden to write when his mother was alive, apparently she would claim the restriction was to protect him from ignorant people but I suspect a little guilt may have been a more likely deterrent. It was her abandonment after all that led to Duracotus' story in the first place.
I've got to be honest, this is a 400 year old, 30 page story... so this is much more background than I was expecting. This reminds me of a backstory for a dungeons and dragons character! Probably not going to feature much in the events of the story other than to describe how the character got here in the first place and to define the character's personality, (alignment), but you can see how much passion the player put into their character.
The captain drops the 14 year old Duracotus off on Tycho Brahe's party island and he returns to collect the boy a few weeks later but Brahe and his students have grown fond of the lad's company and decide to keep him. This turn of events is much to Duracotus' delight who is ecstatically learning all that he can from his new hosts.
Spending whole nights studying the moon often reminded Duracotus of his mother "since she frequently conversed with the moon" and he decides to return home 5 years later. Duracotus notes that his return and the fact of having learned enough to be able to support himself, "put an end to her continual sorrow for having abandoned her son in a fit of rage."
Sweet old mum gets a bit clingy and never leaves his side again until her death, she also takes great pleasure comparing what Duracotus has learned with that knowledge which she has herself discovered as true. She believes now that she can pass on her arcane talents to her son and die happy. Classic!
Enter the witchcraft. Or at least the paranormal. Mum claims that while the brighter and warmer European nations have plenty of science nerds figuring things out the hard way, their dark and cold home boasts spirits who talk familarly with the people, passing on much of the same wisdom at a lesser cost. In particular, one spirit whom she tangos with can transport her in a blink to far off places and can describe for her any place which she cares to ask about. Naturally, Duracotus says "right on" and suggests that they have their very own excellent adventure.
When the time of year and the alignment of the planets and the crescent of the moon are all as required for the ritual, mummy summons up the beast. And my favourite part about it is that as well as having an expected hoarse voice, the summoned daemon has a lisp! Juth fabuluth!
Enter the Daemon from Lavania, (native name for the moon), located some 50,000 German miles above the Earth. That's a fucking good estimate actually because a German mile was a bit more than 7.5km.... 50,000 x 7.5 = 375,000km and the average distance to the moon is ~ 384,000km. Do the maths later on when the circumference of the moon is given in German miles and that's only off by about 400km too, alright I'm impressed but you don't have to be. We were here for a story after all.
Lavania is a bit of an exclusive club and the Daemon explains the types of hardy folks who can safely make the journey. Germans are no good, too soft, but Spaniards are fine. Interestingly, women are said to be generally more suitable to make the rough journey from being harder workers for all of their lives, unlike many of the men of the time.
Anyway, this review is nearly a thesis and we're only a handful of pages in. So I'm going to cut back on the details, you get the gist. The Daemon of course facilitates an imaginary trip to the moon that Duracotus takes with mother dear.
Alright just one more detail... the trip apparently takes 4 hours, which is fast, just shy of 100,000kph - damn that's fast! Still, I shouldn't pick nits but.... I thought we were going places in the blink of an eye, so pffft, not impressed!
"How long those shadows of Earth are which we inhabit on the moon in a compact manner."
The rest of the story is just what we would now call an info dump. It is a thought experiment, comparing perspective on the moon with that on Earth, in regards to movement of the sun and of all six(!) planets, against the fixed background stars. It defines what a day looks like on the near and far sides of the moon and how that varies from the poles to the equator. It defines a year and a month and a day, on the moon.
All of this part is at least based on the scientific measurements of Kepler's time and it's great but unfortunately given in language as descriptive as the 'Principia Mathematica' which is to say (sorry Bert), it's a little dense. I think if I really cared to follow it and understand it I'd be making a lot of drawings.
When describing how the view of the Earth changes for inhabitants of the near-side (Subvolvans) on their Earthlit lunar nights Duracotus notes that "The figure is difficult to explain." But he has a crack at describing it for us anyway:
"We perceive something like the front of a human head, cut off at the shoulders, bending over to kiss a little girl clothed in a long robe while her arm stretches backward and lures a leaping seducer."
Wow. I'm going to say well done for having a go at that description. No doubt based on a 17th century map of the known world, I wonder if there's an Astronaut who has seen anything at all resembling this pareidolia.
The easiest part for me to grasp was the comparison of eclipses as seen from Earth or the moon and that made the final section of this gigantic info dump much more tolerable.
The story ends with some imaginations of what life is like on the moon. The far side is described as more porous, I want to presume from being exposed to a greater amount of impacts, and the dwellers on that side, (Privolvans), use these pockmarks to hide in cave networks from the blistering sun. The water is continuously shuffled around the surface to keep some temperature at all times in the unlit parts. Plants sprout, fruit and die within the space of a lunar day.
And then, the narrator quite suddenly wakes up and Duracotus' story is over.
Is this a recommendable story? Not really, but a little bit. You probably won't love it. There are better ways to get an idea of what it's like on the moon, there's an app which basically lets you walk around on the surface, like "Google Moon" instead of "Google Earth." (I'm not certain but I think it was called "World Wide Telescope" if you want to check that out). The story isn't written in an engaging prose, the plot is minuscule and the characters are just kind of hilarious. But I liked it and you might too. It'll probably only appeal to science history fans and super nerds. But for a pretty quick read, it is fun to check out.
We should probably also bear in mind that this was published posthumously and may have eventually been made into a more compelling narrative if Kepler had lived to finalise it before publication.
October 31, 2022
I’m a bit confused after reading this. 🤔 I get it’s influence, why his thinking was disguised in fiction and appreciate the genius behind one of the earliest science fiction works, but it doesn’t make for great reading. Still, interesting to read something from the origins of the genre.
July 10, 2017
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), der neben Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) und Isaac Newton (1643-1727) als einer der bedeutendsten Naturforscher den Neuzeit gilt, hat mit Somnium, einen der ersten, phantastischen Texte in Deutschland geschrieben. (heute würde man ihn der SF zuordnen).
In seinem 1609 geschriebenen Traum, zeigt er der wissenschaftlichen Welt, wie er sich das Universum vorstellt, ganz besonders ist er vom heliozentrischen Weltbild des Nikolaus Kopernikus überzeugt, ohne das seine Keplerischen Gesetze, die er während den Wirren des 30jährigen Krieges, veröffentlichte, nicht denkbar gewesen wären. Er folgt in diesem Traum seinen griechischen Vorbildern, Platon und Plutarch, die ihre Spekulationen auch in Form von Traumreisen veröffentlichten. Kepler, der Begründer der Astrophysik, war einer der ersten, der aufgrund wissenschaftlich-mathematischen Denkens eine völlig neue Himmelsmechanik erarbeitete und auch nicht öffentlich davon abrückte, obwohl die Kleriker aller Coleur dies verlangten (wie sie es mit Kopernikus gemacht haben und mit Galileo Galilei zu Keplers Lebzeiten), im Deutschland des 30jährigen Krieges gab es wohl andere Themen. Sein Somnium ist die Vision einer Welt, die harmonisch und schön ist, weil sie vernünftig ist.
Dieses Buch, das auf 20 Seiten den Keplerischen Traum vom Mond und der Astronomie (Im Gegensatz zur Astrologie, die Kepler ja auch benutzt hat, um Geld zu verdienen) beinhaltet, dazu sind 100 Seiten Fußnoten Keplers, um auch den Ungebildeten klarzumachen, was er meint, wird mit einem Essay von Beatrix Langner gekrönt, das einem das Leben und die Lebensumstände und auch die Rezeption von Somnium erklärt.
