On Isaac Asimov

Probably the most popular author in the SF genre, Asimov has traditionally been considered one of the "big three" of science-fiction, along with British Arthur C. Clarke and fellow American Robert A. Heinlein.

Some writers may have created a better science fiction from a literary point of view, having developed even better plots or better psychologies for their characters, or some of those other features preferred by highbrow critics, most of which were trained in the Schools of Humanities. It is hard, however, to ignore the importance of Asimov in the underrated genre of SF.

 Asimov was one of the leading figures of the Golden Age of SF, which roughly ran from late 1930s to the 1950´s. It was only in 1926, when German- born publisher Hugo Gernsback, from whom the Hugo Awards would take their name, would baptize this new form of fiction. One which would reach a non negligible artistic level in a century, the 20th, marked by Science.

With such authors like Asimov himself, Robert A. Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon or Lester del Rey, Science-fiction works would gradually make their way into the book market, leaving the ghetto of pulp magazines. The publication by Gnome Press in 1951 of Asimov's Foundation, a series of short stories appeared initially in installments in Astounding in the 1940s, was a milestone. 

 The incredibly prolific Asimov would be writing science-fiction on a regular basis until the year 1958.  The Foundations series (Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation, 1951-53), The caves of steel (1953), The Naked Sun (1955), The End of Eternity (1955) and other works all appeared in the 1950´s, perhaps one of the most brilliant periods in the short history of SF. But by the end of the decade, Asimov would shift away from the genre and would pursue other intellectual and literary interests.

He focused on the popularization not only of Science but also humanistic topics such as history, literature and many others, barely leaving untouched a single one. Asimov would return to SF in 1972 with an extraordinary novel, The Gods Themselves, which would win him the Nebula and Hugo awards. In The Gods Themselves, Asimov managed to create one of the most imaginative and impressive science-fiction novels ever written.  The alien creatures described here, as well as the plot, are simply unforgettable for the reader.

But it had been the popularization of science that really brought him substantial income and a considerable personal satisfaction, as he himself confessed. Asimov was a man of a huge capacity for work, who would not care if he had to spend ten or twelve hours a day before the typewriter. He was lucky enough, however, to have a profession identified with his intellectual interests.

 And in the 1980's, under the pressure of his publisher Doubleday, Asimov would accept to write a continuation of his now legendary Foundations saga. Thus, after Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation (whose distant first publications had taken place thirty years before), Foundation´s Edge  was to be released in 1982, to great success. Followed by 1985 Foundation and Earth, and the 1988 prequel Prelude to Foundation.

Asimov´s characters are not completely polished on a psychological level, we get to know them only through quick dialogues focusing primarily on the plots. But then there are the monumental scenarios the author invokes (like the one set up for the Foundations), the exciting adventures and extraordinary visions. Also some of his original findings, such as the laws of Robotics, or Psychohistory, that projects human history into the future in a similar way as a physicist would with gas molecules.

A true Renaissance man, Asimov is one of only a few individuals for whom this cliché really makes sense. His treatment in hundreds of books, of Science as well as of culture topics, makes Asimov a key figure among the precursors of the Third Culture, which will perhaps be the new paradigm to overcome this divide, which many consider artificial, between the Two Cultures: Science and Humanities.

Víctor Erice: The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

Early 1940s. An isolated village in the middle of the Castilian plateau.The echoes of the Spanish Civil War still in the air. Its consequences and traumas. The loss of political and intellectual illusions, the impossibility of building up a decent country.

A middle-class household in the village outskirts. Two little girls, Ana and Isabel, wander about the long corridors and half empty rooms. They play and shout and chase one another in childish joy. Sometimes they daringly venture into the infinite plains surrounding the house. Investigating riddles. Running there, as if trying to reach the distant horizons.

The father is absorbed by his books and thoughts. Also by his bees. He looks after a beehive, spending many hours at it, contemplating the busy insects, their tiny mechanical life. As if wishing to isolate himself from the harsh reality. The mother is also an abstracted person. She seems to have a few secrets, also a deep inner world. The relationship between the two is of some sort of distant care and affection. They lovingly watch out for the girls without imposing their presence.

One day, something unusual happens. A truck with an itinerant cinema exhibiting James Whale's Frankenstein enters the village roads. The unexpected wonderful movie will be a shock for the girls. In particular for Ana, who will not understand the (apparent) monster´s evilness. The deep impression in her will set into motion something subtle and powerful at a time.

