Galileo’s Dream

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 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. The novel is composed of 20 chapters, each beginning with a quotation from works of literature or poetry from ancient, medieval or modern times including from Galileo himself.

It appears to be written in the third person, occasionally switching to first person narration. Galileo Galilei, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Padua since , meets a stranger from "Alta Europa", who informs him of the existence of a spyglass. He creates one and makes a demonstration to the Doge of Venice and his senators.

Galileo perfects his spyglasses and makes astronomical observations: He contacts the Florentines hoping patronage at the Medici court. The stranger, Ganymede, leads Galileo on Europa; meanwhile in 17th century Italy, Galileo is in a syncope. Galileo meets Hera, Ganymede's group contests a vote on the exploration of Europa's ocean.

Galileo is made to forget his visit. Cartophilus comes to the service of Galileo. Galileo observes the Jupiter moons. He sends spyglasses to many courts in Europe. Galileo moves to Florence and meets young Florentine nobleman Filippo Salviati. He observes the phases of Venus. Ganymede and Hera take Galileo to a plunge into the Europan ocean, trying to sabotage a Europan expedition to the ocean's deep, where they encounter a being. Hera wants to snatch Galileo off Ganymede's influence. Religious condemnations of Galileo's observations. Galileo goes to Rome to defend his opinions, making important acquaintances: Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino initiates an investigation into Galileo's theories.

Ganymede and Hera battle over using the device the entangler to take Galileo back and forth to the future prolepsis and analepsis. Ganymede wanted Galileo as an intelligent and neutral party to support his position to prevent the exploration of the Europan ocean; Ganymede's prolepses aim at science overcoming religion, and Galileo dying as science's martyr, burned at the stake; Hera wants to help prevent that fate.

Galileo defends himself of accusations, another visit to Rome. Bellarmino's warning not to deal with Copernicanism finds itself in the middle of power plays between the Borgias and the Vatican, with the Inquisition meddling. Catophilus and diplomat Giovanfrancesco Buonamici investigate within Rome's network of spies. Bellarmino delivers Galileo a decree with the warning, while all books adopting the Copernican view are banned. Aurora, physicist and mathematician, gives Galileo a fast summary of scientific advancements from the Ancient Greeks, to his own time, to quantum physics, to mathematical descriptions of probabilities, time, multi-verses and manifolds.

Galileo has a partial dream-like memory of previous visits, which influence his decisions in his life; Hera tries to remedy to that. Sickness and bad temper, and Galileo focuses on other things. He develops the jovilabe and the celatone. He sends his daughters to the convent of San Matteo. With Aurora, Galileo gets another crash course at mathematics and physics history: Hera makes Galileo remember his past in order to make him better understand the choices in his life: Hera takes Galileo to Callisto. Ganymede was a cult leader who had ventured in Ganymede's ocean; what he had found there made him want to prevent Europans from doing the same; Hera had been his mnemosyne akin to a psychologist.

On Callisto, Hera and Galileo moved through a great carnival to a council for the whole Jovian system, Ganymede and the Europans clashing. Hera's group follow Ganymede's group to Io and engage in a skirmish; Ganymede escapes while Hera is left stranded and Galileo is sent back in a hurry, without amnestics. Visits to the convent; gardening; writing. Ganymede had made several other interventionist attempts before Archimedes and Cartophilus had been around for over two centuries, but the inertia of the manifolds was too much to achieve the desired long-term effects; the whole process was being abandoned because of philosophical objections.

Hera makes Galileo remember: Galileo having a good time with rich friends while Marina was doing the hard work of parenting; not marrying her because of her stature as a prostitute; complying with astrology prostituting his science for the sake of patronage; and what Hera considers Galileo's main contribution, establishing scientific protocols for experimentation. Ganymede's group creates an explosion in Europa that seemes to damage the sentience underground; then Jupiter reacts. Galileo finishes The Assayer. Positive conjunctions do not last forever: Cardinal Cesarini dies and is replaced by Fra Niccolo Riccardi, less of an intellectual; Pope Urban is too much involved in the politics of installing his power, and of the alliances being made in the Thirty-Years War , to care.