Für alle, die mehr über den Giganten der deutschen Naturwissenschaft wissen wollen und auch den Text des "ersten deutschen SF-Romans" lesen wollen, ist dieses Buch unverzichtbar.
In seinem 1609 geschriebenen Traum, zeigt er der wissenschaftlichen Welt, wie er sich das Universum vorstellt, ganz besonders ist er vom heliozentrischen Weltbild des Nikolaus Kopernikus überzeugt, ohne das seine Keplerischen Gesetze, die er während den Wirren des 30jährigen Krieges, veröffentlichte, nicht denkbar gewesen wären. Er folgt in diesem Traum seinen griechischen Vorbildern, Platon und Plutarch, die ihre Spekulationen auch in Form von Traumreisen veröffentlichten. Kepler, der Begründer der Astrophysik, war einer der ersten, der aufgrund wissenschaftlich-mathematischen Denkens eine völlig neue Himmelsmechanik erarbeitete und auch nicht öffentlich davon abrückte, obwohl die Kleriker aller Coleur dies verlangten (wie sie es mit Kopernikus gemacht haben und mit Galileo Galilei zu Keplers Lebzeiten), im Deutschland des 30jährigen Krieges gab es wohl andere Themen. Sein Somnium ist die Vision einer Welt, die harmonisch und schön ist, weil sie vernünftig ist.
Dieses Buch, das auf 20 Seiten den Keplerischen Traum vom Mond und der Astronomie (Im Gegensatz zur Astrologie, die Kepler ja auch benutzt hat, um Geld zu verdienen) beinhaltet, dazu sind 100 Seiten Fußnoten Keplers, um auch den Ungebildeten klarzumachen, was er meint, wird mit einem Essay von Beatrix Langner gekrönt, das einem das Leben und die Lebensumstände und auch die Rezeption von Somnium erklärt.
Für alle, die mehr über den Giganten der deutschen Naturwissenschaft wissen wollen und auch den Text des "ersten deutschen SF-Romans" lesen wollen, ist dieses Buch unverzichtbar.
April 15, 2019
Im Jahre 1609 schrieb Johannes Kepler eine kurze Erzählung über den Mond, in der ein Dämon erklärt, auf welche Weise Dämonen Menschen zum Mond bringen und mit welchen astronomischen Verhältnissen dort zu rechnen ist. Diese Erzählung wird hin und wieder zu den ersten phantastischen Erzählungen überhaupt gerechnet und deshalb wollte ich dieses Buch lesen.
Die Erzählung selbst umfasst nur etwa 20 Seiten, die von Kepler selbst um ca. 80 Seiten Fußnoten ergänzt wurden. Im Buch kommt dazu noch ein weiterer Anhang von Johannes Kepler, sowie noch einmal mehr als 100 Seiten, in denen Beatrix Langner die Erzählung und ihre Wirkungsgeschichte historisch einordnet, sowie auf Leben und Werk Johannes Keplers eingeht. Es ist also schon ein erstaunliches Verhältnis von Originaltext zu Ergänzungen. Hinzu kommt noch, dass die Erzählung über weite Strecken dazu dient, dem Leser astronomische Gegebenheiten zu erläutern: ich fand allerdings schon faszinierend, wie Kepler sich überlegt, wie die Mondbewohner die Erde (“Volva” genannt) sehen, wie Sonnen- und Erdfinsternisse. Hier spielt er eigentlich seine astronomischen Modelle durch und erläutert sie anhand des Mondes. An dieser Stelle wäre mir übrigens lieber gewesen, statt der Keplerschen Fussnoten, moderne Erläuterungen direkt im Text zu haben, damit das Gelesene besser eingeordnet werden kann. Man kann die Erzählung durchaus als phantastisch bezeichnet, sie endet allerdings etwas abrupt, es gibt keine Handlung im eigentlichen Sinne und (natürlich) ist auch alles nur geträumt, für mich ist sie ein astronomischer Lehrtext.
Dies ist etwas Schönes für Leser, die an Astronomie und Johannes Kepler sehr interessiert sind.
Die Erzählung selbst umfasst nur etwa 20 Seiten, die von Kepler selbst um ca. 80 Seiten Fußnoten ergänzt wurden. Im Buch kommt dazu noch ein weiterer Anhang von Johannes Kepler, sowie noch einmal mehr als 100 Seiten, in denen Beatrix Langner die Erzählung und ihre Wirkungsgeschichte historisch einordnet, sowie auf Leben und Werk Johannes Keplers eingeht. Es ist also schon ein erstaunliches Verhältnis von Originaltext zu Ergänzungen. Hinzu kommt noch, dass die Erzählung über weite Strecken dazu dient, dem Leser astronomische Gegebenheiten zu erläutern: ich fand allerdings schon faszinierend, wie Kepler sich überlegt, wie die Mondbewohner die Erde (“Volva” genannt) sehen, wie Sonnen- und Erdfinsternisse. Hier spielt er eigentlich seine astronomischen Modelle durch und erläutert sie anhand des Mondes. An dieser Stelle wäre mir übrigens lieber gewesen, statt der Keplerschen Fussnoten, moderne Erläuterungen direkt im Text zu haben, damit das Gelesene besser eingeordnet werden kann. Man kann die Erzählung durchaus als phantastisch bezeichnet, sie endet allerdings etwas abrupt, es gibt keine Handlung im eigentlichen Sinne und (natürlich) ist auch alles nur geträumt, für mich ist sie ein astronomischer Lehrtext.
Dies ist etwas Schönes für Leser, die an Astronomie und Johannes Kepler sehr interessiert sind.
March 24, 2020
Surprisingly interesting, at least to me. Kepler describes what astronomy would be like as seen from the moon. What would the motion of the Earth, the other planets, the sun and the stars look like from different places on the moon? What would eclipses look like? Would there be seasons? I found it fascinating. I would prefer an animated video, but Kepler apparently didn't know how to make one of those.
As I understand it, he originally presented this work privately to other scientists without a framing story. Years later he added a prelude to put himself at arms length from the heretical ideas that could have got him killed. So he describes it first as a dream, and then even inside the dream it is a second-hand story told by some guy he met who was transported to the moon by a demon. Even so it wasn't published until he was safely dead.
You can call this Science Fiction if you want, but I'm shelving this as Science because the astronomy is the real point. The framing story is irrelevant to the main content.
As I understand it, he originally presented this work privately to other scientists without a framing story. Years later he added a prelude to put himself at arms length from the heretical ideas that could have got him killed. So he describes it first as a dream, and then even inside the dream it is a second-hand story told by some guy he met who was transported to the moon by a demon. Even so it wasn't published until he was safely dead.
You can call this Science Fiction if you want, but I'm shelving this as Science because the astronomy is the real point. The framing story is irrelevant to the main content.
October 9, 2015
Absolutely fascinating book; I really don't think I've ever read anything quite like it! Apparently, many consider to be the first science fiction ever written, and certainly that makes quite a bit of sense. I would, however, more properly call it a work of "fiction science". Whereas science fiction as we know it today uses science to tell a story, it seems that Kepler is using a story to explain science.
This is a book that is going to be difficult to fully appreciate for just about anyone who reads it. For an astronomer the wild conjecture of extraterrestrial life and the dream-daemon-trip to Mars could be frustratingly un-imperical. Meanwhile for a layman the (apparently very accurate) mathematical calculations are excessive and at times indecipherable. And yet it makes both think about the world differently. By considering how a resident of Mars (or Levania as they know it) sees their place in the universe, we must reconsider our own place in it.
