The Road to Science Fiction

by James Gunn

  But the system was delicately balanced on a complicated structure of assumptions. The Polish astronomer Copernicus (1473–1543) gave the first shove. Wouldn’t it be simpler, he suggested, to suppose that the earth and the planets revolved around the sun? His theories circulated in manuscript for many years before he allowed a book to be published, just before his death. De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543) was banned by the Catholic Church until 1835. In a sense, the scientific revolution started with Copernicus. Humanity and the earth were removed from the center of things, diminished, their uniqueness removed; in compensation, science gave humanity new control over its fate and over its earthly environment.

  Copernicus never looked through a telescope. Galileo (1564–1642) built a telescope, looked through it, and reported what he saw, and was forced by the Inquisition to recant his heresy that the earth moved around the sun. Galileo’s work was continued by Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) in Germany.

  Educated for the ministry, Kepler was recognized early in his career as a brilliant mathematician, and he soon turned to the teaching of science and the study of astronomy. He adopted the views of Copernicus, worked under the elderly Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), and inherited Brahe’s astronomical observations of the apparent motions of the planets, which he finally explained with his famous three laws of planetary motion.

  Most Renaissance scientists needed the protection and support of nobility, and Kepler served as court astronomer for two Holy Roman emperors. Nevertheless, he often was in financial and other difficulties. Like those of many of his contemporaries, his ideas combined a strange mix of medieval mysticism and modern science. As court astronomer, for instance, he often cast horoscopes for the emperor and others, and he believed in the music of the spheres, but his discovery that the orbits of the planets were ellipses with the sun as one focus put an end to Greek astronomy and cast doubt on the theory behind astrology.

  Kepler’s contribution to the development of science fiction, Somnium, or Lunar Astronomy, seems like a strange mixture of superstition and science, but the references to demons and witchcraft are largely metaphorical. Kepler also may have thought that travel to the moon with the aid of a demon was only slightly less likely than by any other means, and perhaps safer theologically than some physical mechanism that might be taken seriously.

  Once Kepler’s hero reaches the moon, however, he finds the kind of lunar conditions that Kepler thought actually existed there. Kepler admitted his indebtedness to Lucian, but the stories share little more than the moon. Kepler and Lucian both send characters to the moon for reasons other than telling a good story, but once the characters arrive, Lucian turns to satire and Kepler to the kind of reality he thought a real space traveler would find.

  The narrative excitement still is minimal, but the purpose is approaching that of science fiction.

  Somnium, which means “a dream,” was written about 1610, circulated privately, and may have been responsible for his mother’s arrest for witchcraft in 1620 (although she had a reputation for actually dabbling in the occult). She died shortly after Kepler procured her release; the demon-propulsion may not have been so safe after all. The story was not published until 1634, four years after Kepler’s death.

  Somnium, or Lunar Astronomy

  BY JOHANNES KEPLER TRANSLATED BY EDWARD ROSEN

  In the year 1608 there was a heated quarrel between the Emperor Rudolph1 and his brother, the Archduke Matthias.2 Their actions universally recalled precedents found in Bohemian history. Stimulated by the widespread public interest, I turned my attention to reading about Bohemia, and came upon the story of the heroine Libussa,3 renowned for her skill in magic. It happened one night that after watching the stars and the moon, I went to bed and fell into a very deep sleep. In my sleep I seemed to be reading a book brought from the fair. Its contents were as follows.

  My name is Duracotus. My country is Iceland, which the ancients called Thule. My mother was Fiolxhilde. Her recent death freed me to write, as I had long wished to do. While she lived, she carefully kept me from writing. For, she said, the arts are loathed by many vicious people who malign what their dull minds fail to understand, and make laws harmful to mankind. Condemned by these laws, not a few persons have perished in the chasms of Hekla. My mother never told me my father’s name. But she said he was a fisherman who died at the ripe old age of 150 (when I was three) in about the seventieth year of his marriage.

  In the earliest years of my boyhood my mother, leading me by the hand and sometimes hoisting me up on her shoulders, often used to take me up to the lower slopes of Mt. Hekla. These excursions were made especially around St. John’s Day, when the sun is visible all twenty-four hours, and there is no night. Gathering some herbs with many rites, she cooked them at home. She made little bags out of goatskin, which she filled and carried to a nearby port to sell to the ship captains. This is how she earned her living.

  Once, out of curiosity, I cut a bag open. Suspecting nothing, my mother was about to sell it, when out fell the herbs and linen cloth embroidered with various symbols. Because I had deprived her of this little income, she angrily made me, instead of the bag, the property of the skipper in order to keep the money. On the next day he unexpectedly sailed out of the harbor, and with a favorable wind steered approximately toward Bergen in Norway. After a few days a north wind sprang up and drove the ship between Norway and England. He headed for Denmark and passed through the strait, since he had to deliver a letter from a bishop in Iceland to the Dane, Tycho Brahe, who lived on the island of Hven. The tossing of the boat and the unaccustomed warmth of the air made me violently sick, for I was a youth of fourteen. When the boat reached shore, he put me and the letter in the hands of an island fisherman. Expressing the hope that he would return, he sailed away.

