Galileo's Dream - Rambling Readers

Hardcover, 532 pages

English language

Published Jan. 2, 2009 by Ballantine Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-553-80659-5
OCLC Number:: 459209947

(1 review)

In a novel of stunning dimensions, the acclaimed author of the Mars trilogy brings us the story of the incredible life – and death – of Galileo, the First Scientist. Late Renaissance Italy still abounds in alchemy and Aristotle, yet it trembles on the brink of the modern world. Galileo's new telescope encapsulates all the contradictions of this emerging reality. Then one night a stranger presents a different kind of telescope for Galileo to peer through. Galileo is not sure if he is in a dream, an enchantment, a vision, or something else as yet undefined. The blasted wasteland he sees when he points the telescope at Jupiter, of harsh yellows and reds and blacks, looks just like hell as described by the Catholic church, and Galileo is a devout Catholic. But he's also a scientist, perhaps the very first in history. What he's looking at is the future, the …

In a novel of stunning dimensions, the acclaimed author of the Mars trilogy brings us the story of the incredible life – and death – of Galileo, the First Scientist. Late Renaissance Italy still abounds in alchemy and Aristotle, yet it trembles on the brink of the modern world. Galileo's new telescope encapsulates all the contradictions of this emerging reality. Then one night a stranger presents a different kind of telescope for Galileo to peer through. Galileo is not sure if he is in a dream, an enchantment, a vision, or something else as yet undefined. The blasted wasteland he sees when he points the telescope at Jupiter, of harsh yellows and reds and blacks, looks just like hell as described by the Catholic church, and Galileo is a devout Catholic. But he's also a scientist, perhaps the very first in history. What he's looking at is the future, the world of Jovian humans three thousand years hence. He is looking at Jupiter from the vantage point of one of its moons whose inhabitants maintain that Galileo has to succeed in his own world for their history to come to pass. Their ability to reach back into the past and call Galileo "into resonance" with the later time is an action that will have implications for both periods, and those in between, like our own. By day Galileo's life unfurls in early seventeenth century Italy, leading inexorably to his trial for heresy. By night Galileo struggles to be a kind of sage, or an arbiter in a conflict ... but understanding what that conflict might be is no easy matter, and resolving his double life is even harder. This sumptuous, gloriously thought-provoking and suspenseful novel recalls Robinson's magnificent Mars books as well as bringing to us Galileo as we have always wanted to know him, in full.

5 editions

Arbieroo reviewed Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson

Review of "Galileo's Dream" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I wonder if this project started off as an attempt at a straight fictional biography, like [b:Doctor Mirabilis|123671|Doctor Mirabilis|James Blish|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1290068768s/123671.jpg|962904] which is also about a scientist who falls foul of the Catholic Church? Hard to say, but it stands as a science fiction story in which Galileo is contacted by humans from the distant future who want him to help with a problem they are having on Europa...

So there are two stories, one about Galileo's life from the start of his work on telescopes up to his death and another about dreams of Europa where strange and complicated things are happening and something has been discovered in the ocean...Eventually these two threads intertwine and start to affect each other in dramatic ways.

This book really ought to be a failure. Chunks of it are theme and variation on Galileo is debauched, ill, irritable and always short of money - …

I wonder if this project started off as an attempt at a straight fictional biography, like [b:Doctor Mirabilis|123671|Doctor Mirabilis|James Blish|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1290068768s/123671.jpg|962904] which is also about a scientist who falls foul of the Catholic Church? Hard to say, but it stands as a science fiction story in which Galileo is contacted by humans from the distant future who want him to help with a problem they are having on Europa...

So there are two stories, one about Galileo's life from the start of his work on telescopes up to his death and another about dreams of Europa where strange and complicated things are happening and something has been discovered in the ocean...Eventually these two threads intertwine and start to affect each other in dramatic ways.

This book really ought to be a failure. Chunks of it are theme and variation on Galileo is debauched, ill, irritable and always short of money - it should get boring but it never quite does. Maybe because the parts where Galileo is doing science or where he is dreaming the future leaven it sufficiently. Maybe because the drama played out over the Copernican world-view is compelling. Maybe because the drama played out near Jupiter is compelling and towards the end an imaginative and descriptive triumph that brought tears to my eyes.

People who have read a fair amount of KSR will know that he has a strong theme of environmental concern running through most of his books. It's back again here but it is mixed with questions about the effect of science and religion on society, whether human nature will evolve, the consequences of war, the compulsive nature of the scientific mind, the beauty of nature and what constitutes life.

A pleasure to read, building steadily to a dramatic climax in Rome and on the moons of Jupiter.