Recommended read for everyone! (and its very short so you have no excuse!)
This is a book that is going to be difficult to fully appreciate for just about anyone who reads it. For an astronomer the wild conjecture of extraterrestrial life and the dream-daemon-trip to Mars could be frustratingly un-imperical. Meanwhile for a layman the (apparently very accurate) mathematical calculations are excessive and at times indecipherable. And yet it makes both think about the world differently. By considering how a resident of Mars (or Levania as they know it) sees their place in the universe, we must reconsider our own place in it.
Recommended read for everyone! (and its very short so you have no excuse!)
May 27, 2014
Somnium, or The Dream, was written by German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler early in the 17th Century as a serious lunar study and declaration of support for Copernican astronomy disguised as a work of fiction. The Copernican model, placing the sun at the center of the solar system, was at that point in history facing great contention from the Church, and Kepler thought it prudent to wreath his astronomical observations in the guise of a fantastical occult tale and to then attempt to circulate his book only to friends and other astronomers.
Somnium is one of a handful of older works I am currently tracking down in an effort to explore the genesis and development of science fiction literature. The translation from the original Latin felt solid, and this printing was full of helpful footnotes and scholarship. After having read a few early utopias to get things started, I have to say that THIS is where I start to get excited - when man first starts to imagine just what may be up There, and how mankind may go about getting up There. It is this exploratory notion, mixed with imagination, that I most enjoy about SF, and Kepler seems to be the true starting point (indeed, Sagan and Asimov both had stated that they considered Somnium to be the first true SF book).
Kepler studied lunar motion in detail and his mathematical abilities allowed him to work out the pure physics involved in traveling from the Earth to the Moon. He judiciously declined to speculate on any mechanical means of achieving this travel, acknowledging that mankind would likely not progress to such a state of ability until long after his own lifetime, but the fact that he believed we would eventually arrive there, that our aspirations to explore would one day take us to the heavens, generates a great amount of admiration within me.
Kepler's investigation of the lunar surface was also exhaustive and in his book he imagined what sort of lifeforms one might find on the moon - imaginings based on false presumptions, yes, but again, it is that meeting of exploration and imagination that is so exciting to me, and I loved reading this book.
Somnium is one of a handful of older works I am currently tracking down in an effort to explore the genesis and development of science fiction literature. The translation from the original Latin felt solid, and this printing was full of helpful footnotes and scholarship. After having read a few early utopias to get things started, I have to say that THIS is where I start to get excited - when man first starts to imagine just what may be up There, and how mankind may go about getting up There. It is this exploratory notion, mixed with imagination, that I most enjoy about SF, and Kepler seems to be the true starting point (indeed, Sagan and Asimov both had stated that they considered Somnium to be the first true SF book).
Kepler studied lunar motion in detail and his mathematical abilities allowed him to work out the pure physics involved in traveling from the Earth to the Moon. He judiciously declined to speculate on any mechanical means of achieving this travel, acknowledging that mankind would likely not progress to such a state of ability until long after his own lifetime, but the fact that he believed we would eventually arrive there, that our aspirations to explore would one day take us to the heavens, generates a great amount of admiration within me.
Kepler's investigation of the lunar surface was also exhaustive and in his book he imagined what sort of lifeforms one might find on the moon - imaginings based on false presumptions, yes, but again, it is that meeting of exploration and imagination that is so exciting to me, and I loved reading this book.
July 7, 2020
Friends, do you have a moment to talk about 17th century astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler? He has been wronged by history, and I aim to be the fan girl to set the record straight.
If you learned about early modern science the way I did growing up, you primarily learned about Galileo Galilei and his telescope-aided astronomical discoveries that overturned the geocentric model of the solar system and brought us into a more enlightened age. Then you skipped straight on to Sir Issac Newton to talk about gravity. But neither Galileo's discoveries nor Newton's theory of universal gravitation were possible without Johannes Kepler. Some facts:
- Kepler described the terrain of the moon using a combination of naked-eye observations and pure a priori reasoning before Galileo observed the moon's surface through his telescope, confirming many of Kepler's conclusions. Kepler's ideas about the moon were wildly radical for the time. The "official" view of the universe supported by the Catholic and Lutheran churches described heavenly bodies as perfect spheres embedded in other, perfect crystalline spheres, with Earth at the center. This view of the universe was a priori-ism run amok and leveraged towards maintaining faith, but regardless, describing the moon as a world with imperfections like mountains, and valleys, and, perhaps, oceans and rivers was next to heresy. How is Earth unique in God's creation if the universe is full of innumerable worlds? Yet this is what Kepler proposed before Galileo's confirmation.
- Kepler developed a conception of gravity 80 years before Newton, describing it as a permeating force similar to magnetism. He was also the first person to use "inertia" in its modern sense. This was no small feat. During Kepler's time, Aristotelian-type theories prevailed, enforced by the Catholic and Lutheran churches (which saw Aristotelianism as more compatible with biblical literalism). These theories viewed gravity as the result of matter's propensity to seek its pre-ordained place in the world. It was highly teleological and relied on a fundamentally different conception of space, matter, and force. To break with this view was an act of unspeakable intellectual creativity. And Newton himself rightly credited Kepler for this genius.
- While Galileo usually gets the praise for overturning the geocentric model of the solar system, it was Kepler who did the heavy lifting by calculating the orbit of Mars using Tycho Brahe's painstaking observations. Kepler's entire life's work, including Somnium, probably did more to establish the heliocentric model of the solar system than any number of contributions made by any other person since Copernicus. Why? Because he had the proverbial receipts. His observations and calculations were undeniable. But more than pure empiricism or pure reason, his writing was able to help people imagine other possibilities for the universe.
And here begins my review of Somnium.
This book is the most prescient work of fiction I have ever read. It's wildly creative, and, while fundamentally wrong on some counts (the moon, for instance, is decidedly not inhabited), what's amazing is all the ways in which it's right.
For instance, solar radiation. In Kepler's enumerations of the dangers of a voyage to the moon, he lists solar radiation, a concept that just didn't exist in his time. He reasoned two things: (1) light is always associated with heat and (2) as you gain elevation, the atmosphere thins. He put these two ideas together to realize that if you left Earth's atmosphere, you'd be directly exposed to unmitigated solar radiation, which would at least burn you, if not kill you outright. What's even more fascinating is that he lists cold as another danger. This is deeply counterintuitive if you believe that burns from a source of heat are a danger. Nevertheless, he reasoned that Earth's atmosphere was acting as a blanket retaining ambient heat, so if you loose the conductive capacity of the atmosphere, you lose ambient heat.