Isabel and Ana. Children discovering the tiny things that make up the fabric of reality, its secret marvels. Which usually go unnoticed by the adults after life long repetition. Two different natures. Isabel, slightly older, with a more practical approach to life. Even a touch of cruelty. And sensible Ana, with more power to grasp the intangible.

1940s, in Spain. A dusty time, poor and oppressive. Not good for lirism, to be sure. Even so, the world and its discreet magnificence unfolds before the girls. Ana, through her huge dark yes, seems to absorb reality and process it into some kind of magic of her invention. A strange communion with the ghost of the monster, his reasons, has been established.

The spirit of the beehive is the spirit of the (beehive-like) world, and its creatures. Much more developed in some than in others. A spirit to keep up as something precious in the harshness of the present. And the future. Some, if they ever had it, will lose it. Others, like Ana will probably tresure it throughout the years to come, or their full existence.

The Spirit of the beehive is one of those movies that cannot be explained with words, without sounding too lyrical, cheesy or simply banal.  The movie is a spectacle of images, sequences, smartly put together. Not to talk about but to watch. One of those mysteriously haunting works that we simply cannot forget. Or understand why we can´t. Perhaps because as critic Linda C Ehrlich put it it never finishes saying what it has to say. Some invincible enigma stubbornly remains at its heart.

Henry James: Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller is an American girl from a New York wealthy family. But one that made their fortune themselves, not one having been born with it. Which means that Daisy's money is not old money, but new. And so she is not fully recognized as a peer among the established American aristocracy of money. And of course, Daisy does not share their moral stiffness, or feels any need to. Those "artificial" conventions, the narrow mentality.

She is un outsider among the wealthy Americans from New York. She travels to Europe with her mother and a little brother, for the usual grand tour experience. First we will find her in Geneva. Later in Rome.

In the Italian capital, she will be a double outsider. Among the rich and rigid Americans living there, supposedly exquisite and sophisticated, art-lovers and stuff, ready for looking down upon about anyone. Of course,she is also un outsider among the native Italians ("representatives" of the Europeans in this novel), those individuals of a somewhat loose morality, from the American puritan perspective. America vs Europe again. Jamesian tout court. Young "innocent" American Daisy in Italy. A pigeon among cats.

But Daisy is a "liberated" woman (for the age). Her temper is an honest, authentic, direct one. She likes meeting people, even those she "should not", according to her inflexible fellow expatriates. She likes relating to the others, chatting, laughing, joking. Interested in knowledge and culture, but only if it is somehow linked to fully fleshed-human beings. She is open, independent. And she appears vulgar to the upper class bostonians or newyorkers living in the eternal city. Yes, vulgar. Fin de l'histoire.

In Geneva, Daisy had met Winterbourne, whom she now encounters again in Rome. This young man is a wealthy American, of the old money ones. He is somewhat fascinated by the girl. Split between his atraction to Daisy and a genuine concern about her plain independence, freshness, authenticity. Though he doesn't entirely dislike these either. The guy is split and a bit irritated by that. It would be a relief for him if he could reach a conclusion on Daisy's true nature. Certainly.

Daisy Miller is one early novel (1878) by Henry James when the author was 34. It doesn't have the verbosity of many of his future novels. It is short, simple (for James), straightforward. The read is a quick one, that flows nicely.

The Jamesian skill for portraying psychologies and their interaccions is here, of course. The study of the characters is a smart one. They are solid figures in James's hands. As usual, James suggests, rather than fully uncover emotional depths. In Daisy Miller's lively writing, he already insinuates the descriptive power that he will abundantly display in the future.

Over a century has gone by since the novel's first publication. But its themes still appeal. Cultures confronted. America and Europe. The contrast of psychologies. A dominant group, the effort for independence. A morality of one's own. A young mind in the shaping, struggling between wishes of freedom and a need to belong.  And the risks (even the tragedy) that we may face if we don't manage to find the proper balance.

Daisy Miller, 1878. Henry James

Arthur C. Clarke: Rendezvous with Rama

Rama is a mysterious object. At first, astronomers think it is an asteroid. Later on, as it gets bigger in size on the telescopes, it appears as a rather strange shaped-body, and eventually they discover that it is artificial.

