The Dream, or Lunar Astronomy: Kepler’s Journey to the Moon

About this book

The daemon describes the shock of the launch, the cold of space and the point where the traveller moves onward by himself; the long lunar day and night; the Earth, "Volva", hanging motionless in the sky like a clock; and the creatures of Levania — huge, short-lived and serpent-like, basking at the mouths of their caves.

In his notes, written between 1620 and 1630, Kepler explains every hint: his calculations, his debt to Plutarch and Lucian, Tycho Brahe, and the bitter story of his mother's witch trial, which he believed his manuscript had helped to provoke. The book was published after his death by his son Ludwig.

Rendered into modern English by BlusaBooks with the help of AI tools, working from images of the pages of the Frankfurt edition of 1634 (Somnium, seu Opus posthumum de astronomia lunari). Sentence by sentence, not a summary or a retelling. Plutarch's dialogue printed in the same volume is not included.

What is inside

• Ludwig Kepler's dedication, the Dream, all 223 of Kepler's notes and the Selenographical Appendix (a letter about "cities" on the Moon) with its notes
• clickable notes: tap a number in the story to jump to Kepler's note, and tap the note's number to return
• the title page of 1634 and Kepler's own diagrams of the Earth's shadow and of an eclipse seen from the Moon
• four colour illustrations, from an eclipse over Iceland to the creatures of Privolva (created with AI tools)
• 99 footnotes on the same page that explain people, places and where today's science differs
• a preface on Kepler, the Dream and his mother's trial; commentary at the end: in plain words and what science says (the lunar day, the Earth seen from the Moon, weightlessness, Apollo)

Who it is for

Readers of science fiction curious about its roots; anyone interested in the history of astronomy and space travel; a thoughtful gift for a stargazer.

A historical source: Kepler writes as a man of the seventeenth century, with the knowledge and beliefs of his time — daemons, witches and spells are kept as in the original. The notes and commentary explain what we know today.