Galileo leaves Rome believing he had been given permission to discuss anything as long as it's considered as a mathematical abstraction. Pope Urban grows more distant and the weight of Galileo's friends diminishes; nevertheless, Galileo successfully negotiates for the publication of his Dialogo. Galileo gets the Dialogo published. Galileo gets a tutorial on the history ies between his time and Hera's: Ganymede believes that minimization shall come by Galileo dying and science overcoming religion.

Flying over Jupiter's surface, Ganymede is on trial; he says he is from the future and that extinction lies ahead if contact is made with the Jovian, because of the despair that would be produced in humanity if they learn how insignificant they are compared to the Jovian and his peers, vastly superior to humanity. Jupiter manifests itself, with sounds and cloud formations, making them understand that the cosmos is populated everywhere, from Europa and Ganymede and Jupiter, to millions around stars elsewhere in the galaxy, and stars themselves, all of them communicating across all ten dimensions, changing always across all manifolds, eternity itself striving to improvement.

In ecstasy, Galileo was unable to follow any longer; "All things remain in God". When they came to, Galileo and Hera made love, Galileo understanding that men of his time had been afraid of women because they were other. Wars in Europe had weakened papal power and Urban had to strike back by crusading against heresy: Galileo is called for examination. Far from portraying him as a Saint for the secular thinker, he is shown as a short-tempered bully, an excessive drinker, a womaniser and sometimes a fanatic whose single-mindedness in overturning the Ptolemaic model leads him to push his daughters into a convent without much thought for anything else.

Also, we get an intriguing insight into the world of Vatican politics as a succession of popes are confronted with the problems of the age; not just Galileo but the impending 30 years war and other religious conflicts. There is a moral tale at work too. The Europans are attempting to manipulate Galileo for their own end, pushing him further in order that he is burnt at the stake to become a secular martyr.

Their ultimate goal is to end the war between religion and science quickly. Galileo feels uneasy at this; after all he always considered himself a good Catholic. In real life he died a sick man under house arrest having been brow-beaten into recanting. Not only is this an intriguing and thoughtful novel, it is also quite fun. We delight at the sense of adventure as he explores the four primary moons and confronts the sentient being that lives in the Jupiter system.

I really cannot fault this book. See more book reviews at my blog This is an epitome of the depths that modern science fiction plumbs. In this instance, fiction is actually less entertaining than fact. If one is interested in physics then I would suggest a good textbook, such as any of Halliday and Resnicks books, all of which are be This is an epitome of the depths that modern science fiction plumbs. I fear the best I can say about this is that Mr.

Robinson has done a quite good job of portraying the hernia. There is a theory that views all of history as the result of actions by individuals at pivotal moments. These "Great Men" or, let's be fair, "Great People " are the movers and shakers of historical periods. These are the people whose mark lasts long on history, or so we think. I do There is a theory that views all of history as the result of actions by individuals at pivotal moments. I do not subscribe to the Great Person Theory. It appeals too much to our individualism and our love of anecdotal explanations.

We are creatures who like nothing better than a story, and the episodes from the lives of these Great People make for great stories. Assigning all, or even most of, the responsibility for historical change to these individuals is simplistic.

Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson

So whenever someone comes along and proposes that history would be different if, say, Galileo had burnt at the stake, I wonder: Of course, we don't know, and we probably can't ever know. Such counterfactual speculation remains just speculative, which is probably why I enjoy it so much. I wouldn't go so far as to say the book propounds it, because Robinson's model of time travel accommodates alternatives. Rather, many of the characters from the 31st century who travel into the past to alter it—commit "analepses" in the book's terminology—subscribe to this theory.

Thus, Ganymede tries to ensure science's dominance over religion first by aiding Archimedes; when that does not go well, he moves on to Galileo. However, he does not want to help Galileo. He wants Galileo to burn at the stake, to become a martyr for the cause of science. It's a profound thought. Galileo's heresy trial is an infamous moment in the history of science and the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Galileo's Dream

Often we envision it as a moment of ignorance—or arrogance—triumphing over justice. Galileo was found guilty of "vehement suspicion of heresy" and forced to recant any belief in the Copernican model of the solar system, a model we have since adopted as the preferred one.

He was embroiled in ongoing enmity both within the Catholic Church and between Catholics and Protestants. His enemies, many of whom did not much like Galileo, accused him of being soft on heretics. Robinson emphasizes the political climate around Rome at the time of Galileo's trial. Galileo's Dream shows how his trial was more than just a matter of science versus religion although it was that ; Galileo's fate was as much a matter of political expediency and political expectations than justice or injustice.