Cylindric, with the somewhat comical looks of a giant pressure cooker, scientists soon learn through the study of its parameters, that the body must be hollow. Soon it will be made clear that its an enormous technological device made by who knows who. An advanced alien civilization, supposedly.

As an artificial body, it is awesomely big. As a world, it is is a small one of some 20 miles of diameter and 50 miles long, but a world nonetheless. It can also be considered, of course, a giant alien spaceship. The Endeavour, at the time devoting itself to other tasks, is called to get closer to the thing and land on it to have a look. The spaceship led by commander Norton (a Captain Cook devotee), does as it is ordered, and lands near the center of one of the huge round cylinder faces, the northern one.

A few crew members make their way into the object, without much difficulty. At first it is all darkness. They walk along strange vast corridors. Finally they seem to reach the edge of an enormous open space.

They start to explore it, with some artificial light of their own, which allows them to have a glimpse of the hugeness of this hollow world. At some point a (sort of) dawn will come unexpectedly. Six (artificial) suns start to irradiate their rays, and it is morning within Rama. The incredible magnificence of this world´s interior shines up. And everything "natural" the explorers find there. Seas and valleys, and mountains and greenness. Even if the cylindrical interior creates some disturbing (and a bit scary) optical illusions and perspective distortions. Also some misterious servant-like creatures will discreetly show up in due time.

There is a problem when trying to explore this impressive artificial interior. Rama had entered the Solar System and reached the Earth outskirts. It is now heading towards the Sun, and in principle it will soon come out of the Solar System, and will vanish forever into the stars. So the time that the Endeavour astronauts have to pull out some secrets from the thing is limited: only a few weeks.

Rendez-vous with Rama deals with the topic of contact, so much a commonplace in SF. But Clarke offers us a new frame and approach, far more mature and "realistic" than the the usual in other works of the genre. Inside Rama, it is wonder and full strangeness you encounter, things you had never seen before. But to some degree it also appears familiar as well, with those lakes, mountains and so on. It is this combination of strangeness and familiarity that makes Rama so sinister. What is the purpose for all that, who built up this piece of technological arquitecture far bigger than anything created by man, so far or in the forseeable future? Could Rama be, for instance, a spaceship travelling across the universe, away from the original planet of its alien builders, has this become inhabitable? Is the ship itself a world of its own to hold generations of ramans for a long journey of centuries or millenia, into those stars that light takes ages to reach?

There is a connection with Stanislaw Lem here. In some of the Polish author´s novels such as Solaris, Fiasco or Invincible, communication with alien beings, or forms of life the product of a completely different evolutionary process, will most likely be impossible rather than hard. Not only a different culture and biology, but different mental processes and motivations, unimaginable communication codes and tools. More so if we consider how hard dialogue, transmission of info, between human beings themselves can be, and usually is.

Communication with other non-Earth beings is not (it comes without saying) considered one of the bigger things (as A. Burgess once called them) of the "human condition". One of the big human affairs that mainstream literature has usually dealt with over the centuries. At present, alien communication cannot be compared in literary terms to jealousy, ambition, love or death, or other used-up topics of the sort.

But that is so mainly because the Space Age, which started off with the Sputnik, is a mere 50-year old. Science and Technology are here to stay and their impact on human reality will only increase in the decades and centuries to come. And this "weird" topic of communication with other beings will (potentially) become dostoievskyan in no time.

One day, in a maybe distant future, there should be some kind of contact. It cannot be otherwise, unless we are alone in un unconceivably big universe, which is rather unlikely.

We will always be humanistic creatures, of course. Which means that issues like Art and Literature will always have their place in human civilization, no matter how technical this will become. And alien communication will have its corner among the humanistic-high brow, intelectuals and the like, not only among scientists. A big human affair, quoi, waiting for a new playwright of genius. And our theory is that works like Lem's Solaris or His masters voice, or Clarke's Rama (still rather looked down upon today ) will have an entirely different critical consideration. Old classics from a nearly forgotten time, that in which man started to leave (Tsiolkovsky dixit) the cradle-Earth.

