Daily Archives: December 29, 2011

This is the first book of fiction by Stuart Clark, a well-known UK astrology journalist and astophysicist professor. The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth is the first of a trilogy of novels inspired by the history of trying to understand the Universe. Called The Copernicum Trilogy, the first book (The Sky’s Dark Labyrinth) portrays the struggles of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei. The second (The Sensorium of God) focuses on the story of Isaac Newton and his contemporaries such as Edmond Halley, and the third (The Day Without Yesterday) addresses Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, and George Lemaitre. At the dawn of the seventeenth century everyone believed that the sun revolved around the earth. Yet some men knew that the heavens did not move as they should, a heresy punishable by being burned alive. As Europe convulsed in conflict between Catholic and Protestant, these men prepared to die for that truth. German Lutheran Johannes Kepler is convinced that he has been given a vision by God when he becomes the first man to distill into mathematical laws how stars and planets move through the heavens.  Galileo Galilei, an Italian Catholic, will try to claim Kepler’s success for his own Church, but he finds himself enmeshed in a web of intrigue originating from within the Vatican itself.  Both men struggle with themselves, with the evidence and with the forces of reaction changed not simply themselves but our world. They become trapped by human ignorance and irrational terror to the peril of their [...]