Galileo’s Dream

Galileo’s Dream
Kim Stanley Robinson

The dazzling novel from the acclaimed author of the groundbreaking MARS trilogy follows Galileo on an amazing journey from the dawn of the modern world to a future on the verge of a completely new scientific breakthrough.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.

GALILEO’S

DREAM

Kim Stanley Robinson

The Muses love alternatives.

- VIRGIL, Eclogues, Book III

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u0b10534f-1307-5416-a375-3e646aa8de90)

Title Page (#u08a41124-3d58-54a5-b31b-d8ba1a672568)

Epigraph (#uffa872fc-52f6-505b-87e5-26104aec8386)

Chapter One The Stranger (#u88c572bf-ddc2-5f73-b75b-854cb11689d1)

Chapter Two I Primi Al Mondo (#u185b96c0-20b0-5c8b-a2bf-e74432328ce1)

Chapter Three Entangled (#uaa660cf9-a229-5c3c-aa94-0e6bc28a473e)

Chapter Four The Phases of Venus (#ub917d9a2-ec28-5510-8ea7-3547ae3c9ca1)

Chapter Five The Other (#ua5a4dde3-58a8-52fb-beb6-826744c68d89)

Chapter Six A Statue Would Have Been Erected (#u4b9d1d19-de65-57a1-8165-3ca2aaae8ba9)

Chapter Seven The Other Galileo (#u4e270f8e-5ac8-51c8-9811-64b875438718)

Chapter Eight Parry Riposte (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine Aurora (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten The Celatone (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven The Structure of Time (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve Carnival On Callisto (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen Always Already (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen Fear of the Other (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen The Two Worlds (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen The Look (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen The Trial (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen Vehement Suspicion (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter NineteenEppur Si Muove (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty The Dream (#litres_trial_promo)

Authors Note (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

Other Books By Kim Stanley Robinson (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One The Stranger (#ulink_cf93824c-a10f-54c6-9a08-9f88f4a3670c)

All of a sudden Galileo felt that this moment had happened before-that he had been standing in the artisans’ Friday market outside Venice’s Arsenale and felt someone’s gaze on him, and looked up to see a man staring at him, a tall stranger with a beaky narrow face. As before (but what before?) the stranger acknowledged Galileo’s gaze with a lift of the chin, then walked toward him through the market, threading through the crowded blankets and tables and stalls spread all over the Campiello del Malvasia. The sense of repetition was strong enough to make Galileo a little dizzy, although a part of his mind was also detached enough to wonder how it might be that you could sense someone’s gaze resting on you.

The stranger came up to Galileo, stopped and bowed stiffly, held out his right hand. Galileo bowed in return, took the offered hand and squeezed; it was narrow and long, like the man’s face.

In guttural Latin, very strangely accented, the stranger croaked, ‘Are you Domino Signor Galileo Galilei, professor of mathematics at the University of Padua?’

‘I am. Who are you?’

The man let go of his hand. ‘I am a colleague of Johannes Kepler. He and I recently examined one of your very useful military compasses.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ Galileo said, surprised. ‘I have corresponded with Signor Kepler, as he probably told you, but he did not write to me about this. When and where did you meet him?’

‘Last year, in Prague.’

Galileo nodded. Kepler’s places of residence had shifted through the years in ways Galileo had not tried to keep track of. In fact he had not answered Kepler’s last letter, having failed to get through the book that had accompanied it. ‘And where are you from?’

‘Northern Europe.’

Alta Europa. The man’s Latin was really strange, unlike other transalpine versions Galileo had heard. He examined the man more closely, noted his extreme height and thinness, his stoop, his intent close-set eyes. He would have had a heavy beard, but he was very finely shaved. His expensive dark jacket and cloak were so clean they looked new. The hoarse voice, beaky nose, narrow face, and black hair made the man seem like a crow turned into a man. Again Galileo felt the uncanny sensation that this meeting had happened before. A crow talking to a bear-

‘What city, what country?’ Galileo persisted.

‘Echion Linea. Near Morvran.’

‘I don’t know those towns.’