Rendezvous with Rama 1973. Arthur C. Clarke

H.G. Wells: The Invisible Man

Not only is HG Wells´s The Invisible Man one of the author´s best narrations, the ones he wrote in his youthful years. Those fantasias of possibility, as he himself called them (not science-fiction), and published between 1895 and 1901. The invisible man is a good read, an absorbing adventure, a tale of solitude and alienation, of an ambition wrongly (wickedly) directed. It is also, one fiction work that clearly casts a shadow on Science.

By the late 19th century, Science was a positive force, inextricably linked to progress and improvement of life and civilization. The treatment of Science in literature, essays, treatises or papers was mostly, if not unanimously, positive. Let´s recall Jules Verne and his novels, for instance: a positivist feast, and Science and Technology as radiant deities. That was the norm, rather than the opposite.

From 1945 on, however, the tale would change dramatically, even if there had been some previous warnings like A. Huxley´s 1932 Brave new world. Hiroshima and nuclear devastation would darken the social image of Science since mid 20th century. Books and movies would start off invariably providing scenarios of apocalyse.

But in 1897, when The invisible man was published, it was still another story, and the suggestion of science and scientists as evil was relatively scarce, madscientist stuff aside. In the novel, Griffith, a chemist, discovers a way to render matter invisible, through a scientific process whose plausibility Wells does not explain in the same technical detail as Verne used to. The author is more concerned with the social implications of Science and its moral impact. Griffith is, like Victor Frankenstein, a guy passionate for the wonders (waiting to be discovered) of the natural world. He studies and researches tiressly, determined to pull out secrets from matter.

Finally, he establishes the process of invisibility. He is even capable of aplying it to himself. He becomes completely invisible, except when dressed, or after lunch. What happens next? Well, he is unable to manage his new condition, the potential of his new power,  in a valid moral way. Once power is in his hands, he abandons all moral constriction. Knowledge without morality, science withouth conscience, leads to disaster. The topic has become a cliche, obviously, but it was not in 1897.

The psychological study of the characters in Wells´s narration is not great, to be sure. They appear to be a little like cardboard pieces. Even the plot could be perceived as a bit commonplace, after one century of piles of novels written on a similar topic. But that is not fair. It would be like accusing Ford´s Stagecoach of the same charge. Its theme has become a cliche, but it was simply the first to treat it.

So, apart from a nice reading, and its clear status as an old-SF classic, The invisible man makes us also wonder if our morality is not just a question of the fact that we are beeing watched at all times. By the others, by Society, by the State. Un uneasy thought. But if our morality truly depends on that, let us not worry too much. We cannot certainly complain of not being monitorized enough, these days.

The invisible man, 1897. HG Wells.

Houellebecq and Science

Michel Houellebecq has a very poor opinion of 20th-century culture. The polemic French writer reckons that Science and Technology are the real intelectual and economic forces of our time. Also the biggest human successes of the last hundred years. In comparison, Houellebecq claims, humanistic culture has been an involution, a disaster.

20th-century intelectuality has been almost totally rubbish, he argues in his 2006 article coming out of the 20th century. Left wing thinkers are phony. Literature is useless. But there is, concedes the controversial author, one literary genre which can be saved from the general wreckage: science-fiction. Oddly, a form of fiction usually dispised, looked down upon by critics. Houellebecq praises, in particular, Clifford D. Simak´s City (1952).

Science fiction, as a literary genre, is a humanistic thing, but one closely linked to Science and Technology. We could say it is the literary creature of what French intelectuals call Techno-Science. SF written from the 1950 onwards, reasons Houellebecq, may not have the elegance of old fantastic fiction from the turn of the 19th century into the 20th (Wells, Stevenson). But SF is however, the form of fiction of today which has to tell the things most worthy of consideration on the human condition. And its place on planet Earth and the Universe that holds it.

The turning point for it all was Hiroshima. The human tragedy of the bomb defined also a dramatic shift in man´s view of science, unanimously positive so far. That opened the door for Science to become the stuff of literature and drama. A big human affair at last, so to speak.

Science is an usual presence in Houellebecq´s works, like Atomized or Posibility of an island. Its impact in reality, nature and even culture is there. And, in the case of Atomized, the possibility of it changing the (according to Houellebecq) sorry human condition, no less, and its anavoidable suffering. Something no reconversion of the political or social frame will ever achieve. In Michel Houellebecq, Science is, ironically, the ultimate humanistic force.