Other insights? He believed that Earth's atmosphere was being held in place by gravity. He believed that gravity was a force that diminished with distance and was related to the mass of an object. So as you move away from a body with mass, you leave its atmosphere. (He consequently prescribed a breathing aid for interplanetary travelers.) He believed that the tides of Earth's oceans were caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. (He was the first person to discover this... and he was ridiculed. Others argued that if the moon was causing the tides through attraction, why did a high tide occur when the moon was on the opposite side of the planet? Kepler responded that an equal and opposite reaction could be expected, that once the moon passed, the ocean would rebound back from it's unnaturally high position to form a bulge on the back side of the planet due to the inertia of the water itself... he was, of course, proved right.) Kepler also believed that the moon's gravity would need to be taken into account when plotting the course of an interplanetary journey... the very first person to describe interplanetary trajectory calculations. He believed that to escape Earth's gravity, you'd need exceptional thrust (which he described as a cannon a la Jules Verne 200 years later). He noted that the forces caused by such acceleration would wreck havoc on human anatomy, so he prescribed special force-dampening harnesses... and sedatives to control heart rate. He recognized that there would be a hypothetical neutral point in the gravitational pull between the Earth and the moon, so things would float in space. He recognized you'd need breaking thrusters to counter the moon's gravity on a descent to the surface. He understood that gravity would be weaker on the moon and that that would translate into a thinner atmosphere. (He was wrong about the moon having an atmosphere, but so was pretty much everyone before the 20th century. Meanwhile he used his understanding of gravity to shape the type of life he thought might exist on the moon, saying that such life needed to be able to extract oxygen from water to avoid relying on the thin atmosphere and that life would grow very large due to the weak gravity. Moon creatures would also live in caves and canals to avoid exposure to solar radiation and temperature extremes driven by the moon's exceptionally long days and nights.) He was wrong in believing the moon had oceans, but what's interesting is that he realized that Earth's gravitational pull on the moon would result in the earth-side face being more covered in water, explaining the (apparently) large oceans on the earth-side face. He also envisioned what the heavens would look like from the moon, describing how much of the sky would appear to go retrograde as the moon completed its back-side orbit around the earth, and how navigation on the moon's surface could be aided by reference to Earth's fixed position in the sky. The moon's inhabitants meanwhile would have a very different conception of time, given their "days" last a full month in Earth terms.
I truly don't understand how Kepler reasoned all this out. He wasn't building from anything, except maybe Plutarch and a smattering of other ancient Greeks and Romans. It would be like writing about time travel today from nothing more than a handful of philosophy and math classes, and having the theoretical physics of it be conceptually correct, even though it contradicts our current standard model.
Yet, he did. And in describing all of this, Kepler gave people a way of imagining what life would look like from the moon. It helped them see the moon as a place in and of itself, and it helped people understand that our perspective on everything, heavens included, is contingent on our human perspective from Earth. How differently might things look if we were to free ourselves from those constraints?
This is the power of science fiction. Speculation. Shifts in perspective, and though them, new possibilities arising from obscurity. It's powerful. Necessary even. As Thomas Kuhn described in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and as Max Jammer has described in his groundbreaking works, all of scientific pursuit is human endeavor, bounded by human phenomenology and human psychology. How then can we break out of old paradigms to explore new possibilities? Though creativity and imagination. Though people uncowed, unconstrained by social norms and, in Kepler's and Galileo's case, by direct threats to life and limb. And literature is a vehicle that can be used to explore controversial ideas in safe, perhaps subversive, ways.
However writing Somnium was not safe for Kepler. The work was written as an allegory in order to make it more palatable, but unfortunately Kepler's imagined journey to the moon was taken with his mother, who he described as a herbalist capable of speaking with the spirits who inhabit the wild northern regions of Iceland.* Accordingly, word-of-mouth accounts of the then-unpublished story were used as evidence in charging Kepler's mother with witchcraft, and she was imprisoned. Kepler spent an entire year painstakingly constructing a legal defense to secure his mother's release, which relied on finding scientific explanations for all the various charges against her (e.g. cows not giving milk, a pain in a child's arm, etc., etc.). Though his mother was released, she ultimately died as a result from her imprisonment.
The price of a dream that would ultimately launch humanity on its first steps to the stars was the life of an innocent woman. It was a price that rocked Kepler to the core.
In reading Kepler's various works, he was never boastful. He was careful, and particularly after the death of his mother, he was always aware of the political and physical dangers of the ideas he proposed. While Galileo writes in grandiose terms, Kepler often comes across world-weary. I believe he was weary of the world that killed his mother. And yet, in spite of everything, what's most moving about Kepler's writing is the pure joy in the beauty of the universe and all its mysteries. Joy and love and boundless possibility.
________________
* Kepler fuses fantasy and science fiction in this work. He writes that witches, old women accustomed to riding broomsticks over the wild barrens in the depth of night, are the perfect, hardy travelers for a voyage to the moon. He writes that spirits know the way to the moon -- indeed the moon is where spirits live. The way to the moon is through "tunnels of shadow," a very fae turn of phrase, though he literally means that you have to travel in the cone of shadow made by the moon or earth blocking the sun's powerful solar radiation. So you either have to spiral outward from earth, always saying night-side while traveling upwards from earth's surface until you reach the plane on which the moon travels, at which point, if you've plotted your course correctly, the moon will come to meet you once you've gained sufficient elevation OR you have to do the entire journey in the course of an eclipse. Incidentally, this is why eclipses are bad luck: they are opening the shadow tunnels between the earth and the moon, allowing spirits to invade our world.
It's perfect. Just perfect.
If you learned about early modern science the way I did growing up, you primarily learned about Galileo Galilei and his telescope-aided astronomical discoveries that overturned the geocentric model of the solar system and brought us into a more enlightened age. Then you skipped straight on to Sir Issac Newton to talk about gravity. But neither Galileo's discoveries nor Newton's theory of universal gravitation were possible without Johannes Kepler. Some facts:
- Kepler described the terrain of the moon using a combination of naked-eye observations and pure a priori reasoning before Galileo observed the moon's surface through his telescope, confirming many of Kepler's conclusions. Kepler's ideas about the moon were wildly radical for the time. The "official" view of the universe supported by the Catholic and Lutheran churches described heavenly bodies as perfect spheres embedded in other, perfect crystalline spheres, with Earth at the center. This view of the universe was a priori-ism run amok and leveraged towards maintaining faith, but regardless, describing the moon as a world with imperfections like mountains, and valleys, and, perhaps, oceans and rivers was next to heresy. How is Earth unique in God's creation if the universe is full of innumerable worlds? Yet this is what Kepler proposed before Galileo's confirmation.
- Kepler developed a conception of gravity 80 years before Newton, describing it as a permeating force similar to magnetism. He was also the first person to use "inertia" in its modern sense. This was no small feat. During Kepler's time, Aristotelian-type theories prevailed, enforced by the Catholic and Lutheran churches (which saw Aristotelianism as more compatible with biblical literalism). These theories viewed gravity as the result of matter's propensity to seek its pre-ordained place in the world. It was highly teleological and relied on a fundamentally different conception of space, matter, and force. To break with this view was an act of unspeakable intellectual creativity. And Newton himself rightly credited Kepler for this genius.
- While Galileo usually gets the praise for overturning the geocentric model of the solar system, it was Kepler who did the heavy lifting by calculating the orbit of Mars using Tycho Brahe's painstaking observations. Kepler's entire life's work, including Somnium, probably did more to establish the heliocentric model of the solar system than any number of contributions made by any other person since Copernicus. Why? Because he had the proverbial receipts. His observations and calculations were undeniable. But more than pure empiricism or pure reason, his writing was able to help people imagine other possibilities for the universe.
And here begins my review of Somnium.
This book is the most prescient work of fiction I have ever read. It's wildly creative, and, while fundamentally wrong on some counts (the moon, for instance, is decidedly not inhabited), what's amazing is all the ways in which it's right.
For instance, solar radiation. In Kepler's enumerations of the dangers of a voyage to the moon, he lists solar radiation, a concept that just didn't exist in his time. He reasoned two things: (1) light is always associated with heat and (2) as you gain elevation, the atmosphere thins. He put these two ideas together to realize that if you left Earth's atmosphere, you'd be directly exposed to unmitigated solar radiation, which would at least burn you, if not kill you outright. What's even more fascinating is that he lists cold as another danger. This is deeply counterintuitive if you believe that burns from a source of heat are a danger. Nevertheless, he reasoned that Earth's atmosphere was acting as a blanket retaining ambient heat, so if you loose the conductive capacity of the atmosphere, you lose ambient heat.
