Citation de luxorion
First chapter
Space travel
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) wrote his strange moon-voyage tale, Somnium, around the time that Galileo's discoveries first became known. It was the first science-fiction novel written by a scientist — or, for that matter, by anyone at all knowledgeable in science. And, important to us, it is perhaps the first example of an astronomical discovery influencing an art form. It is unfortunate that the novel was not illustrated, for if it had been, it might have provided the first true astronomical art.
As Galileo was discovering new worlds in the sky, so new worlds were being discovered here on earth. Scarcely more than a century earlier the continents of North and South America had been discovered quite by accident, lying unsuspected and unknown on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean. Soon, hundreds of ships and thousands of explorers, colonists, soldiers, priests, and adventurers had made the journey to these fertile, rich, and strange new lands. Now they learned that an Italian scientist had found that not only did our own earth harbor unsuspected worlds, but that the sky was full of them, too.
How frustrating it must have been! The new worlds of the Americas, which lay invisibly beyond the horizon and which existed for the vast majority of Europeans only in the form of traveler's tales and evocative if imaginative charts, nevertheless could be visited by anyone possessing the funds or courage. But now here were whole new earths — Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon — which could be seen by anyone and even mapped; whole new planets with unimaginable continents and riches… yet there was no way to touch them! They were like a mirage of an oasis in the middle of the desert, in plain sight yet tantalizingly out of reach.
Little wonder, then, that Galileo's discoveries could not be easily suppressed. They were followed by an unprecedented spate of space travel stories: Somnium (published in 1634), The Man in the Moone (1638), A Voyage to the Moon (1657), A Voyage to the World of Cartesius (1694), Iter Lunare (1703), John Daniel (1752), Voltaire's "Micromegas" (1752), and countless others. If it was not possible to reach these new worlds in the sky in reality, it would be done on the page.
Few of these books were illustrated, and, when they were, the artists demonstrated as much disregard for astronomy as did the authors. Nevertheless, they were representative of the rapidly increasing interest in voyaging into outer space and the possibilities of other worlds.
Space travel
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) wrote his strange moon-voyage tale, Somnium, around the time that Galileo's discoveries first became known. It was the first science-fiction novel written by a scientist — or, for that matter, by anyone at all knowledgeable in science. And, important to us, it is perhaps the first example of an astronomical discovery influencing an art form. It is unfortunate that the novel was not illustrated, for if it had been, it might have provided the first true astronomical art.
As Galileo was discovering new worlds in the sky, so new worlds were being discovered here on earth. Scarcely more than a century earlier the continents of North and South America had been discovered quite by accident, lying unsuspected and unknown on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean. Soon, hundreds of ships and thousands of explorers, colonists, soldiers, priests, and adventurers had made the journey to these fertile, rich, and strange new lands. Now they learned that an Italian scientist had found that not only did our own earth harbor unsuspected worlds, but that the sky was full of them, too.
How frustrating it must have been! The new worlds of the Americas, which lay invisibly beyond the horizon and which existed for the vast majority of Europeans only in the form of traveler's tales and evocative if imaginative charts, nevertheless could be visited by anyone possessing the funds or courage. But now here were whole new earths — Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon — which could be seen by anyone and even mapped; whole new planets with unimaginable continents and riches… yet there was no way to touch them! They were like a mirage of an oasis in the middle of the desert, in plain sight yet tantalizingly out of reach.
Little wonder, then, that Galileo's discoveries could not be easily suppressed. They were followed by an unprecedented spate of space travel stories: Somnium (published in 1634), The Man in the Moone (1638), A Voyage to the Moon (1657), A Voyage to the World of Cartesius (1694), Iter Lunare (1703), John Daniel (1752), Voltaire's "Micromegas" (1752), and countless others. If it was not possible to reach these new worlds in the sky in reality, it would be done on the page.
Few of these books were illustrated, and, when they were, the artists demonstrated as much disregard for astronomy as did the authors. Nevertheless, they were representative of the rapidly increasing interest in voyaging into outer space and the possibilities of other worlds.