In an era where many of the highest-ranking clergy were related by blood, Galileo's trial involves more than testimony. It was an intense episode of intrigue conducted across family lines. Galileo called in favours for services rendered, and his friends marshalled his crumbling support base. There is more to Galileo than his trial, of course, and the book follows Galileo from Padua to Florence. We share in his hope that the patronage of Duke Cosimo de Medici will give him the freedom to tinker and experiment. We experience his anxiety over the fates of his children: And then there's his mother.

Apparently insane or just very mean , Giulia is a thorn in Galileo's side, one that he cannot remove. Despite such hardships, his continuous illness, and his troubles with Rome, Galileo's life wasn't that bad. He had some money; he had family no matter how difficult at times ; he even got recognition for his ideas as well as scorn. The telescope was a pretty neat invention; his experiments involving incline planes were neater still.

I get a sense that Galileo was, like many scientists, a discovery junkie, always hooked on the next big idea. So far I have mostly just been gushing about Galileo. That's because Galileo's Dream offered me a rich look at his life. Though not without fault, this book's depiction of Galileo was diverse and thoughtful, and it has made me want to learn more about Galileo through other sources such as non-fiction.

I love it when books make me think, question, and want to learn more. The historical parts of Galileo's Dream , then, are exceptional. What of the science-fictional elements? Visits to a far-off future of Jovian colonization! Encounters with extraterrestrial intelligence! Compared to the chapters set in 17th-century Italy, the adventures of Galileo in space are lacking. It seems like I'm not the only reviewer who has noticed this.

The characters and society of 31st century are very vaguely described. We meet only a handful, and they refer to various councils—presumably democratic—who are quite ineffective in the crisis of the moment. Ganymede is the one who begins bringing Galileo into his future, ostensibly as some sort of rallying symbol for his quest to stop the Europans from contacting the intelligence in their ocean. Soon enough the people who initially oppose Ganymede's analepsis begin bringing Galileo forward quite frequently. But each time Robinson latches onto a plausible reason for Galileo's visits to the future, such as the intermittent attempts to communicate with this strange intelligence, the story pushes the reason aside and stubbornly returns to a discussion of the philosophy of time travel.

What we have here is, rather than a lack of exposition, misplaced exposition. Robinson spends all of Galileo's time in the future explaining time travel and not enough explaining the 31st-century society. Since we never learn much about the society, it is difficult to care about the politically-motivated action sequences or the attempts to contact the Jovian intelligence. Galileo's visits offered little of interest, and I found myself wishing for a swift return to the past. As far as Robinson's time travel mythology goes, I'm ambivalent. On one hand, it is confusing, and Robinson resorts to vague, semi-philosophical explanations rather than any solid, say, physics.

On the other hand, time travel, if it is even possible, is bound to be confusing, so I don't think I can fault him for that. Yet the time travel in Galileo's Dream disappoints me, because it doesn't change much. As far as I understand it and maybe I'm wrong , Galileo didn't "originally" always a dangerous word to use when discussing timelines burn at the stake, but Ganymede wanted to change his present by ensuring Galileo did.

See a Problem?

Since the book ends with Galileo not burning and also burning. Oh, we've got some time travellers stranded in the past, and then there's the question of whether Galileo would have stumbled upon telescopy without Ganymede's prompting. The narration of the book is odd, because it is seemingly in third person for the entire book—but first-person pronouns occasionally sneak into the text.

In the end, we learn that Cartophilus, Galileo's servant from the future, is the author of the text. He refers to himself as "Cartophilus" in the third person because this is just a role he plays, albeit one he has played for a long time. However, like the time travel, this doesn't add much to the book. Galileo's Dream reads like two books, one historical and one science fiction, united by the mind of a single man, who was a great man if not a Great Man.

It contains a fascinating look at Galileo and a. What will stay with me overall is its depiction of the human struggle to discover, as well as the obstacles that one must overcome during the discovery. Jul 14, Amanda rated it really liked it Shelves: Publisher's Blurb courtesy of Harper Voyager: Late Renaissance Italy 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 type of telescope for Galileo to peer through, enabling him to see the world of humans three thousand years hence. Galileo will soon find himself straddling two worlds, the medieval and the modern. By day his lif Publisher's Blurb courtesy of Harper Voyager: By day his life unfurls in early seventeenth century Italy; by night he is transported through dimensions of time and space no other man of his time could possibly comprehend.