  When I delivered the letter, Brahe was quite delighted and began to ask me many questions. These I did not understand, since I was unacquainted with the language except for a few words. He therefore instructed his students, whom he supported in great numbers, to talk to me frequently. So it came about, through Brahe’s generosity and a few weeks’ practice, that I spoke Danish tolerably well. I was no less ready to talk than they were to ask. For I marveled at many unfamiliar things, and they wondered about the many novelties I related about my country.

  Finally the skipper returned to take me back. When he failed, I was very happy.

  I was delighted beyond measure by the astronomical activities, for Brahe and his students watched the moon and the stars all night with marvelous instruments. This practice reminded me of my mother, because she, too, used to commune with the moon constantly.

  Through this opportunity, then, I, who had come from an entirely destitute background in a half-savage country, acquired knowledge of the most divine science, and this knowledge paved my way to greater things.

  For, after spending several years on this island, I was finally overcome by a desire to see my country again. I considered that it would not be hard for me, with the knowledge I had acquired, to rise to some position of importance among my backward people. Hence, having paid my respects to my patron, who gave me his permission to depart, I went to Copenhagen. I found traveling companions, who gladly took me under their protection because of my familiarity with the language and the region. Five years after I had left, I returned to my native land.

  What delighted me first on my return was to find my mother still active and engaged in the very same pursuits as before. The fact that I was alive and important put an end to her prolonged grief over the son she had lost through her impetuosity. At that time autumn was approaching, to be followed by those long nights of ours, since during the month in which Christ was born the sun barely rises at noon and sets again at once. On account of this interruption in her work my mother clung to me and did not leave my side, no matter where I went with my letter of recommendation. Sometimes she asked about the countries which I had visited, and sometimes about the heavens. She was delirious
ly happy that I had become acquainted with that science. Comparing what she had learned with my remarks, she exclaimed that now she was ready to die, since she was leaving behind a son who would inherit her knowledge, the only thing she possessed.

  Since I am by nature most eager to acquire new knowledge, I, in turn, questioned her about her arts and her teachers of those arts among a people so remote from all the others. Then one day, choosing the time for her narrative, she went over the whole story from the beginning, about as follows:

  Advantages have been conferred, Duracotus my son, not only on all those other regions to which you went but also on our country, too. To be sure, we are burdened with cold and darkness and other discomforts, which I feel only now, after I have learned from you about the salubriousness of the other lands. But we have plenty of clever persons. At our service are very wise spirits, who detest the bright light of the other lands and their noisy people. They long for our shadows, and they talk to us intimately. Among them there are nine chief spirits. Of these one is especially well known to me. The very gentlest and most innocuous of all, he is evoked by one and twenty characters. By his help I am not infrequently whisked in an instant to other shores, whichever I mention to him; or if I am frightened away from some of them on account of their distance, by inquiring about them I gain as much as if I were there in person. Most of the things which you saw with your own eyes or learned by hearsay or absorbed from books, he related to me just as you did. I should like you to become my companion on a visit, particularly, to that region of which he has spoken to me so often. Quite remarkable are the things which he tells about it. The name she uttered was “Levania.”

  Without any delay I agreed that she should summon her teacher. I sat down, ready to hear the entire plan for the trip and description of the region. It was already spring. The moon, becoming a crescent, began to shine as soon as the sun set below the horizon, and was in conjunction with the planet Saturn in the sign of the Bull. My mother went away from me to the nearest crossroads. Raising a shout, she pronounced just a few words in which she couched her request. Having completed the ceremonies, she returned. With the outstretched palm of her right hand she commanded silence, and sat down beside me. Hardly had we covered our heads with our clothing (in accordance with our covenant) when the rasping of an indistinct and unclear voice became audible. It began at once as follows, albeit in the Icelandic tongue.

  THE DAEMON FROM LEVANIA

  Fifty thousand German miles up in the ether lies the island of Levania.4 The road to it from here or from it to this earth is seldom open. When it is open, it is easy for our kind, but for transporting men it is assuredly most difficult and fraught with the greatest danger to life. We admit to this company nobody who is lethargic, fat, or tender. On the contrary, we choose those who spend their time in the constant practice of horsemanship or often sail to the Indies, inured to subsisting on hardtack, garlic, dried fish, and unappetizing victuals. We especially like dried-up old women, experienced from an early age in riding he-goats at night or forked sticks or threadbare cloaks, and in traversing immense expanses of the earth. No men from Germany are acceptable; we do not spurn the firm bodies of Spaniards.

