Review: Somnium: The Dream, or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy

Somnium: The Dream, or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy by Johannes Kepler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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.

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