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.

I think Kepler’s short work of science fiction is of historical interest only. The frame story about having a dream about reading about the life of someone else who goes to the moon is the only thing that makes it a narrative. The bulk of it is just imaginative astronomy / planetary science with a tiny bit of xenobiology at the end. The frame story is interesting though. The principal subject of the story studies with Tycho Brahe before returning home and learning more about his mother’s witchcraft, both of which apparently mirrored issues in Kepler’s life. I mean, he’s famously an associate of Tycho Brahe, but I didn’t know his mother was accused of being a witch. Anyway, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov apparently called this the first work of science fiction, and (barring other candidates for a number of reasons) I might agree—but to anyone who'd take Kepler's story as the first, I’d suggest Godwin’s The Man in the Moone as the first satisfying work of science fiction.

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 oldest science fiction that we are aware of! It was so cool to read this knowing Kepler's important role in science and human knowledge.

Arguably The Worst Translation of Kepler's Work Into English; Does NOTHING for Science or Literature. **NOT RECOMMENDED** Get Rosen's work - internationally recognized expert on Kepler & Copernicus.

This is arguably the worst translation into English of Kepler's famous work. To add insult to Kepler, this edition does NOT include any of Kepler's explanatory notes. This is one of several poorly done works on Kepler's Somnium. Steer clear.

Kepler's Somnium is not simply an early, first attempt at science fiction. It was his thesis for his Master's degree in mathematics (of which astronomy was part of). It's surprisingly accurate and perceptive considering the known science and existing technology of his time.

The best translation and **scholarly** work was done by Dr. Edward Rosen of CUNY whose work was published in 1965 by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later republished by Dover Publishing in 2003. These latter two works are identical in content. Rosen also includes ALL of Kepler's extensive notes AND he provides more explanations to give them context.

A small quantity of Rosen's 1965 edition can still be found through sources such as AbeBooks and Alibris; however, they tend to run $75 and up. The Dover editions are surprisingly scarce; sellers tend to hoard and offer them for $145 to several hundred dollars. (There's another scholarly work that Lear and Kirkwood completed and published by The University of California very shortly before Rosen's work. Unfortunately, the Lear and Kirkwood version falls short on both translation and scholarly analysis.)

***Get Rosen's version whether through a library or buy one if you can afford it and are genuinely interested in Kepler and the history of astronomy or science fiction literature. Lear and Kirkwood's version is a distant second. Don't bother with all other editions.

the science fiction aspect is fascinating, and his observation and conclusions are fairly incredible

It is incredible to read Johannes Kepler's description of a journey to the moon considering he wrote it in the early 17th century. Although he naturally didn't get everything right, his deductions and rationale are superbly logical. John Lear's added introduction is also invaluable for providing context and an understanding of the political and religious climate Kepler was writing under.

Somnium is a fantastic blend of science and enchantment, perspectives that seemed to co-exist happily in the minds of the scientists of the 17th century. Kepler himself embodies that blend, as in the mixture of musical harmony and hard math behind “the harmony of the spheres” and his third law of planetary motion.

Somnium has been called the first science fiction novel, having been written in 1608 and published in 1634.

The story is a recounting of a dream. The narrator says that in his dream he was reading a book by an Icelandic man named Duracotus. Duracotus’s mother asks that a teacher she has known tell Duracotus of the island Levania.

The teacher tells about the journey up to Levania, our Moon, and about the nature of its two hemispheres, Subvolva and Privolva. Subvolva is so named because, from it, you can view Volva (Earth). Volva is stationary, not seen from Privolva and always seen in the same position in the Subvolvian sky.

The rest of the story is description — really the geometry of the Earth/Moon system, how it produces eclipses, the length of the Levanian day, and its seasons. And how all of these things generate the kind of life that is possible for the Levanians. It is a brilliant piece of imagination mixed with science.

Kepler knew of the Moon’s phases, its rotational period, its apparent size, and, placing all this into a larger geometry, he reached conclusions about how heat must build up during the long lunar day and how that heat must somehow be dissipated in order for life to be possible there. He concluded that “a serpentine nature is predominant,” with serpents living in caves coming out to expose themselves to the Sun but always able to retreat quickly back to the cool of their caves.

All of the story maintains a kind of descriptive distance — there are no adventures on Lavonia itself, just a description of its characteristics and large scale features, like a recitation of a body of scientific knowledge. But the knowledge is reached imaginatively and presented through the device of a dream.

To us, I think the inter-weaving of mysticism and science feels odd. I suspect it did not to Kepler, just as the combination of musical harmony and mathematics in the orbits of the planets is natural to him.

The book is very short (45 sparsely printed and unnumbered pages, with a very brief introduction). It doesn’t stand as an engrossing story in its own right, but is certainly interesting and provocative as an artifact of the time, and of the workings of a mind steeped in an amalgam of what we now separate into astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, and astrology.

“How do we get to the moon?”
“Magic”

What you get when a big celestial mechanics nerd tries to write sci fi:

"Just as in one of our years the Sun transits 365 times, and the sphere of the fixed stars revolves 366 times – or more precisely, 1461 Suns in four years but 1465 revolutions of the fixed sphere – so for them, in one year the Sun transits 12 times, and the sphere of fixed stars 13 times – or more precisely, in eight years the Sun transits 99 times and the fixed sphere revolves 107 times. But a 19-year cycle is more familiar to them, for in that number of years the Sun rises 235 times and the fixed stars 254 times."

There is also a fun little occult frame story wrapped around the moon phase info dumps. Everything old is new again.

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.

had to read this for one of my classes but i’m here to say it makes NO SENSE. no offence kepler but wtf are u talking ab !! his storytelling skills are probably not as good as his science skills bc this book ends so abruptly & the actual reading of this is hell on earth. almost unreadable !!

overall fuck this class