Inexorably, Galileo faces trial for religious crimes in his own time, while in the new world he discovers, where science assures men that they can perform wonders, but does not tell them what wonders to perform, he is revered. Galileo's Dream is, first and foremost, a masterclass in how to write historical fiction. Much of the novel is based in Renaissance Italy, following Galileo at what most consider to be the height of his fame before he is embroiled in disputes with the Church.

Life in Italy, the importance of religion, the baby steps being taken towards scientific understanding - all of these are brought to glorious life, with wonderful descriptive passages and the use of Galileo's letters to enforce the events he was living through. I confess that I would have been hugely satisfied with an historical novel that purely explored the life and times of Galileo. Kim Stanley Robinson, however, intersperses the historical passages with brief visits to the far-flung moons of Jupiter - Galileo travelling through both time and space to discover the colonised moons in To begin with, these passages felt as though they were shoehorned into the novel in a clumsy fashion, with the reader suffering the same confusion as the Galileo of this novel must have suffered.

The passages set in the future were roughly sketched, the worldbuilding not living up to the meticulously researched historical sections. Eventually, you become used to the rough transitions, but I never enjoyed them, and I grew frustrated at the fact that each time Galileo returned from his future visits, his memory was partially cleared of events experienced in the future. As well as the excellent historical sections, for me the greatest strength of this novel - the factor that gave it both humour and heart - was the stunning characterisation of Galileo Galilei. This is a man who infuriated many of his contemporaries - arrogant, stubborn, opinionated.

A man who was liable to forget the day to day running of his household, who was able to commit his daughters to difficult lives. And yet also a visionary - a towering historical figure who gave so much to the world of science. All of this, and more, Kim Stanley Robinson manages to commit to paper - Galileo lives on through this novel.

Ultimately, then, Galileo's Dream is a richly rewarding read that I thoroughly enjoyed. My main issue with it is the pacing created by the dual storylines - this caused me no end of frustration because, at heart, I felt this should have been a straight historical novel. I would recommend this book to those who have even a passing interest in the progression of science.

It is excellently written and the "frustrated genius" of Galileo takes centre stage. Hmm, Galileo's Dream is yet another solid entry into the short list of six books - and, once again I feel I am constantly repeating myself in these short analyses it is a completely different novel from the other five. It brings the science to science fiction, in this case - exploring actual science as well as taking us on a space opera journey to future worlds. It is massively deserving of its place as a finalist, not least of which because this novel shows the continual fascination with science that gave us science fiction in the first place I think I have expressed that in a rather clumsy manner - but it is the truth that without men such as Galileo and Newton, we wouldn't have such a desire to look at what might be achieved through the use of science.

Kim Stanley Robinson's enormous affection for his subject matter shines through, and gives us a novel which is possibly the most honest of the six. I don't think it will win - but I secretly want it to. May 04, Michael Pryor rated it it was ok. Jan 14, Omar rated it liked it Shelves: I had mixed feelings about this book - largely because of expectations I'd developed reading previous KSR books. Without revealing anything critical about the plot, KSR has come up with a mechanism by which he exposes his readers to Galileo Galilei's life in the 17th century while periodically pulling us forward to a time in roughly the 31st century.

I found KSR's take on the 17th century Galileo to be engaging and thought provoking in unexpected ways. I've been strongly affected by previous KSR I had mixed feelings about this book - largely because of expectations I'd developed reading previous KSR books. I've been strongly affected by previous KSR books largely because of the way he's used epic scale stories unfolding in monumental settings as lens' into his equally vast, sweeping social and economic theories - all without losing the reader's intimate connections to characters that are carefully and intricately personalized.

The 17th century thread in this book, however, eschews the panoramic setting in order to concentrate on Galileo's personal journey. In my mind, he succeeds thoroughly in this approach. He draws the reader into his depiction of Galileo as a man wrestling to gain perspective on past personal traumas many self-inflicted, through narcissism and blind privilege while desperately trying to avoid future disaster. Meanwhile, he uses the events of the 17th century story line and some expositional elements of the 31st century story to give the reader a nice overview of the significance of Galileo's historical position, as the first human being known to have applied what we now call the scientific method.