  Great as the distance is, the entire trip is consummated in four hours at the most. For we are always very busy, and agree not to start until the moon begins to eclipse on its eastern side. Should it regain its full light while we are still in transit, our departure becomes futile. Because the opportunity is so fleeting, we take few human beings along, and only those who are most devoted to us. Some man of this kind, then, we seize as a group and all of us, pushing from underneath, lift him up into the heavens. In every instance the take-off hits him as a severe shock, for he is hurled just as though he had been shot aloft by gunpowder to sail over mountains and seas. For this reason at the outset he must be lulled to sleep immediately with narcotics and opiates. His limbs must be arranged in such a way that his torso will not be torn away from his buttocks nor his head from his body, but the shock will be distributed among his individual limbs. Then a new difficulty follows: extreme cold and impeded breathing. The cold is relieved by a power which we are born with; the breathing, by applying damp sponges to the nostrils. After the first stage of the trip is finished, the passage becomes easier. At that time we expose their bodies to the open air and remove our hands. Their bodies roll themselves up, like spiders, into balls which we carry along almost entirely by our will alone, so that finally the bodily mass proceeds towards its destination of its own accord. But this onward drive is of very little use to us, because it is too late. Hence it is by our will, as I said, that we move the body swiftly along, and we forge ahead of it from now on lest it suffer any harm by colliding very hard with the moon. When the humans wake up, they usually complain about an indescribable weariness of all their limbs, from which they later recover well enough to walk.

  Many additional difficulties arise which it would be tedious to enumerate. On the other hand, we suffer no harm at all. For as a group we inhabit the earth’s shadows, whatever their length. When they reach Levania, there we are as though disembarking from a ship and going ashore. Up there we quickly withdraw into caves and dark places, lest after a short while the sun overpower us in the open, and drive us out of the living quarters we had chosen, and force us to follow the retreating shadow. Up there we are granted leisure to exercise our minds in accordance with our inclinations. We consult with the daemons of that area and enter into a league. As soon as a spot begins to be free from sun, we close ranks and move out into the shadow. If it touches the earth with its apex, as generally happens, we rush toward the earth with our allied forces. This we are permitted to do only when mankind sees the sun in eclipse. Hence it happens that solar eclipses are feared so much.

  I have said enough about the trip to Levania. Next I shall talk about the nature of the region itself, starting like the geographers with its view of the heavens.

  The fixed stars look the same to all Levania as to us. But its view of the movements and sizes of the planets is very different from what we observe here, so that its entire system of astronomy is quite diverse.

  Just as our geographers divide up the sphere of the earth into five zones on the basis of celestial phenomena, so Levania consists of two hemispheres. One of these, the Subvolva,5 always enjoys its Volva,6 which among them takes the place of our moon. The other one, the Privolva,7 is deprived forever of the sight of Volva. The circle which separates the hemispheres passes through the celestial poles, like our solstitial colure, and is called the divisor.

  In the first place I shall explain what is common to both hemispheres. All Levania experiences the succession of day and night as we do, but they lack the variation that goes on all year among us. For throughout the whole of Levania the days are almost exactly equal to the nights, except that each day is uniformly shorter than its night for the Privolvans, and for the Subvolvans longer. What varies in a period of eight years will be mentioned later on. To produce equal nights at each of the poles, the sun is hidden half the time and shines half the time as it travels around the mountains in a circle. For Levania seems to its inhabitants to remain just as motionless among the moving stars as does our earth to us humans. A night and a day, taken together, equal one of our months, since at sunrise in the morning almost an entire additional sign of the zodiac appears on any day as compared with the previous day. For us in one year there are 365 revolutions of the sun, and 366 of the sphere of the fixed stars, or more accurately, in four years, 1,461 revolutions of the sun but 1,465 of the sphere of the fixed stars. Similarly, for them the sun revolves 12 times in one year and the sphere of the fixed stars 13 times, or more precisely in eight years the sun revolves 99 times and the sphere of the fixed stars 107 times. But they are more familiar with the nineteen-year cycle, for in that interval the sun rises 235 times, but the fixed stars 254 times.

  The sun rises for the middle of central Subvolvans when the moon appears to us in its last quarter, but the
middle Privolvans when we have the first quarter. What I say about the middle must be understood as applying to complete semicircles drawn through the poles and the middle at right angles to the divisor. These may be called the Midvolvan semicircles.

  Halfway between the poles there is a circle corresponding to our terrestrial equator, by which name it too may be denoted. It twice intersects both the divisor and the Midvolva in opposite points. At all places on the equator the sun at noon passes almost exactly overhead daily, and exactly overhead on two opposite days of the year. For all the others, who live on either side of the equator toward the poles, the sun deviates from the zenith at noon.

  On Levania they have also some alternation of summer and winter. But the contrast is not to be compared with ours, nor does it always occur, as with us, in the same places at the same time of year. For within a period of ten years their summer shifts from one part of the sidereal year to the opposite part in any given place. The reason is that in a cycle of nineteen sidereal years, or 235 Levanian days, summer occurs twenty times near the poles and winter just as often, but forty times at the equator. Every year they have six summer days, the others winter, like our months. This alternation is scarcely felt near the equator, because in those places the sun deviates no more than 5° back and forth to either side. It is felt much more near the poles, where the sun is present or absent in alternating periods of six months, as is the case among us on earth for those who live near either of the poles. Hence the sphere of Levania, too, is divided into five zones, corresponding somewhat to our terrestrial zones. But their tropical zone, like their arctic zones, contains scarcely 10°. All the rest belongs to zones similar to our temperate zones. The tropical zone passes through the middle of the hemispheres, with half of its longitude in the Subvolva and the other half in the Privolva.