Good evening and welcome to boring books for bedtime. I hope tonight's installment provides

all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep for once. So lie back, adjust your

volume, take a nice deep breath.

And off we go.

This evening, we're reading one of the first works of science fiction

ever written.

It's Somnium or The Dream, by the great mathematician and astronomer, Johannes Kepler, written in 1608.

Let's begin.

In the year 1608, when quarrels were raging between the brothers, Emperor Rudolph, and Archduke Mathias, people were

comparing precedence from Bohemian history.

Caught up by the general curiosity,

I applied my mind to Bohemian legends

and chanced upon the story of the heroine Labusa famous for her magic art.

It happened then on a certain night that after watching the stars and moon, I stretched out on my bed and fell sound asleep. In my sleep I

seemed to be reading a book I had got from the market. This was how it went. My name is Durakotis. My homeland is Iceland, which the ancients called Thool.

Because of the recent deaths of my mother, Veal Zilda, I am free to write of something which I have long wanted to write about.

While she lived, she earnestly entreated me to remain silent.

She used to say that there are many wicked folk who despise the arts and interpret maliciously everything their own dull minds cannot grasp.

They fasten harmful laws onto the human race, and many, condemned by those laws,

have been swallowed by the abyss of Hecla. My mother never told me my father's name, but she said he was

a fisherman and that he died at the very old age of 150 years when I was three. After about 70 years of marriage.

In my early childhood, my mother often would lead me by the hand, or lift me onto her shoulders and carry me to heckless lower slopes.

...