In short, humanity's first scientist. Unfortunately, while the 31st century thread proves integral in advancing the 17th century storyline; it fails to compel, in and of itself. At first, it feels like a distraction. When it loses some of it's off-putting cartoonish-ness, it never succeeds in finding it's own draw. To me, it feels as though KSR came up with it as a way to develop the 17th century story; but was never able to come up with a good story to drive the 31st century thread forward.

In the end, however, I liked the book. I don't think it'll prove to have as much affect on me as the Mars trilogy did; but taken in the context of KSR's overall work, I see it as balancing the Mars Trilogy. While I never read the Three California's trilogy, I noticed the quality of his characterizations improved noticeably during the span of the Mars trilogy. This trend continues in the Science in the Capital cycle and seems to me to have reached a pinnacle with this book.

Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson | Book review | Books | The Guardian

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. W one penny hardback brand spanking new first edition! A good biography, lots of splendid science, the historical period down to a tee except that forementioned cussing and a question as to whether coffee was availible in Italy back then so why not more than 3. Since Moxysox has taught me to look for tone, I cannot not look for it and have discovered just how many books don't have it and this was the problem here.

Founded in by Federico Cesi, it was the first academy of sciences to persist in Italy and a locus for the incipient scientific revolution.

The academy was named after the lynx, an animal whose sharp vision symbolizes the observational prowess required by science. It was revived in the s to become the national academy of Italy, encompassing both literature and science among its concerns. View all 4 comments. Jan 14, Abra rated it really liked it Shelves: He's local-ish -- resident in Davis, CA. I like what he writes about -- future possibilities that extend really existing science much more than most sci fi, and tha I am fascinated by Kim Stanley Robinson or KSR, as many of his fans seem to refer to him. I like what he writes about -- future possibilities that extend really existing science much more than most sci fi, and that confront political problems for humans, like capitalism, violence, environmental depletion and castastrophe.

But I was telling my mother this evening that I think this book, Galileo's Dream marks something of a step backwards for him politically. It might even be able to trace a backwards At first, he seems to be speaking for revolution against capitalism and his depiction of such a revolution, on Mars, thrilled me paradoxically because it was so realistically BORING!

Endless meetings and consensus and a few rifles. Then he moves to a quasi reformist take on how an elected Democrat with an environmental conscience and pure scientist thinktanks could help deter environmental catastrophe that might be somewhat unfair I still liked the book very much, with its combination of a believable and humanist biography of Galileo Galilei and time travel to a possible future.

Why are science fiction authors so fascinated by Jupiter, though? Jan 17, Kate rated it it was amazing Shelves: I really wasn't sure about reading this as I found the only other KSR "alternate history" book Years of Rice and Salt that I'd read not to be particularly enthralling. However, I'm glad I took a chance on this and got it out of the library. I didn't know all that much about Galileo Galilei before reading the book, but KSR uses passages from GG's writings and also from those in church records and correspondence about him.

These really give a flavour of GG as a man of his time, but also someone w I really wasn't sure about reading this as I found the only other KSR "alternate history" book Years of Rice and Salt that I'd read not to be particularly enthralling. These really give a flavour of GG as a man of his time, but also someone who had a flexible and inquiring mind who would have been equally at home in the modern world - which is entirely suitable as GG is considered to be the father of modern science. The treatment of Galileo's relationship with his eldest daughter was particularly moving and enthralling.

It is a shame that whilst her letters to him still survive, his letters to her were never found. It sounds like they were very close and view spoiler [her death at 31 absolutely devastated him hide spoiler ] This is definitely a science fiction novel too - I won't go into those aspects of the book though, don't want to spoil it for new readers. I will say though that it does work, and KSR blends the past and the far future into one brilliant novel.

Jun 08, Ethan rated it really liked it. This is an odd book - part historical fiction, part science fiction, all Kim Stanley Robinson. I'm becoming a big fan of Kim Stanley Robinson these days. This isn't one of his best, but a mediocre KSR book is still pretty good. The positives This is an odd book - part historical fiction, part science fiction, all Kim Stanley Robinson. It's not for everyone, but I really enjoyed it. Mar 06, Tlaura rated it did not like it. This book is a bloated disaster. As somebody who is fascinated by the development of natural philosophy in the 17th century albeit as an enthusiastic amateur , I found Robinson's contempt for historical context almost as offensive as his view of ideal science as a mixture of bloodless phenomena-saving and new age spiritual pap.

