Galileo's Dream: A Novel

Kim Stanley Robinson

Dec 2009 · Spectra

About this ebook

At the heart of a provocative narrative that stretches from Renaissance Italy to the moons of Jupiter is the father of modern science: Galileo Galilei. To the inhabitants of the Jovian moons, Galileo is a revered figure whose actions will influence the subsequent history of the human race. From the summit of their distant future, a charismatic renegade named Ganymede travels to the past to bring Galileo forward in an attempt to alter history and ensure the ascendancy of science over religion. And if that means Galileo must be burned at the stake, so be it. From Galileo’s heresy trial to the politics of far-future Jupiter, Kim Stanley Robinson illuminates the parallels between a distant past and an even more remote future—in the process celebrating the human spirit and calling into question the convenient truths of our own moment in time.

Ratings and reviews

This was such an intriguing mash-up of history, science-fiction, fantasy, and philosophy. It switches between so many types of story-telling that your mind has to work to keep up. The characters became too numerous to keep track and some of the theoretical science went over my head, but the presentation of Galileo's life and works is too enthralling for that to matter. Keep an open mind about how you define "genre" because this novel will play hopscotch with those conventions.

His books are all better than this one. I don't see how this scores higher than Red Mars, which is fantastic for instance. I guess some of the book reviewers are on drugs.

About the author

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of nineteen previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica. In 2008 he was named a "Hero of the Environment" by Time magazine, and he recently joined in the Sequoia Parks Foundation's Artists in the Back Country program. He lives in Davis, California.