Emily Dickinson, beauty and truth

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth - the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

Emily Dickinson, I died for Beauty, 1862

This poem by Miss Dickinson is not only musical and beautiful. It also contains ideology, and a metaphysical statement. A strong vision of reality, as usual in her poetry. Truth and beauty are one and the same, or at least, they go hand in hand.

Since the second half ot the 20th century, there has been around, among sociologists, intelectuals and the like, an insistent idea: Truth does not exist. And scientific truth and science itself are nothing but social constructions. Therefore, Beauty has no particular relation with the Truth, since Truth is a cultural invention.

Realists and Scientists obviously claim the opposite. Truth does exist. There is an outer truth out there, independent fom our senses and our minds. Without denying the influence of these in the truth and the construction of reality.

And since truth exists, according to realists, scientists and miss Dickinson, could there be something more beautiful than the discovery and enjoying of it?. This was very clear to Nabokov, a great artist who liked discovering the inner truth of his insects, knowing them, which added to their beauty. Knowledge, positive and real one, was aesthetic.

Yes, beauty is truth and truth beauty. Even if we admit that the creations and products of the mind can also be beautiful. Of course. We have known that for millenia.

Southern Seas (1979)

The most talented crime writer in Spain, Manuel Vazquez Montalban (1939-2003) was the creator of a well known figure, not only in his home country: sarcastic, eficient, untidy, nihilistic, gourmand and somewhat politically incorrect Pepe Carvalho. The detective was the main character in a series of acclaimed novels that Vázquez Montalbán set up mainly in Barcelona throughout three decades and three different political periods in Spain: the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Southern Seas (1979) is, to many, his best Carvalho novel. Winner of the Planeta prize that year, the narration introduces us to the turbulent Barcelona of the strict center of the Spanish Transition years. Those that took Spain away from a 40-year dictatorship into a long sought after democracy.

The plot is a skillful one. The characters are vivid and discursive, with well achieved psychologies and motivations. But the main character is Barcelona itself, the Barcelona of that last year of the 1970s, with its social unrest, the nervoussness at the streets, the gesticulation of the engagés, the political debate, the ideological effervescence of a country at the crossroads.

Reading Southern Seas is like plunging into 1979 Barcelona and touch it with the fingers, living almost first hand a crucial time in Spain. Recreating in one´s mind the political past, while enjoying a well fitted, clever noir adventure.

Southern Seas, 1979. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

The Time of the Doves

The Time of the Doves (La Plaça del Diamant) is one of the masterpieces of  20th century literature in the Catalan language. Written in 1962, in Geneva, where the author was in exile from francoist Spain, the novel was translated into Spanish (castillian) as early as 1965. The English version would come later, among many others. A modern and very popular classic in Catalan literature, it was turned into a TV series in 1982.

The story of Colometa (little dove, in Catalan) a low class girl living in Barcelona, precisely near La Plaça del Diamant, between the late 1920s and the 1950s. From the years inmediately prior to the Second Republic (1931) and into the darkest period of Franco´s regime, traversing a brutal Civil War (1936-39) and the inmediate postwar years. The Time of the Doves is narrated by an intimate voice, that of Natalia. Or Colometa, as she is "baptized" by Quimet, her mischievous husband.

Natalia's life will go through quite a few shifts and she will also have to face up grave setbacks. Quimet´s ludicrous jealousy and arbitrariness (that she unasertively accepts), the deep sorrow after his death at the front, the misery of the postwar years, the tremendous efforts to sustain her children; even the threat of insanity at some point lying around her. Yet her literary voice oddly stays on with a similar tone. A nice and poetic stream of conciousness, her mind and thoughts flowing pleasantly and aesthetically for the reader. Though apparently not reflecting the emotional impact that setbacks or even tragedy should provoke in her.

Natalia accepts life, its challenges and blows, with a somewhat unnerving lack of asertiveness. Her voice is therefore a symbol of a time and a country. That lack of asertiveness of Catalonia and its people and the whole of Spain, during those opressive years. But Natalia's identity changes, even so. Psychology cannot remain the same in front of life´s agressions and demands. Natalia changes, like every human being throughout existence.

And change, the psychological transformation of one character, is one of the great spectacles that literature can provide. Change in Natalia is a discreet one, exposed in a weird non-passionate way. Her voice is monochromatic, with hardly any apparent variety. Yes, monochromatic o nearly. But of a splendid colour we have seen very few times before.