Other insights? He believed that Earth's atmosphere was being held in place by gravity. He believed that gravity was a force that diminished with distance and was related to the mass of an object. So as you move away from a body with mass, you leave its atmosphere. (He consequently prescribed a breathing aid for interplanetary travelers.) He believed that the tides of Earth's oceans were caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. (He was the first person to discover this... and he was ridiculed. Others argued that if the moon was causing the tides through attraction, why did a high tide occur when the moon was on the opposite side of the planet? Kepler responded that an equal and opposite reaction could be expected, that once the moon passed, the ocean would rebound back from it's unnaturally high position to form a bulge on the back side of the planet due to the inertia of the water itself... he was, of course, proved right.) Kepler also believed that the moon's gravity would need to be taken into account when plotting the course of an interplanetary journey... the very first person to describe interplanetary trajectory calculations. He believed that to escape Earth's gravity, you'd need exceptional thrust (which he described as a cannon a la Jules Verne 200 years later). He noted that the forces caused by such acceleration would wreck havoc on human anatomy, so he prescribed special force-dampening harnesses... and sedatives to control heart rate. He recognized that there would be a hypothetical neutral point in the gravitational pull between the Earth and the moon, so things would float in space. He recognized you'd need breaking thrusters to counter the moon's gravity on a descent to the surface. He understood that gravity would be weaker on the moon and that that would translate into a thinner atmosphere. (He was wrong about the moon having an atmosphere, but so was pretty much everyone before the 20th century. Meanwhile he used his understanding of gravity to shape the type of life he thought might exist on the moon, saying that such life needed to be able to extract oxygen from water to avoid relying on the thin atmosphere and that life would grow very large due to the weak gravity. Moon creatures would also live in caves and canals to avoid exposure to solar radiation and temperature extremes driven by the moon's exceptionally long days and nights.) He was wrong in believing the moon had oceans, but what's interesting is that he realized that Earth's gravitational pull on the moon would result in the earth-side face being more covered in water, explaining the (apparently) large oceans on the earth-side face. He also envisioned what the heavens would look like from the moon, describing how much of the sky would appear to go retrograde as the moon completed its back-side orbit around the earth, and how navigation on the moon's surface could be aided by reference to Earth's fixed position in the sky. The moon's inhabitants meanwhile would have a very different conception of time, given their "days" last a full month in Earth terms.
I truly don't understand how Kepler reasoned all this out. He wasn't building from anything, except maybe Plutarch and a smattering of other ancient Greeks and Romans. It would be like writing about time travel today from nothing more than a handful of philosophy and math classes, and having the theoretical physics of it be conceptually correct, even though it contradicts our current standard model.
Yet, he did. And in describing all of this, Kepler gave people a way of imagining what life would look like from the moon. It helped them see the moon as a place in and of itself, and it helped people understand that our perspective on everything, heavens included, is contingent on our human perspective from Earth. How differently might things look if we were to free ourselves from those constraints?
This is the power of science fiction. Speculation. Shifts in perspective, and though them, new possibilities arising from obscurity. It's powerful. Necessary even. As Thomas Kuhn described in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and as Max Jammer has described in his groundbreaking works, all of scientific pursuit is human endeavor, bounded by human phenomenology and human psychology. How then can we break out of old paradigms to explore new possibilities? Though creativity and imagination. Though people uncowed, unconstrained by social norms and, in Kepler's and Galileo's case, by direct threats to life and limb. And literature is a vehicle that can be used to explore controversial ideas in safe, perhaps subversive, ways.
However writing Somnium was not safe for Kepler. The work was written as an allegory in order to make it more palatable, but unfortunately Kepler's imagined journey to the moon was taken with his mother, who he described as a herbalist capable of speaking with the spirits who inhabit the wild northern regions of Iceland.* Accordingly, word-of-mouth accounts of the then-unpublished story were used as evidence in charging Kepler's mother with witchcraft, and she was imprisoned. Kepler spent an entire year painstakingly constructing a legal defense to secure his mother's release, which relied on finding scientific explanations for all the various charges against her (e.g. cows not giving milk, a pain in a child's arm, etc., etc.). Though his mother was released, she ultimately died as a result from her imprisonment.
The price of a dream that would ultimately launch humanity on its first steps to the stars was the life of an innocent woman. It was a price that rocked Kepler to the core.
In reading Kepler's various works, he was never boastful. He was careful, and particularly after the death of his mother, he was always aware of the political and physical dangers of the ideas he proposed. While Galileo writes in grandiose terms, Kepler often comes across world-weary. I believe he was weary of the world that killed his mother. And yet, in spite of everything, what's most moving about Kepler's writing is the pure joy in the beauty of the universe and all its mysteries. Joy and love and boundless possibility.
________________
* Kepler fuses fantasy and science fiction in this work. He writes that witches, old women accustomed to riding broomsticks over the wild barrens in the depth of night, are the perfect, hardy travelers for a voyage to the moon. He writes that spirits know the way to the moon -- indeed the moon is where spirits live. The way to the moon is through "tunnels of shadow," a very fae turn of phrase, though he literally means that you have to travel in the cone of shadow made by the moon or earth blocking the sun's powerful solar radiation. So you either have to spiral outward from earth, always saying night-side while traveling upwards from earth's surface until you reach the plane on which the moon travels, at which point, if you've plotted your course correctly, the moon will come to meet you once you've gained sufficient elevation OR you have to do the entire journey in the course of an eclipse. Incidentally, this is why eclipses are bad luck: they are opening the shadow tunnels between the earth and the moon, allowing spirits to invade our world.
It's perfect. Just perfect.
July 25, 2024
Hace 47 años, la sonda espacial Voyager1 fue lanzada desde Cabo Cañaveral hacia un viaje sin retorno a la frontera misma del sistema solar. Había estado recogiendo imágenes de los cuerpos celestes que caían en su trayectoria y ahora se disponia a salir fuera de nuestro alcance. Entre los astrofísicos de la NASA se debatía en qué dirección, a qué zona del espacio dirigirla para tomar las ultimas imágenes que pudieran tener más interés antes de que sus cámaras se apagaran definitivamente.
Fue en ese momento cuando la propuesta realizada por Carl Sagan años atrás cobró fuerza. Solicitó que la sonda girara sus instrumentos una última vez en dirección a la Tierra, para intentar captar su imagen tal y como se vería desde el espacio, en este caso desde una distancia de, aproximadamente, 6.000 millones de kilómetros. El 14 de febrero de 1990, treinta y cuatro minutos después de fotografiar la Tierra, las cámaras de la Voyager1 se apagaron. El resultado fue el primer selfie de la Tierra a larga distancia, una imagen que hizo historia, la de un punto azul pálido mostrando su insignificancia y su soledad en la inmensidad del espacio vacío.
Casi 500 años antes, Copernico desplazó la Tierra del centro del sistema planetario y su lugar pasó a ocuparlo el Sol. Un cambio de perspectiva que supuso también una revolución en muchos aspectos.
Somnium, la obra de Kepler que nos ocupa, fue escrita en 1608, pero se publicó de forma póstuma en 1634. Cuatro siglos después, Isaac Asimov y Carl Sagan, la señalaron como la primera novela de ciencia ficción de la historia.
