Somnium - Kepler (1608)

Somnium (The Dream) was written in 1608 by Johannes Kepler, considered one of the founding fathers of mordern science. The novel was eventually published by Kepler's son in 1634, some four years after his death. The English translation I've quoted here is mostly from The Somnium Project.

The bulk of the story is told from the point of view of Duracotus, an Icelandic boy aged 14 at his introduction. His mother, Fiolxhilde, angry with him for ruining a potential sale of one of her herb mixtures, leaves him with the skipper of a ship until she can replace the product. She doesn't get chance before the ship sets sail... Duracotus ends up living in Denmark and studying astronomy for years.

Eventually, aged 19, Duracotus travels back to Iceland and is reunited with his overjoyed mother. She tells him in turns how she came to learn about astronomy herself:

"At our service are wise spirits, who detest the light of other lands and the uproar of their peoples. They seek out our shadows, and converse with us on friendly terms. Among them, nine are foremost; of these, one is best known to me – the most gentle and kindest of all. He is summoned by 21 symbols. Through his power I am often transported, in an instant of time, to other shores – anywhere I ask, but if I be frightened by the distance, I learn as much by asking questions as if I were present there. Many of the things that you have seen with your own eyes, or heard reported, or taken from books, he recounted to me just as you have."

Duracotus asks her to summon this spirit, so he might hear about the region of Levania. This she does, and the spirit tells them:

"The island of Levania is located fifty thousand German miles high up in the sky. The route to get to there from here, or back to this Earth, is rarely open. When it is open, it is easy for our kind, at least, to travel. But transporting humans is truly difficult, and risks the greatest dangers to life.

We do not admit desk-bound humans into these ranks, nor the fat, nor the foppish. But we choose those who regularly spend their time hunting with swift horses, or those who voyage in ships to the Indies, and are accustomed to living on hard bread, garlic, dried fish and other abhorrent foods.

The best adapted for the journey are dried-out old women, since from youth they are accustomed to riding goats at night, or pitchforks, or travelling the wide expanses of the earth in worn-out clothes. There are none in Germany who are suitable, but the dry bodies of Spaniards are not rejected."

It goes on to tell them that the journey is completed in four hours at most, but it has to be completed before the moon regains its full light. Few humans ever make the trip, not least because of the hardships associated with it:

"First of all he experiences a strong pressure, not unlike an explosion of gunpowder, as he is hurled above the mountains and the seas. For this reason, drugs and opium are consumed at the start, so that he falls asleep, and each of his limbs disentangled, so that his body is not torn from his legs, nor his head driven from his body, but so the shock will be distributed across all his limbs.

Next he experiences new difficulties: it is intensely cold and he cannot breath. All of us are born with a power to relieve the cold; for his breathing, we push damp sponges up his nose to block the flow. With this first part of the journey accomplished, it is easy to set his trajectory. When we reach the open sky, we remove our hands from his body so that he balls himself up like a spider, which we transport almost by our will alone, so that finally the mass of the body falls towards the intended destination of its own accord."

After some more monologuing on the difficulties of the journey, we're told a little about life on Levania:

"Therefore, as geographers divide our sphere of the earth into five zones according to their celestial phenomena so is Levania divided into two hemispheres: one of these is the Subvolvan, the other is the Privolvan. The Subvolvans are forever blessed by the light from Volva [our Earth] which for them takes the place of our Moon. But the Privolvans are eternally deprived any sight of the Earth. The circle dividing their hemispheres, named the divisor, resembles the meridian passing through the solstices and the poles of our world."

The text goes on to give us information about the length of Levonian days, how eclipses look, and other astronomical titbits:

"From the intersections of the equatorial and zodiacal circles arise four cardinal points just like our equinoxes and solstices, and the zodiacal cycle commences at these intersections. But as a consequence of this, the movement of the fixed stars is very swift, since in 20 tropical years – which are defined as one summer and one winter – the entire zodiac passes by, which happens with us once in nearly 26000 years. So much for the first motion."

Of more interest for this blog is the section where the inhabitants of Levania are described:

"The whole of Levania stretches out no further than 1400 German miles in circumference, a fourth part of our Earth. It possesses very high mountains, very deep and wide valleys and in consequence yields much to our Earth in perfect roundness. The entire surface is porous, as it were pierced through with hollow caverns and continuous caves, especially prolonged through the Privolvans. These hollow places are the principal means that the Privolvans have to ward off the heat and cold.

Whatever springs from the land or walks upon the land is of a monstrous size. Increases in size are very rapid. Life is of short duration because all living things grow to such an enormous bodily mass. The Privolvans have no fixed dwelling place. In the space of a single day, they traverse the whole of their world in hordes, following the receding waters either on legs that are longer than those of our camels, on wings, or in boats. If a delay of very many days is necessary, they crawl through the caves according to each one's nature.

There are many divers among them and all their living creatures breathe very slowly. By combining nature with art, they can take refuge at the bottom of the deep waters. They say that those in the very depths of the water endure the cold, while the upper waves are boiling hot from the Sun. Those that remain on the surface are boiled by the midday Sun and serve as nourishment for wandering colonists. In general, the Subvolvan hemisphere compares favorably with our cantons, towns and gardens while the Privolvan resembles our fields, forests and deserts.

Other creatures who find breathing more necessary, retreat into caves which are supplied with water by narrow canals so that the water may gradually cool on its long way; but when evening comes, they go out for food. The bark on trees, the skin on living creatures, or if anything else takes their place, takes up the greater part of the corporeal mass because it is spongy and porous. If any creature is taken by surprise in the heat of the day, his skin becomes hard and scorched and falls off in the evening. Plants in the earth, and there are a few on the mountain tops, spring up and die on the same day, daily making room for new growing things.

Their nature is generally like a snake's. They have a strange love for basking in the noonday Sun, but only close to their caves, so that they can make a swift and safe retreat.

Others whose spirits have been exhausted by the heat of the day lose their life, but return through the night, on account of some paradoxical cause like the production of flies here on Earth. Here and there all over the ground are scattered masses in the shape of pine cones. Their rinds are sun-burnt through the day and die, but in the evening produce living creatures when the hiding places are opened."

Kepler - as narrator - then awakens from his dream about Duracotus and there, rather abruptly, ends the story.