The Sleepwalkers (200 page)

It
was
the
same
story
as
in
Gratz
and
Linz:
the
people
were
compelled
to
become
Catholics,
or
to
leave
the
country.
They
were
not
even
allowed
to
follow
a
Lutheran
hearse
to
the
cemetery.
The
privileged
position
that
Kepler
enjoyed
only
intensified
his
loneliness.
He
was
a
prisoner
of
constant,
nagging
anxieties
about
matters
large
and
small:

"It
seems
to
me
that
there
is
disaster
in
the
air.
My
agent
Eckebrecht
in
Nuremburg,
who
handles
all
my
affairs,
has
not
written
for
two
months...
I
am
worried
about
everything,
about
my
account
in
Linz,
about
the
distribution
of
the
Tables,
about
the
nautical
chart
for
which
I
have
given
a
hundred
and
twenty
florins
to
my
agent,
about
my
daughter,
about
you,
about
the
friends
in
Ulm."
¹¹

There
was,
of
course,
no
printing
press
in
Sagan,
so
he
set
out
again
on
travels
to
procure
type,
machinery
and
printers.
This
took
nearly
eighteen
months
out
of
the
altogether
two
years,
the
last
of
his
life,
that
he
spent
in
Sagan:

"Amidst
the
collapse
of
towns,
provinces
and
countries,
of
old
and
new
generations,
in
the
fear
of
barbaric
raids,
of
the
violent
destruction
of
hearth
and
home,
I
see
myself
obliged,
a
disciple
of
Mars
though
not
a
youthful
one,
to
hire
printers
without
betraying
my
fear.
With
the
help
of
God
I
shall
indeed
bring
this
work
to
an
end,
in
a
soldierly
fashion,
giving
my
orders
with
bold
defiance
and
leaving
the
worry
about
my
funeral
to
the
morrow."
¹²

4.
Lunar Nightmare

When
the
new
press
was
installed
in
December
1629,
in
Kepler's
own
lodgings,
he
embarked
(with
his
assistant,
Bartsch,
whom
Kepler
had
bullied
into
marrying
his
daughter
Susanna)
on
a
remunerative
enterprise:
the
publication
of
ephemerides
^*
for
the
years
1629-36.
Ever
since
the
Rudolphine
Tables
had
come
out,
astronomers
all
over
Europe
were
competing
to
publish
ephemerides,
and
Kepler
was
anxious
"to
join
the
race"
as
he
said,
on
the
race
track
that
he
had
built.
But
in
between,
he
also
began
the
printing
of
an
old,
favourite
brain-child
of
his:
Somnium
–
a
dream
of
a
journey
to
the
moon.
He
had
written
it
some
twenty
years
before,
and
from
time
to
time
had
added
notes
to
it,
until
these
had
far
outgrown
the
original
text.

____________________

The
Somnium
remained
a
fragment;
Kepler
died
before
he
finished
it,
and
it
was
only
published
posthumously,
in
1634.
It
is
the
first
work
of
science-fiction
in
the
modern
sense
–
as
opposed
to
the
conventional
type
of
fantasy-utopias
from
Lucian
to
Campanella.
Its
influence
on
later
authors
of
interplanetary
journeys
was
considerable
–
from
John
Wilkins'
Discovery
of
a
New
World
and
Henry
More,
right
down
to
Samuel
Butler,
Jules
Verne
and
H.
G.
Wells.
¹³

Somnium
starts
with
a
prelude
full
of
autobiographical
allusions.
The
boy
Duracotus
lived
with
his
mother
Fiolxhilda
on
Iceland
"which
the
ancients
called
Thule".
^*
The
father
had
been
a
fisherman,
who
had
died
at
the
age
of
one
hundred
and
fifty
when
the
boy
was
only
three.
Fiolxhilda
sold
herbs
in
little
bags
of
ram-skin
to
the
seamen
and
conversed
with
demons.
At
fourteen,
the
boy
curiously
opened
one
of
the
little
bags,
whereupon
his
mother,
in
a
fit
of
temper,
sold
him
to
a
seafaring
captain.
The
captain
left
him
on
the
Isle
of
Hveen,
where
for
the
next
five
years
Duracotus
studied
the
science
of
astronomy
under
Tycho
de
Brahe.
When
he
returned
home,
his
repentant
mother,
as
a
treat,
conjured
up
one
of
the
friendly
demons
from
Lavania
^†
–
the
moon
–
in
whose
company
selected
mortals
might
travel
to
that
planet.
"After
completing
certain
ceremonies,
my
mother,
commanding
silence
with
her
outstretched
hand,
sat
down
beside
me.
No
sooner
had
we,
as
arranged,
covered
our
heads
with
a
cloth,
when
a
hoarse,
supernatural
voice
began
to
whisper,
in
the
Icelandic
language,
as
follows..."