Es una obra breve, bastante mediocre desde un punto de vista literario, bien sea por la traducción del latín en el caso de esta edición que, por momentos, resulta irritante y de una difícil justificación en cuanto a sus numerosas ofensas sintácticas (qué daño ha hecho google translate para según qué cosas. Si podéis, haceros con la versión de Francisco Socas. Introducción, traducción, notas e índices, mucho más amena, legible e inteligible, y con infinidad de notas que aclaran y dimensionan el texto); o tal vez sea a causa de las limitaciones del propio astrónomo al tratar de escribir ficción, un género aun por nacer; o por lo farragoso que resultan sus intentos de trufar de explicaciones cientificas las descripciones de la luna así como del aspecto de la Tierra vista desde Levania.
Sin embargo, lo que más me ha llamado la atención de esta obra han sido dos cuestiones: por un lado, la repercusión que tuvo en su autor, el precio familiar, profesional y humano que tuvo que pagar por la propagación anónima de su manuscrito en contra de su voluntad; y, por otra parte, el interés y la curiosidad de Kepler por saber cómo se vería la Tierra desde la Luna. Es aquí donde Carl Sagan y Kepler se encuentran, en ese cambio de perspectiva que trata de ver la Tierra desde un nuevo punto de vista, nunca antes desplegado con tal cantidad de detalle. ¿Podría observarse desde la Luna la asombrosa velocidad a la que gira la Tierra en su movimiento de rotación? ¿Cómo se observaría el firmamento estrellado, los demás planetas, los eclipses desde nuestro satélite? ¿En qué condiciones vivirían los habitantes de Levania? En Somnium, la existencia de los selenitas venía a rescatarnos de nuestra soledad cósmica, éramos una referencia para ellos y nuestro planeta suscitaba interés e influía en los habitantes de otro cuerpo celeste, manteniendo viva la fascinante posibilidad de llegar algun día a contactar con ellos.
Menos optimista se mostraba Carl Sagan: "Nuestro planeta es un solitaria mota de polvo en la gran envoltura de la oscuridad cósmica. Y en toda esta oscuridad, en toda esta inmensidad, no hay ningún indicio de ayuda que pueda llegar desde el exterior para salvarnos de nosotros mismos..."
Fue en ese momento cuando la propuesta realizada por Carl Sagan años atrás cobró fuerza. Solicitó que la sonda girara sus instrumentos una última vez en dirección a la Tierra, para intentar captar su imagen tal y como se vería desde el espacio, en este caso desde una distancia de, aproximadamente, 6.000 millones de kilómetros. El 14 de febrero de 1990, treinta y cuatro minutos después de fotografiar la Tierra, las cámaras de la Voyager1 se apagaron. El resultado fue el primer selfie de la Tierra a larga distancia, una imagen que hizo historia, la de un punto azul pálido mostrando su insignificancia y su soledad en la inmensidad del espacio vacío.
Casi 500 años antes, Copernico desplazó la Tierra del centro del sistema planetario y su lugar pasó a ocuparlo el Sol. Un cambio de perspectiva que supuso también una revolución en muchos aspectos.
Somnium, la obra de Kepler que nos ocupa, fue escrita en 1608, pero se publicó de forma póstuma en 1634. Cuatro siglos después, Isaac Asimov y Carl Sagan, la señalaron como la primera novela de ciencia ficción de la historia.
Es una obra breve, bastante mediocre desde un punto de vista literario, bien sea por la traducción del latín en el caso de esta edición que, por momentos, resulta irritante y de una difícil justificación en cuanto a sus numerosas ofensas sintácticas (qué daño ha hecho google translate para según qué cosas. Si podéis, haceros con la versión de Francisco Socas. Introducción, traducción, notas e índices, mucho más amena, legible e inteligible, y con infinidad de notas que aclaran y dimensionan el texto); o tal vez sea a causa de las limitaciones del propio astrónomo al tratar de escribir ficción, un género aun por nacer; o por lo farragoso que resultan sus intentos de trufar de explicaciones cientificas las descripciones de la luna así como del aspecto de la Tierra vista desde Levania.
Sin embargo, lo que más me ha llamado la atención de esta obra han sido dos cuestiones: por un lado, la repercusión que tuvo en su autor, el precio familiar, profesional y humano que tuvo que pagar por la propagación anónima de su manuscrito en contra de su voluntad; y, por otra parte, el interés y la curiosidad de Kepler por saber cómo se vería la Tierra desde la Luna. Es aquí donde Carl Sagan y Kepler se encuentran, en ese cambio de perspectiva que trata de ver la Tierra desde un nuevo punto de vista, nunca antes desplegado con tal cantidad de detalle. ¿Podría observarse desde la Luna la asombrosa velocidad a la que gira la Tierra en su movimiento de rotación? ¿Cómo se observaría el firmamento estrellado, los demás planetas, los eclipses desde nuestro satélite? ¿En qué condiciones vivirían los habitantes de Levania? En Somnium, la existencia de los selenitas venía a rescatarnos de nuestra soledad cósmica, éramos una referencia para ellos y nuestro planeta suscitaba interés e influía en los habitantes de otro cuerpo celeste, manteniendo viva la fascinante posibilidad de llegar algun día a contactar con ellos.
Menos optimista se mostraba Carl Sagan: "Nuestro planeta es un solitaria mota de polvo en la gran envoltura de la oscuridad cósmica. Y en toda esta oscuridad, en toda esta inmensidad, no hay ningún indicio de ayuda que pueda llegar desde el exterior para salvarnos de nosotros mismos..."
January 3, 2021
This very short book is hailed as potentially the first ever science fiction book, so I simply had to read it. The majority of it - the middle chunk - is all tedious details about Kepler’s theories of what the moon is like and how the sun looks and all of that. The beginning and end is by far the most interesting and the reason I gave it 4 stars - because it was basically unprecedented, this idea of aliens and what not. Kepler falls into a dream (Somnium means dream I believe in Latin or German) and he is a boy and his mothers a witch, sells him to a sailor because he ripped open some illegal (?) merchandise if hers. At some point (I honestly got a little confused) the son returns to the mother and she offers to impart knowledge of space onto him that she acquired through Witchery stuff. She explains the working of the moon civilizations (there’s like three that leave in various places - all a bit confusing but interesting). Then the closing pages are very interesting because it talks about how the moon has oceans that move across the moon with the shade - the topmost sections being boiling hot and the bottom depths being frigid. The critters (very long legged ones, winged ones, or boat rowing ones) either brave the waters or take the pervading tunnel systems. The moon critters also like to sit out for a sunbath but this causes them to shed like snakes, which is an interesting idea - all the life on the moon undergoes this shedding deal. Very interesting ideas, considering the book was written in 1643 or so.
December 26, 2014
Uma obra de leitura complexa e pouco gratificante que tem valor na sua forma de alegoria da vida e carreira científica do próprio Kepler. O Sonho serve como uma janela aberta para a mente dum astrónomo do século XVI, os seus conflitos pessoais com outros científicos, a sua relação com a mitologia e as superstições e também com a realidade geopolítica da época.
O Sonho permite fixar a obra kepleriana num contexto que vai mais alá das equações da elipse. O Johannes Kepler que escreve esta obra deixa cair piadas (algumas extremadamente eruditas e outras até vulgares) que o retratam como um ser humano vital e não como uma entidade de ciência pura próprio das mitologias fundacionais da revolução científica. O relato ganha ainda mais vida quando lemos as mais de 200 notas de fim que Kepler foi refazendo durante a sua vida, explicando e expandindo o curto texto do relato.Junto todo isto podemos desfrutar duma tradução cuidada e original, marca da editora, e umas notas de pé que clarificam mais ainda as divagações do autor original.