Here he is explaining Galileo's approach to his Two New Sciences: Whereas on the other hand, with these simple propositions about motion, force, friction and strength, he This book is a bloated disaster. Whereas on the other hand, with these simple propositions about motion, force, friction and strength, he could stick to only those assertions that he had demonstrated by experiment.

After all the guesses about comets and stars and sunspots, about buoyancy and magnetism and all the fascinating mysteries he did not have any basis for comprehending, that were in the end the equivalent of astrology, it was a tremendous pleasure to write down only what he had seen and tested. So speculation is bad. Stick to the facts! And yet on the very next page: Amazing the force which results from adding together an immense number of small forces.

There can be no doubt that any resistance, so long as it is not infinite, may be overcome by a multitude of minute forces. Infinity and indivisibility are in their very nature incomprehensible to us; imagine then what they are when combined. Yet that is our world. So speculation is fine, so long as it sounds vaguely scientific but is actually sufficiently meaningless as to pose no challenge. These comments apply to Robinson of course, not to Galileo. Of course no historians accept that Galileo's ideas in Two New Sciences or the Dialogue were based exclusively on controlled experiment, as is perfectly obvious from the text of the Discorsi.

Robinson can't quite accept this idea, leading to all sorts of howlers. The people from the Jovian future talk about Galileo facing the Inquisition for stating "an obvious truth", although heliocentrism was not an "obvious truth" in or Later Newton is described as having introduced "a fourth dimension" -- time -- to physics. Newton, an Arian Christian, of course had the same linear view of time as all the great thinkers of the 17th century including Galileo.

What did Newton actually introduce to physical thinking? Such a great theme for a sci-fi novel, but it would take a much better and smarter writer than Robinson to explain it.

• Galileo’s Dream?
• Married by Monday (Weekday Brides Series, Book 2).
• You are here.

Robinson's treatment of Kepler really scrapes the bottom. Kepler was Galileo's exact contemporary and managed to promote Copernicanism his whole life from what was then the best intellectual patronage position in Europe. Moreover he was a much more influential thinker, and a better one, on the subject of technical cosmology. This makes Robinson's case for Galileo as the hero and legitimizer of Copernican astronomy somewhat problematic, and so Robinson gets around the problem in the age-old way by dismissing Kepler or having Galileo dismiss him as "crazy". Given Robinson's near-constant presentation of scientific insight as new agey handwaving not to mention the near total lack of historical evidence that Galileo viewed Kepler negatively the sneering at Kepler for views that Robinson wrongly identifies as mystical woo is pretty rich.

Not to mention cramped, unkind, and solipsistic. So much for history. The sci-fi bits of the story are generally more entertaining as Robinson describes the future of science as a combination of Sokal Hoax candidate feminist theory, shaky post-quantum-physics-for-poets, and old chestnuts like cosmic harmonies, color wheels, and conic sections. The plot doesn't matter or make any sense so I won't describe it.

Suffice it to say the futuristic characters from 30th century Jupiter talk incessantly like this: Nonlocality means things happening together across distance as if the distance were not there, and we have found nonlocality to be fundamental and ubiquitous. In some dimensions, nonlocal entanglement is simply everywhere and everything, the main feature of that fabric of reality. The way space has distance and time has duration, other manifolds have entanglement.

My favourite bit comes right the book's romantic climax, in which Galileo is fucked by "the mother goddess" a woman named Hera, his equal in every way in a divine harmony of transcendant post-patriarchal something. Galileo watched her, transfixed. She was big and muscular, her female curves parabolic volumes in space, an ultimate reality.

Baby, you remind me of rolling a ball off the edge of a table, or a comet that just escapes the sun's gravitational force Naturally, this nonsense is eventually put in the service of Robinson's cod-spiritual take on the conflict between reason and religion. After some hedging, it is 1 that belief in God is really a manifestation of our ESP about and hankering for future human accomplishment and 2 that Galileo's conflict with the Inquisition was historically necessary because otherwise science and religion might not have been sufficiently rendered asunder which for some reason would have led to more war and probably also more creation museums.

