Somnium (Latin for "The Dream") is a fantasy written between 1620 and 1630, in Latin, by Johannes Kepler. In the narrative, a student of Tycho Brahe is transported to the Moon by occult forces. It presents a detailed imaginative description of how the earth might look when viewed from the moon, and is considered the first serious scientific treatise on lunar astronomy. Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov have referred to it as the first work of science fiction.[1]
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Plot summary [link]
The story is the tale of Duracotus, who was the son of an Icelandic witch named Fiolxhilda. During his youth she banished Duracotus to Denmark for five years. Upon his return, she decided to share some of her secrets with him. She explained that her instructor had been a demon who dwelt on the Moon. During a Solar Eclipse, the lunar demons were able to travel between the Earth and the Moon via a bridge of darkness. The son decided he wanted to make this journey, and so he was transported to the Moon by demons.[2]
To ease his journey he was given a drowsing draught and moist sponges to hold under his nose. He was carried to the point of neutral gravity between the Earth and Moon, then allowed to drift down to the lunar surface. Thus the author understood some of the effects of gravity and the need for environmental protection above the atmosphere.[2]
Publication history [link]
Development [link]
Somnium began as a student dissertation in which Kepler defended the Copernican doctrine of the motion of the Earth, suggesting that an observer on the Moon would find the planet's movements as clearly visible as the Moon's activity is to the Earth's inhabitants. Nearly 20 years later, Kepler added the dream framework, and after another decade, he drafted a series of explanatory notes reflecting upon his turbulent career and the stages of his intellectual development. The book was edited by his heirs, including Jacob Bartsch, after Kepler's death in 1630.
Publication [link]
Similarities with real life led to Kepler's own mother being arrested on charges of witchcraft.[3] The book was published posthumously in 1634 by his son, Ludwig Kepler.[4]
In popular culture [link]
Fresh Aire V by the Mannheim Steamroller is a concept album based on the work.
References [link]
- ^ Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan on Johannes Kepler's persecution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAVeTFin0mU&feature=related.
- ^ a b Moore, Patrick (1994). The Great Astronomical Revolution: 1534-1687 and the Space Age Epilogue. Horwood Publishing. pp. 129–132. ISBN 1-898563-19-5.
- ^ https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2611.htm
- ^ Christianson, Gale E. (1976). "Kepler's Somnium: Science Fiction and the Renaissance Scientist". Science Fiction Studies (SF-TH Inc) 3 (1): 76–90. JSTOR 4239001.
https://books.google.com/books?id=OdCJAS0eQ64C&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=falseSOMNIUM @GoogleBooks
External links [link]
- Christianson, Gale E., Kepler's Somnium: Science Fiction and the Renaissance Scientist
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Novel
A novel is a long narrative, normally in prose, which describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story.
The genre has also been described as possessing "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years". This view sees the novel's origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, and the tradition of the novella. The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Ian Watt, however, in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel first came into being in the early 18th century,
Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era; the first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605.
The romance is a closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society". However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott,Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, are also frequently called novels, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo."
Moon of Israel (novel)
Moon of Israel is a novel by Rider Haggard, first published in 1918 by John Murray. The novel narrates the events of the Biblical Exodus from Egypt told from the perspective of a scribe named Ana.
Haggard dedicated his novel to Sir Gaston Maspero, a distinguished Egyptologist and director of Cairo Museum.
Adaptation
His novel was the basis of a script by Ladislaus Vajda, for film-director Michael Curtiz in his 1924 Austrian epic known as Die Sklavenkönigin, or "Queen of the Slaves".
References
External links
Novel (disambiguation)
A novel is a long prose narrative.
Novel may also refer to:
See also
Somnium (album)
Somnium (2001) is an album by the American ambient musician Robert Rich. It is a seven-hour album on a DVD-video that was partly inspired by Rich's sleep concert series of the early 1980s and mid 1990s. Like those concerts, the music on this album was composed to influence the dreams and pre-REM hypnagogic visions of the listener. For this purpose it is suggested that the volume be kept down to the threshold of perceptibility, ideally with speakers surrounding the listener's bed. Rich also recommends this album for conventional listening.
For a brief period at the beginning of the album there is a slightly more active texture while the listener adjusts the volume and settles down to sleep. As the music progresses it slowly drifts through a variety of electronic drones as well as acoustic source material and nature recordings. The third and final track gradually fades into a morning atmosphere filled with bird songs.
In order to allow for the album's seven-hour length it was released on the DVD-video format instead of DVD-Audio. Rich also wanted to avoid the digital artifacts caused by compression. To achieve this the frames of video that a DVD player uses to navigate inside a chapter were not included. In spite of this, the second track had to be compressed using Dolby AC-3 encoding in order to maintain the album's length.
Nemrem
Art Style: NEMREM, known as Art Style: ZENGAGE in North America and Art Style: SOMNIUM in Japan, is a puzzle video game developed by skip Ltd. and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DSi's DSiWare digital distribution service.
Gameplay
The game involves players sliding colored tiles on a game board in order to match the positions of colored balls resting on the same board.
Some puzzles in higher level stages may feature obstacles that could send some color balls bouncing elsewhere or stuck, etc.
Development
NEMREM was announced for the DSiWare service on January 28, 2009, and released two days later alongside Art Style: Picopict, another title in the Art Style series.
