‘Mission’ Statement

So – why Kepler’s Dream?

Some time around 1611, Johannes Kepler wrote and circulated what has been called the first science fiction story. In it, he described a wonderful voyage to the Moon and men walking on its surface. The story was eventually published after his death as Somnium – ”The Dream.”

The narrator in the story used his mother’s knowledge of magic to travel to the Moon, which may have led Kepler’s real mother Katharina to be arrested and charged with witchcraft. Although she was freed after a six-year battle by her son, several other suspects were not so fortunate.

We have the privilege of living in an age in which Kepler’s Dream is our reality. Mankind has walked upon the surface of another world. The scientific advances that Kepler helped to pioneer would seem like magic to the man himself. Yet Kepler would be forgiven for thinking that little else has changed since his day. We are still in a world in which the revelations of science are threatened with the flames of religious ignorance. Science is still being viewed as something evil, something to be feared, by the superstitious who deny reality and those who seek to profit from them.

It falls to us to fight the spread of the religion mind-virus, if we hope to leave a dream for our children to realise.

(Design note: I originally added the green tint to Buzz Aldrin’s photo for my YouTube channel around November 2009, when it was used to show support for an anti-torture campaign. Since the sudden and devastating loss of my beloved fiancée six months later, I chose to adopt it as the principal colour scheme for this blog in her memory: green was her favourite colour.)