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.

Ooof! This was hard going in places. In parts it reads like a treatise on the arcs of spheres in mathematics. The story is a simple one and, despite the long passages describing the movement of the stars and planets - what else from Kepler! - you cannot help but wonder how this was received in 17th Century Germany. It is so fantastical, so imaginative, and so 'other-worldy' that I'm sure it blew minds.

Somnium – Un Sueño
escrito por Johannes Kepler

Luego de terminar la lectura de Cosmos, escrito por Carl Sagan, leí Somnium, que fue escrito por Johanes Keppler en 1609 y fue publicado en 1638, luego de haber muerto. Fue escrito originalmente en latín. Para poderse defender Kepler de los ataques de la iglesia (creían que el sol y todos los planetas giraban alrededor de la tierra), tuvo que escribir un “sueño” y ser publicado luego de su muerte.
Un Sueño es quizás la primera fantasía científica, que combina matemáticas y astronomía (200 años antes de Julio Verne), y en la que los principales personajes son Duracotus (Kepler), la mamá de Kepler (quien para evitar ser quemada como bruja escapó de Alemania) y Tycho Brahe (astrónomo danés que fue maestro de Kepler).
Levania es la luna y Volva es la tierra. Subvolva es el hemisferio de la luna que siempre mira hacia la tierra. Mientras que Privolva nunca nos ve. El Demonio no es ni el diablo ni un brujo, sino que parece ser un cohete que permite a los humanos moverse rápidamente! Esto fue escrito en 1609.

En el sueño Duracotus, nacido en Thule (Islandia) es el hijo de Fiolxhild, quien le recomendó no escribir para que no le hicieran daño y lo mandaran a los abismos de Hekla. El hace un error y la mamá lo entrega al capitán de un bote que va hacia Dinamarca, para entregar correspondencia Tycho Brahe, en la isla de Hveen. Brahe comenzó a hacerle preguntas que Duracotus no entendía pues no hablaba danés. Fue aprendiendo y comenzó a disfrutar las lecciones de astronomía que Brahe le dio, conectándolo con la luna y las estrellas (y con su mamá que hablaba siempre con la luna). “Conocí la más divina de las ciencias”.

La mamá le dice que tienen gente con talento para compartir sobre la luna. Luego viene toda una lección de astronomía, referida al Sol, a Saturno, Júpiter, Venus, Mercurio y Marte. El “Demonio” podrá llevarlos a la luna en unas 4 horas, luego de la explosión de pólvora.

Buscando referencias en internet, encontré la siguiente dirección que presenta los resultados de un proyecto que se viene implementando sobre Somnium. Es fantástico!

https://somniumproject.wordpress.com/

Fun science facts, fitting well with Kepler's amazing work in astronomy; otherwise super dull.

Johannes Kepler was one of the most important thinkers of the Scientific Revolution. He successfully defended Copernicus's heliocentrism, studied under the famous astronomer (and qualified geocentrist) Tycho Brahe, was official mathematician for the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire, discovered the three laws of planetary motion, helped set the path for Isaac Newton's discoveries, and was one of the greatest scientists the Scientific Revolution produced (indeed perhaps that human history has produced). On top of all of that, as he displays in this posthumously published work, he was also one of Christian civilization's first science-fiction authors, arising as one of the stars of a post-Copernican framework in which science-fiction could actually exist.

I say this because science-fiction was impossible during the Middle Ages. The closest one comes to it is Dante and Ariosto's journeys into the heavens. However, these journeys do not qualify as sci-fi. As insights into the Medieval mind, they are fantastic. As science-fiction, they fail to pass a crucial litmus test. And that litmus test is the speculative mindset, one in which a disposition of discovery or an openness to alterity dominates. Dante's Paradiso occupies a dogmatically theological vision of the world-the antithesis both of the disposition to discovery and the openness to alterity. While wonderful in their own right, they do not meet the qualifications for science-fiction.

Kepler, along with a number of less notable contemporaries (most radically the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno- burned at the stake in 1600), does not partake in that tradition. The universe is not dogmatic from Kepler's eyes. There is something to be discovered in the universe. This is all apparent in the simple journey to The Moon- a journey instigated by his witch mother and carried out by daemons in which a portrait of The Moon is given, divided into hemispheres, with a unique vision of The Sun and the Earth and their place in the universe, and crawling with alien life forms of a sort all different from life on Earth.

You can hear in these pages the crackle of the zeitgeist, you can see that no longer can the universe occupy the beautiful but dogmatic catholic splendor of Dante or the profoundly, perhaps even somewhat disturbingly anthropocentric vision of Medieval astronomy. For one, The Earth isn't the center of our vision anymore. We, throughout this entire text, get a glimpse of the Earth from a cosmic vantage point other than the one humanity has occupied for most of its young life. Secondly, there is the possibility of discovery and of alterity- indicated by Kepler's discoveries on The Moon- discoveries of new perspective, of alien lifeforms unknown to man, and of a new way of seeing the ordinary. Thirdly, the heavens are now something which are not divine but can be explored and perhaps understood. This is evident in Kepler's laborious footnotes- evidence of a splendid literary and scientific intellect at work.

While the astronomy is certainly primitive, the mentality is not. Here in these pages lies the beginning of a new epoch- indicated by a new genre, a genre tremendously important to the author of this review. While the 21st century science-fiction reader will no doubt find this dull in comparison to the work that has been produced since, there is no equal to the impact of the vision expressed here on the intellectual history not only of science-fiction but of European civilization.

Surprising how well this holds up across the centuries

Worth not only reading but understanding the man and the times when he lived. This was written as what we call sci-fi since Kepler would have been labeled a heretic and put to death. Brilliant, based on his own mathematics accurately describing the motion of the Moon for the first time.

I can't help but think some of his original ideas were "borrowed" by HG Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

published in 1634, this can be easily mistaken as a scifi short story, if only it was not meant, a lot, seriously...it is old, but it's a bit too absurd for my liking and too far away from science...now the bigger problem,
"(...) The cause of the Subvolvans' solar eclipse is the Vulva, as our Moon causes ours. This cannot occur, because their Volva measure four times greater than the Sun, without having the Sun cross from the east through the south behind the immovable Vulva into the west. (...)"
...once he starts saying the...controversial...word "vulva", he does not stop, he uses this word so much, it's absurd...did it really, really need to be "vulva" with "volvans"? ...i mean, a lot of people from the past had a look at the moon and associated her with a pretty lady, but this was just one step too far into obsession and insanity. is it a satire? i could not see that, unfortunately (even with the interpretation that he dreams about new space exploration of Vulva and wakes up from his dream with a fever...it's just too ridiculous, and not discussed as a satire, but a work of "lunar exploration", acclaimed by the likes of Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan).
in case you'd want to excuse him, yes, the word has been there with its meaning since ancient times (vulva and volva, latin, representing what they do, back then, just as in the present).

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.

It being the first Science Fiction story gets this an extra star - less a tale and more a scientific description of the Moon (and the people who live there) told through a dream so Kepler wouldn't get burned alive by the Church (plausible deniability).

Really kind of cool to think that not long before this story, people didn't really imagine other worlds or "aliens" being out there because no one had ever viewed those other worlds or known what they were

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"

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.

The first serious treatise of lunar astronomy, written in a medieval dream allegory of a boy who travels to the umbra of the moon. Kepler has over 400(!) notes on lunar astronomy and a selenographical appendix (this was where the field of selenography was created).