Repito que a obra não é de leitura fácil nem para o público ocasional nem para o mais adoçado, mas sim uma verdadeira joia para quem estiver interessadx na história da ciência, a cosmologia proto-científica e o ambiente cultural no ocaso de século XVI.
O Sonho permite fixar a obra kepleriana num contexto que vai mais alá das equações da elipse. O Johannes Kepler que escreve esta obra deixa cair piadas (algumas extremadamente eruditas e outras até vulgares) que o retratam como um ser humano vital e não como uma entidade de ciência pura próprio das mitologias fundacionais da revolução científica. O relato ganha ainda mais vida quando lemos as mais de 200 notas de fim que Kepler foi refazendo durante a sua vida, explicando e expandindo o curto texto do relato.Junto todo isto podemos desfrutar duma tradução cuidada e original, marca da editora, e umas notas de pé que clarificam mais ainda as divagações do autor original.
Repito que a obra não é de leitura fácil nem para o público ocasional nem para o mais adoçado, mas sim uma verdadeira joia para quem estiver interessadx na história da ciência, a cosmologia proto-científica e o ambiente cultural no ocaso de século XVI.
June 27, 2018
El prólogo a cargo de Francisco Socas de la edición de la Universidad de Huelva me parece, hasta el momento, insuperable.
July 17, 2022
Böyle bir şeyin hikayeleştirerek anlatılması hoşuma gitti. Arada sırada ortaya çıkan betimlemeler de hikayeye çok güzel bir hava katıyordu. En sevdiğim kısım, Kepler'ın notlarıyla yazılanları belirtmesi ve bazen de desteklemesiydi. Kitabın sonlarına doğru sanki birazcık kitabın dili değişiyor. O yüzden son kısımlar ilk defa bilim kitabı okuyanlar için ağır gelebilir.
"Benim Somnium'umun temel amacı, yeryüzünün hareketi lehine kanıt sunmak ve Ay örneği üzerinden yobazlığa evrensel bir karşı çıkış gösteren insanoğlunun önündeki engelleri kaldırmaya yardımcı olmaktır."
"Benim Somnium'umun temel amacı, yeryüzünün hareketi lehine kanıt sunmak ve Ay örneği üzerinden yobazlığa evrensel bir karşı çıkış gösteren insanoğlunun önündeki engelleri kaldırmaya yardımcı olmaktır."
October 19, 2024
La primera novela de ciencia ficción, que no pudo ser distribuida por las represalias legales y religiosas que hubiera tenido. Kepler derrumba el mito de la cúpula de estrellas inmóviles e, inclusive, propone que ciertos astros tienen la capacidad de alterar las mareas.
March 19, 2025
Pretty dope from a historical standpoint. All the layers of abstraction were pretty funny. "I had a dream that I was a kid and my mom summoned a demon who told me a story of how he took people to space. And then I woke up"
August 22, 2022
Meh. Just read the Wikipedia article.
November 11, 2024
the science fiction aspect is fascinating, and his observation and conclusions are fairly incredible
Read
March 9, 20231634
Dream & notes https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/h...
https://somniumproject.wordpress.com/...
Kepler wrote his Somnium in Latin before 1610, and the text suggests the completion date of the central story may be 1608. Some parts may have been written when Kepler was a student at the University of Tubingen from 1589 to 1594, where philosophy and theology, mathematics, astronomy and astrology were among his studies. From about 1620 until his death in 1630, Kepler revised Somnium with extensive footnotes and added the framing structure of the “dream”. The revised version was first published posthumously by Kepler’s family in 1634.
Kepler’s Somnium relates a “dream” about an Icelandic adventurer and student named Duracotus, who learns an ancient secret of space travel from space-dwelling “daemons” who can carry travelers between the moon and the earth during a solar eclipse. Kepler imagines our moon as an alien world – named Levania by its inhabitants – with weather and climate, and alien peoples adapted to life on the moon.
Somnium also contains an early astronomy lecture that describes how the sun, stars and planets would appear to the inhabitants of the moon as it orbits the earth – an echo of the idea that the earth orbits the sun, as theorised by Copernicus. By imagining that life could exist on the moon, in orbit around the earth, Kepler subtly challenged the 2000-year old theory, still favoured by university scholarship at the time, that the earth was the only inhabited world, immovable and located at the centre of the universe.
In 1615, Kepler’s mother Katharina Kepler was accused of witchcraft and spent years on trial for her life. Kepler himself suggested that descriptions in Somnium of magic performed by Duracotus’ mother Fiolxhilde may have contributed to the accusations against his own mother, Katharina.
When Kepler revised the original story in his later years he added footnotes explaining or justifying the details of the story. He also added the framing structure of the “dream” of the title, perhaps to suggest Somnium wasn’t intended as a direct challenge to the authorities of the time.
Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd Century CE wrote a comic account of travelling to the moon on a ship caught in an ocean waterspout, where the ship’s crew encounter the exotic armies of the Moon, Sun and other planets, but there is no science in it. About 50 years earlier, the Greek historian Plutarch had written seriously about the possibility that the mottled appearance of the moon was caused by vegetation, weather or oceans on the lunar surface. In his footnotes, Kepler wrote that he was inspired by the writings of Lucian and Plutarch to write Somnium.
Plutarch also reported legends of an ancient gateway between the worlds, sited in the northern islands of Thule. Kepler adopted this idea for Somnium when he casts his main characters, the Icelandic journeyer Duracotus and his mother Fiolxhilde, who communes with spirits or “daemons” who have the power to travel over a bridge of shadow between the earth and the dark side of the moon during an eclipse. Even with this seemingly magical method of transport, Kepler’s Somnium is the first “hard” science fiction story: a tall tale of travel to the moon combined with descriptions of space travel and the lunar landscape, a radical scientific description of astronomy as seen from the moon, and inspired speculation about the climate of the moon and the experiences of the civilized Levanians who live there.
Somnium, written around 1608 but not published until 1634, after Kepler’s death, predates Francis Godwin’s “The Man in the Moone”, published in 1638 but thought to be written around 1620. Godwin’s story relates a voyage in a gondola harnessed to a team of lunar geese – gansas – that migrate between the earth and the moon. A few decades later, the French dramatist and duelist Cyrano de Bergerac wrote L’Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune (The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon) and Les États et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun), which were published after his death in 1658 and 1662 respectively. In the first, Cyrano travels to the moon on a rocket powered by firecrackers and meets a race of four-legged moon men with musical voices and hunting weapons that also cook the game they kill.
Dream & notes https://dspace2.creighton.edu/xmlui/h...
https://somniumproject.wordpress.com/...
Kepler wrote his Somnium in Latin before 1610, and the text suggests the completion date of the central story may be 1608. Some parts may have been written when Kepler was a student at the University of Tubingen from 1589 to 1594, where philosophy and theology, mathematics, astronomy and astrology were among his studies. From about 1620 until his death in 1630, Kepler revised Somnium with extensive footnotes and added the framing structure of the “dream”. The revised version was first published posthumously by Kepler’s family in 1634.
Kepler’s Somnium relates a “dream” about an Icelandic adventurer and student named Duracotus, who learns an ancient secret of space travel from space-dwelling “daemons” who can carry travelers between the moon and the earth during a solar eclipse. Kepler imagines our moon as an alien world – named Levania by its inhabitants – with weather and climate, and alien peoples adapted to life on the moon.