Stanislaw Lem, filling the gap

Since the C. P. Snow lecture at Cambridge, there has been much talk about the Science-Humanities divide. In 1959, at the time of the lecture, there was truly a divide, with representatives of both fields turning backs on each other. Fifty years later, even if there have been some attempts to overcome it (like those by John Brockman and Edge), the situation is not so disimilar even today, as some of us would like. There is still a sorry gap.  

How about literature? What is the paper of Science in that main "humanity"? If we had to identify an author in whose work the two realms are well and cleverly put together, that´s Polish writer Stanislaw Lem.

Often identified with Science-ficcion, Lem´s novels and short stories are part of the genre, true, but this could be misunderstanding, as the thing goes far beyond that. Novels like Solaris, His master´s voice, Fiasco or Return from the stars are also the most beautiful and balanced mixture of Science and the Humanities that a reader can enjoy.

Javier Marías: A Heart So White

My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white. Lady Macbeth says to her shaken husband, inmediately after he murdered the king, his hands full of blood from the regicide.

Marias likes giving his novels titles taken from Shakespearian lines. And the title chosen usually refers to something essential in the narration, playing with the possible meaning(s) of the original line, though re-interpreting it according to his own purposes.

In the Macbeth line above, we deal with hands and hearts, that could be white or coloured. Coloured here means guilty, or having done the deed, as Macbeth himself states to his wife, or having been finally bold enough to carry out the villainy. Or, in Ladymacbethian terms, having gathered the resolution to go beyond traditional human moral. Even if that implies a bloodbath, as is the case.

And hands may be coloured, as Macbeth's after de (mis)deed, but the heart may remain white. That is the lady´s accusation. Her husband´s heart remains white, after the murder, which she finds shameful. He is shaken, he fears even the surrounding shadows, devastated by apparent guilt. His hands (and hers, as she helped him to disguise the slaughter) are coloured, but the heart is still a prisoner of a narrow, small morality.

In Marias's narration, a white heart could also mean a heart that doesn´t know or doesn´t wish to know. One that chooses not to know. Since knowledge is a path of no return. One that can colour your heart (darken it), and you will never be able to wash it away, the colour of knowledge. Darkening one´s heart, knowing, is a serious decision, because once we make it, we will have to co-exist with knowledge for the rest of our lives. As total oblivion is impossible. And our view of reality may change accordingly.

I first read A Heart so white in its original Spanish, in Barcelona, many years ago. The novel has haunted me ever since. Written in a rich and hypnotic language, full of nuances, insights, philosophical especulation. And all within the frame of a smart noir plot.

The novel is about secrets, old family misteries, misunderstandings, silences within the couple, esential material "lost in translation". The decision to know, to colour one's heart, will never be pondered enough. Pity our ears have no lids like our eyes. The consequences. To know or not to know. A matter of the same entity of that hamletian to be or not to be. Though perhaps, carefully considered, they are both one and the same thing.

A heart so white, 1992. Javier Marías

Macbeth

My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white. Macbeth. Act II. Scene II.

Sometimes the colour of the hands is different from the colour of the heart. Sometimes, out of weakness or decision, our hands get dirty. But somehow, through an impeccable mental and intelectual process, we manage to keep our heart white. That is a type of art. A moral one.

George Orwell: 1984

We think we know it all about 1984, its background and implications. A dark alegory of the USSR and the Eastern block, presciently written in the 1940s. A threat on the world to come, if we don´t watch out. The portrait of a totalitarian State, able to view and record, through technology, all possible details, even minor ones, of our lifes.

1984 is a dystopia. A good dystopia, aside from literary values, is always a warning. And to be so, it needs to be an exaggeration. The society described by Orwell is a hell, a sordid psychological nightmare. We could wonder if such a society could exist to such a degree of ignominy, without people exploding, minds and bodies bursting, and destroying it. Wonder if it is possible such a repression of all desires, emotions and freedom, this perversion of all that constitutes a human being. And not a tiny, miserable insect in the hands of Ideology.

