By the Light of the Moon: Science Fiction's 17th-Century Roots


injury—even decapitation, and have women who are so beautiful that no man ever desires to cheat on his wife. (It seems to me that such reasoning could be flawed.) A more interesting thing he finds there is the reason why the moon is so peaceful. It seems that the giants identify potential sinners at birth and ship them off to Earth—more specifically to North America.

Earlier we said that SF extrapolates from current scientific knowledge. The contraption in which the geese transport Gonsales to the moon is based on Galilean physics. Once on the moon, much of the story's underpinnings rely on the science of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. Clearly some attention was paid to the incorporation of "real" science. Godwin's advancement of the Copernican model was both brave and cutting edge for the time period. It was fortunate that he was not a subject of Rome. Galileo was ultimately confined to house arrest by the Inquisition for doing the same.

DREAMS OF A NEW WORLD
Another seventeenth-century trip to the moon is Kepler's Somnium (Dream), which was published in 1634—the same year that Lucian's works were translated into English. In Somnium the main character, Duracotus, arrives on the moon by supernatural means and then begins giving the reader a tour based on scientific theories of the time. Duracotus's moon is more extreme than Earth in almost all respects. Mountains are higher, valleys are deeper, temperature variation is much wider, and the life forms that call the place home are born in the morning and die in the evening. Talk about your short lifespan! Somnium is nothing more than scientific extrapolation and speculation, but, as we have already pointed out, that is something that is commonly found in modern SF as well.

Speaking of life on the moon, more speculation can be found in John Wilkins's 1638 book Discovery of a New World. Here Wilkins talks about what it might be like to travel to the moon and what things man might find there.

Still another moon voyage from the time period is Athanasius Kircher's Itinerarium Exstaticum (1656) in which an angel carries the chief protagonist to the moon for a grand tour that is

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