Somnium by Johannes Kepler
The cover of Somnium. Wikipedia.
The astronomer and astrologer Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630) wrote one of the very first science fiction novels, and the book caused his mother to be tried for witchcraft. I’m not making this up.
Kepler’s book, which was written in Latin in 1608, is called Somnium, which means dream. So he used the easy plot device of telling a story which is all dream, but what a dream!
The protagonist of the story is a 14 year old boy in Iceland. His mother is a witch1, and has the wonderful name Fiolxhilde. Why Iceland? Kepler doesn’t say, but at that time there was the idea around that Mount Hekla (which features in the story) was a portal to Hell, so it makes sense that it could be a portal to the heavens as well.
1 Most witches put on trial in Iceland were male. Of the 22 executed for sorcery in Iceland, 20 were men and only two women.
2 Kepler was an assistant to Brahe and became his successor as imperial mathematician.
At the start of the story, the boy angers his mother by tampering with a magical talisman which she has made to sell to sailors at the port. In her anger her mother decided to sell him to a ship captain, and so his adventure begins. He ends up on the island of Hven with astronomer Tycho Brahe2. He spends several years with Brahe and learns astronomy, before returning to Iceland and his mother. It’s at this point where the story starts to get weird.
His mother tell him how she also knows of the heavens, and shows him her secret. She summons a daemon which takes the boy on a pathway between the Earth and the Moon3. On the Moon, the boy observes the Earth and the movement of the Moon around the Earth, as well as the flora and fauna of the Moon. Kepler wakes up suddenly from the dream and the story doesn’t really finish satisfactorily.
3 Apparently humans need to be sedated for this trip, which makes me wonder if Kepler is actually describing an experience he had taking psychedelic drugs, rather than a dream. Also in the story I think the daemon just describes things and they don’t actually go on the trip, but I prefer my version.
Many years after the story was published, Kepler’s mother was tried for witchcraft. It is thought that the story might have been the cause of this. Kepler successfully helped to defend his mother. He also added many footnotes to his story explaining the scientific meanings in it.
Anyway, I thought it would be a good story to illustrate, and to add footnotes to the illustrations giving background details. Each one was also an experiment in illustration. The first one I did with acrylic paints:
For the second one, I used pencil:
The third is a combination - acrylic paints with coloured pencil applied on top.
Looking at these now I can see my handwriting has improved a lot since I drew these. And there are many other things I would do differently. It was a good learning exercise.