The answer is clearly, no. Or not to this unhuman extent. But reading Orwell´s novel is necessary. For moral and political reasons. It is a warning through exaggeration and practical impossibility. Because 1984's world of manipulation of language, of a rough reinvention of the past, of full creation of reality by media, annihilation of the very concept of truth, of total loss of privacity, can perfectly exist, though in a much more subtle way. 1984 is a reminder of the possibility of a few real dangers, aside from being a magnificent thriller.

1984, (1948). George Orwell

Orwell: A Trilogy of Poverty

Three Orwell novels published between 1933 and 1937. If there is something that links the three is poverty, economic trouble. All of them are populated by characters whose days are determined by the struggle for life, for material survival. Even if, in some cases, the horizon of life may be a higher or, say, more spiritual one.

Keep the aspidistra flying, 1936. Gordon Comstock is a somewhat pathetic character. He is convinced of his literary talent, or tries to. He has just published a little volume of poems (which is collecting dust in one or two book shops) and desperately works on a second book. Which should consacrate him, or so he hopes. Gordon hates the empire of money and bussiness, and material work. He refuses to go through the usual alienating working week, even if he doesn´t completely lack the necessary skills to do something there, even some social climbing.

 He has a problem, though. Deep down, he is not that far from vulgarity as he thinks. For one thing, he is horrified by the possibility of people noticing that he is actually penniless. A sorry lack of moral independence. Which leads him to some ludicrous situations.

Down and out in Paris and London, 1933. Highly autobiographical, the story tells the downs and outs of Orwell himself, or someone resembling him, in both cities. The humble jobs he is obliged to pick up to survive, and the weird fellows that he encounters. Their trickery, their thoughts and conversations. The supposedly upcoming Revolution. A well-drawn portrait of the urban atmosphere in the 1930s in the two main european capitals by someone, Orwell, who tasted it first hand.

The road to Wigan Pier, 1937. Orwell was commissioned by publisher Gollancz to visit the northwest of England, between Liverpool and Manchester and write on life conditions of poor people in the area. He delivered another brilliant chronicle of vivid characters, narrated in the first person and with Orwell´s usually clever reflections.

Three good reads for this time of (neverending) economic crisis.

Stanislaw Lem: Solaris

Solaris, a planet whose surface is nearly all covered by a huge ocean. An ocean which turns out to be a sentient living thing. So the only living thing in the sphere is the sphere itself, or more exactly, its ocean.

During the century gone by since the planet was discovered, Solaristics, the Science of the conscious ocean, has developped strongly, and influenced all fields of human culture. Literature, poetry, arts, philosophy. Solaris is everywhere, haunting the human mind.

A scientific station is in orbit around the planet, over the mysterious, omnipresent ocean, to study it. Something strange is starting to happen among the three crew members. Kelvin, a Solaris expert and a psychologist, comes all the way from Earth to see what is going on. Also, to determine if keeping up the station is worth the effort...Communication attempts with the ocean seem a no go.

An experiment has recently been set up. Bombarding the ocean with radiation, and see if it responds. It does eventually. And the response is the weirdest imaginable.

Solaris digs up the minds of the Station scientists, manipulating their memories, hopes, fears. Out of that emotional material, Solaris is capable of creating human beings in full. Psychological stuff, ghosts from the past of the human visitors, are then incarnated into people who appear before them. Kelvin will receive the visit of his wife, dead ten years ago.

Lem´s novel is an investigation on the human condition, true. Nothing new there. But with a powerful and conditioning frame: science and technology, the enormous potential of the vast Universe and, first of all, the unbelievable being that confronts Earth creatures and their nature.

Solaris, 1961. Stanislaw Lem
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William Hope Hogdson: The Night Land (1912)

An impressive literary creation of a horrid world. The sun has died out. It is now millions of years in the future. The Earth is frozen and resignedly keeps revolving around her star. The whole surface of the planet is in darkness. Humankind lives in a haven built by itself: the redoubt, a huge and populous pyramidal construction that holds all men and women remaining in this half-dead world.

Away from the Redoubt, and sorrounding it, is the deep darkness, the night land. Ignote paths, valleys, mountains. Also monstrosities wandering by: lovecraftian creatures whose origins, nature or purpose are unknown.

A  man from the past trasports himself or his mind into this distant dark future. He inhabits the redoubt. One day a woman´s voice is heard by telepathy, which reveals there is a second redoubt, also inhabited by people. The mysterious narrator, who has travelled through the ages into the Time of the Dead Sun, will now venture also into the Night Land, in search of the second pyramid.