Somnium also contains an early astronomy lecture that describes how the sun, stars and planets would appear to the inhabitants of the moon as it orbits the earth – an echo of the idea that the earth orbits the sun, as theorised by Copernicus. By imagining that life could exist on the moon, in orbit around the earth, Kepler subtly challenged the 2000-year old theory, still favoured by university scholarship at the time, that the earth was the only inhabited world, immovable and located at the centre of the universe.
In 1615, Kepler’s mother Katharina Kepler was accused of witchcraft and spent years on trial for her life. Kepler himself suggested that descriptions in Somnium of magic performed by Duracotus’ mother Fiolxhilde may have contributed to the accusations against his own mother, Katharina.
When Kepler revised the original story in his later years he added footnotes explaining or justifying the details of the story. He also added the framing structure of the “dream” of the title, perhaps to suggest Somnium wasn’t intended as a direct challenge to the authorities of the time.
Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd Century CE wrote a comic account of travelling to the moon on a ship caught in an ocean waterspout, where the ship’s crew encounter the exotic armies of the Moon, Sun and other planets, but there is no science in it. About 50 years earlier, the Greek historian Plutarch had written seriously about the possibility that the mottled appearance of the moon was caused by vegetation, weather or oceans on the lunar surface. In his footnotes, Kepler wrote that he was inspired by the writings of Lucian and Plutarch to write Somnium.
Plutarch also reported legends of an ancient gateway between the worlds, sited in the northern islands of Thule. Kepler adopted this idea for Somnium when he casts his main characters, the Icelandic journeyer Duracotus and his mother Fiolxhilde, who communes with spirits or “daemons” who have the power to travel over a bridge of shadow between the earth and the dark side of the moon during an eclipse. Even with this seemingly magical method of transport, Kepler’s Somnium is the first “hard” science fiction story: a tall tale of travel to the moon combined with descriptions of space travel and the lunar landscape, a radical scientific description of astronomy as seen from the moon, and inspired speculation about the climate of the moon and the experiences of the civilized Levanians who live there.
Somnium, written around 1608 but not published until 1634, after Kepler’s death, predates Francis Godwin’s “The Man in the Moone”, published in 1638 but thought to be written around 1620. Godwin’s story relates a voyage in a gondola harnessed to a team of lunar geese – gansas – that migrate between the earth and the moon. A few decades later, the French dramatist and duelist Cyrano de Bergerac wrote L’Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune (The Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon) and Les États et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun), which were published after his death in 1658 and 1662 respectively. In the first, Cyrano travels to the moon on a rocket powered by firecrackers and meets a race of four-legged moon men with musical voices and hunting weapons that also cook the game they kill.
November 7, 2020
Ever wonder what it's like on the moon? The freakin MOON!?
The seminal science-fiction story reads a bit like a dissertation, because it started out as one! A lot of the early stuff is very dry speculation done by astronomers with flowery frames added (and done in Latin, no less!). Since this dates from like 1600, this is all just part of the context.
I didn't have as much fun with “Somnium” as I did with Lucian's “True History”, but that just makes sense since Lucian was making fun of embellished accounts while Kepler was engaging in more straightforward scientific speculation. It's a bit dry, but it's honest stuff.
“Somnium” does contain some elements that I enjoy in older sci-fi, being that it has a frame story (our narrator dreams of reading the book!), and an introduction to an observer/hero whose whole purpose is to witness another world. Duracotus, son of a witch, in Iceland, gets sold to a sailor and winds up in Denmark where he becomes an astronomer's pupil. Our guy goes back to Iceland and he and his mother get some spirits to send them to the moon!
We learn about Privolvans and Subvolvans and how the Earth (or “Volva”) looks from the moon, how long days and nights last, effects of heat from the sun and the reflected heat from the Earth, and the various types of eclipses. Only towards the very end do we get to learn about the huge animals and the plants that grow huge and then die in a hurry. So, basically, it ends right when it's getting good.
Although most of “Somnium” is super dry and not strictly entertainment, it's still an important text with fun flourishes and of course that delightful notion that the other spheres are dense with exotic life.
Oh, and this could probably do with a better translation, if anybody gets around to it.
The seminal science-fiction story reads a bit like a dissertation, because it started out as one! A lot of the early stuff is very dry speculation done by astronomers with flowery frames added (and done in Latin, no less!). Since this dates from like 1600, this is all just part of the context.
I didn't have as much fun with “Somnium” as I did with Lucian's “True History”, but that just makes sense since Lucian was making fun of embellished accounts while Kepler was engaging in more straightforward scientific speculation. It's a bit dry, but it's honest stuff.
“Somnium” does contain some elements that I enjoy in older sci-fi, being that it has a frame story (our narrator dreams of reading the book!), and an introduction to an observer/hero whose whole purpose is to witness another world. Duracotus, son of a witch, in Iceland, gets sold to a sailor and winds up in Denmark where he becomes an astronomer's pupil. Our guy goes back to Iceland and he and his mother get some spirits to send them to the moon!
We learn about Privolvans and Subvolvans and how the Earth (or “Volva”) looks from the moon, how long days and nights last, effects of heat from the sun and the reflected heat from the Earth, and the various types of eclipses. Only towards the very end do we get to learn about the huge animals and the plants that grow huge and then die in a hurry. So, basically, it ends right when it's getting good.
Although most of “Somnium” is super dry and not strictly entertainment, it's still an important text with fun flourishes and of course that delightful notion that the other spheres are dense with exotic life.
Oh, and this could probably do with a better translation, if anybody gets around to it.
December 15, 2017
Primero: la edición deja mucho que desear la verdad. Por otro lado, para mí fue toda una sorpresa descubrir que la "novela" ocupaba 20 páginas. No sé por qué en internet la llaman la novela de Kepler cuando es un relato. Bueno, que me lo he leído para un trabajo-locura para una asignatura de la uni y me ha servido mucho, pero que realmente es un poco tostonazo si no vas buscando justamente que te cuente al detalle cómo funciona todo en el mundo este de la Luna. Quiero decir, no hay una historia como tal, solo es una excusa para soltarte todo lo que tenía en la cabeza.
February 19, 2021
Wow, what a work. The fiction here is short but very interesting, exciting even. The notes and the appendix letters were more interesting to me because you can see Kepler and his work in a historical way. After having read Banville's book on Kepler, I have a much creator appreciation and knowledge of Kepler, his life personally and historically and most importantly, his ideas that made breakthroughs in science and astronomy.
April 25, 2021
It just feels wrong rating these historic books. It was written in the early 1600s, so it's going to be a little foreign and awkward unless you're a scholar of the time. But for what it is, it's pretty good! The plot is much more interesting when considered with the biography of Kepler and his mother. The mix of science and supposition throughout the book is delightful. If you're a science fiction fan it's worth reading this one just for the novelty of having read the first ever in the genre.
September 15, 2014
So bloody beautiful. I can't believe I'd never read this... but I'm absolutely delighted to have discovered it now. A lovely early work of science fiction, using the supernatural to describe the nature of the solar system to the audience of the scientific revolution. And it's just beautiful.
April 18, 2013
Everyone should read this.
July 9, 2013
This book is the weirdest. THE WEIRDEST. Must be read by all.
October 7, 2021
Historically, a wonderful and important work. I felt compelled and obliged to read it, yet bored to tears through a major portion of it. It’s extremely short, so the boredom is short lived.
August 2, 2023
Not exactly a character driven nor plot dense story but certainly some hard sci-fi from the Kep.
Want to read
June 11, 2010First sci fi?
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