September, 2017

Stargazing

Posted on September 1, 2017 by | Posted in about LibriVox, Blog, For Volunteers, Monthly Picks, News | Comments: 1 Comment on Stargazing

There’s a lot going on in the skies these months: the American eclipse in August, meteor showers in September… Why not celebrate these events with 10 gems from our catalog?

In the Days of the Comet that is visible in the sky, William is about to kill his unfaithful girlfriend. But when the greenish comet enters Earth’s atmosphere, all his problems vanish in an instant… Find out what happened in the sci-fi novel by H. G. Wells.

Caroline Herschel would have loved to see a comet up close – she discovered 8 of them. Starting out as assistant to her brother William, she became the first woman to be paid for such work. You can get to know her better in Memoirs and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, written by her nephew’s wife Margaret Herschel.

A different view on astronomy is that of poetess Constance Naden. Her Sonnets contain poems entitled Starlight, Nebular Theory, and Mystery of Light, for example.

And then there is Leopoldo Lugones. The second half of his Las Fuerzas Extrañas contains stories about space entitled Cosmogonia, which played a fundamental role in developing Argentinian science fiction.

A long long time before that in France lived Cyrano de Bergerac, who wrote one of the oldest novels about space travel, complete with self-propelled rockets and extra terrestrial beings. Read A Voyage to the Moon and see how far his imagination really went 400 years ago.

A lot of imagination have people who believe that the moon creates witches. But who knows, back in old Rome, there may have been witches, and Tristan might just have met one of them on the Eve of St. John, 935… Nathan Gallizier’s novel Under a Witches’ Moon weaves true love with the unreal and a bit of sorcery.

Staying with the stars’ influence for a moment: Who does not check their horoscopes when meeting somebody new? Let’s hope all ends better for you than for the most famous star-crossed couple Romeo and Juliet, masterfully invented by William Shakespeare.

Not witchcraft or superstition, but hard science lies behind inventions like the telegraph and telephone. And now that everything is wireless, their inventors truly are Masters of Space, as Walter K. Towers calls them in his book, part biography, part science history.

Being able to communicate over vast distances comes handy Auf zwei Planeten. When three scientists go on an expedition to the North Pole, they discover a research station of Martians. Even though both sides are friendly at first, things go downhill rapidly in Kurd Laßwitz’ epic sci-fi novel.

Harold Jacoby tries to make himself as clear as possible in his book Practical Talks by an Astronomer. He teaches little lessons about topics related to astronomy that are interesting to the layman. Why don’t you try yourself how to make a sundial?

Enjoy – and keep gazing at the stars!

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