Almost pages and that's the great takeaway. In the final analysis though the problem with this book is that it's impossibly tedious especially the last pages on Galileo's Inquisition Trial and its aftermath unless you accept the premise that the Galileo Affair was the most important event in the history of thought, the pivotal clash of authority and freethinking, the bloody birth of modern secular science etc.

I don't accept this view. Galileo was, and explicitly chose to be, an intellectual client of a powerful court who, on two occasions in his career, misjudged his position and overstepped his boundaries, the second time effectively insulting his most powerful patron in print at a time when that patron felt politically vulnerable. It's not surprising that a man of Galileo's intellectual stature would chafe against the requirements imposed on an early 17th century intellectual client, but nor is it surprising that he suffered the predictable and common consequences of rebellion: Those consequences didn't depend much on whether the offended court was sacred or secular.

If anything, the relative democracy and trial by committee of the Roman curia likely spared Galileo from the wrath he would have experienced had Urban been a secular absolutist prince. Of course, Galileo wasn't just a run of the mill courtier or a standard court mathematician. As Robinson declares over and over, Galileo was fascinating, transformative, sui generis.

But what made him great, exceptional, was the work he did, the ideas he had, not the grubby and context-specific details of his political rise and fall. Galileo the proto-scientist deserves to be the subject of a great novel. Instead, and sadly, Galileo the modern "martyr for science" will probably always be put in the service of unimaginative presentist horseshit like this. I started out liking it more than I ended up liking it. It's fairly well-written, but I thought it at times sounded too much like a history book. I also thought the last 60 or so pages just dragged. I liked the concept, part alternate history, part far future space opera, all surrounding Galileo, but one of the most interesting parts of the story just got completely dropped, which was frustrating.

It seemed a bit all over the place at times, and could have been tightened up. But it was still ove I started out liking it more than I ended up liking it. But it was still overall a really interesting idea and fairly interesting read. Dec 04, Kristin rated it really liked it. I honestly rather loved this book. I'm glad, however, that I stuck with the book as I loved the rest of it and found myself having almost constant "aha moments. I've read other novels that attempted to explain the concept of multiverses, but this book actually helped me actually understand the science behind it.

I could honestly write a whole book on ALL of the lines that made me think in this book. And religion needed more science. The two needed to become one. Science is a form of devotion, a kind of worship. They account for that paradoxical feeling I often notice, that any moment in my past happened just a short time ago and yet is separated from me by an immense gulf of time. You don't usually see the plenum as length, breadth and height, you simply experience space. Time is similarly triune but whole.

It shifts and flows, breaks up and eddies, percolates and resonates. Maybe, when food is secure, the grasp for certainty moves elsewhere. But that ability to record events turns out to be much stronger than our ability to recall them at will. Recollection is the weak link. Which then leads to other reactions. In the end it's lucky if you're even civil afterwards. Paranoia, catatonia, suicidal or homicidal manias, or both at once - denial, post-trauma, anachronism- you see them all.

These living souls with their foreheads, cheeks, eyebrows, hair, chins, mouths, were much weirder than genitals and ever so much more expressive, more suggestive, more revealing To look someone eye to eye, my Lord, what a shock! Eyes were indeed windows To share a gaze was a kind of intercourse. Maybe new souls were generated not with a f--k but the look. Identity or difference were both acceptable, but between them lay an uncanny valley, where the partial resemblance creates a discord. No one could stand the simulacra. Sometimes I think this practice deceives us in a different way, because we can't imagine that mere boxes can have become as intelligent as they obviously have.

So we fail to notice how powerful they have become -probably in many ways much more intelligent than we are. That hasn't kept us from carrying on as if we understood it.

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Maybe even when all people were fed and clothes, these concerns with hierarchy and power never went away, so that people were always angry. When you're asleep then all the entangled moments become more obvious. And with other people's lives too. Different times, different minds, different phase patterns. All expressed rather weakly in the brain's chemistry, and so perceived surreally in sleep's lack of sensory input. It's part of the integrity of the organism, the urge to life. A cellular thing, no doubt.

That's always the real seat of government. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes; our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else ever knows these lives. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone. Deja vu is the feeling something has happened before. Presque vu is the feeling that you almost understand something, usually something important, but you don't quite A really big existential tip of the tongue moment.