In Supernatural horror in Literature, Lovecraft praised Hogdson´s The Night Land, if remarking his hard writing style. Which does not at all spoil, as HPL himself reckons, a magnificent weird horror experience.  

The Night Land, 1912. William Hope Hogdson

Michel Houellebecq: Whatever

Whatever (Extension du domaine de la lutte), previous to Atomized, is another tale of solitary particles (individuals) moving in a deep space of nothingness. The narrator is even more devastated by absurdity than Meursault, "the stranger" from the novel by Albert Camus.

A nonsensical world. Same as the one that Meursault inhabits, but with the atmosphere of late 20th century-professional world and consumer society.

A particle, an atom cannot, or should not, exist on its own. It needs to form molecules and macromolecules and even cells and living matter. No other message lies under Whatever or Atomized.

Whatever is one of those fundamental novels of our age, along with the rest of Houellebecq´s work. Their reading is a very umpleasant and dark experience. But also something we have to do, if we want to understand properly the world we live in. No matter if we consider ourselves houllebecquian creatures or not.

Funny, terrifying and nauseating, says The Independent in the cover of the English edition. Hard to imagine a better combination of words to describe the disgustingly absorbing little novel.

Whatever 1994 Michel Houellebecq

The Shinning

His name is Jack Torrance. He fancies becoming an acclaimed author. A successful (in the material sense), a famous one. His real life is far from that.

He gets a temporary job in an isolated hotel. He, his wife and son move there. To be the only inhabitants of the huge place in the winter months.

He dreams of being some sort of Scott Fitzgerald. He would have wanted to live and enjoy that cool atmosphere of the 1920s. He is somewhat haunted by the ghost of Gatsby.

He moves into the loneliness of the hotel at the mountains. In the long empty days, he wanders about rooms and corridors. He writes or tries to. He starts to see things and presences that are not there. Or that were there, but in the distant past. In the 1920s. Ghosts from a fascinating and mundane age of social parties, sophistication and pretended intellectual conversations.

The ghosts appear here and there and devour his reason, with promises of a non existent world. The Shinning is psychological horror at its best.

The Shinning, 1980. Stanley Kubrick.

Stanley Kubrick: Barry Lindon

Barry Lindon is perhaps Kubrick´s best work. At least from a purely aesthetic point of view. This is the most polished movie of his filmography. The brand new technology he used and the possibility of filming in candlelight gives the scenes a wonderful air of a eighteenth century-piece of art.

Rather than a motion picture, Barry Lindon is at times like a motion painting. An elegant old painting come to life. A true show, and pleasure, for the eye.

Barry Lindon, 1975. Stanley Kubrick

William Hope Hogdson, father of weird fiction

He was praised by Lovecraft. Such works as House on the Borderland or The Night land were highlighted as unforgetable by the Providence author. And it is not unthinkable that WP Hogdson is even better than HPL, his visions being even more powerful.

He was a precursor. A kind of father figure of quite a few, if not all, of those authors of weird fiction of late 19th and early 20th century.

His literary style is not great, true. It was Lovecraft himself who pointed out that. In a novel like The Night Land, this could be something of an obstacle for a quick and absorbing reading.

But only a bit. His somewhat baroque way of writing cannot spoil a most terrifying, deep vision of time and space. His path may be full of stylistic boulders, but we run over it, full of joy, mesmerized.

WH Hogdson. Night Land (1912). House on the borderland (1908)

Mary Shelley, beyond Frankenstein

There is much more to Mary W. Shelley than Frankenstein. Hers was a passionate life, a rebellious and strong individuality. Something nearly compulsory for anyone living in the early 1800s. Aside from her most popular book, she is also responsible for other works, many worth remembering.

After Percy Shelley’s death in Italy in 1822, she devoted herself to promoting the poet´s work, and became her tireless editor. Shelley, who had been her physical and intellectual love. Along with that, she would enlarge her own work with numerous essays and stories. We can recall The Last Man (of 1826), among other writings.

Her life was proactive. A powerful self. As an essayist and thinker she was not unworthy of her father, philosopher Godwin, and her mother, feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Shelley is one of the most fascinating figures of a fascinating age.

It has been in recent decades that her intelectual and literary brilliance has shone again.  The past is full of figures to rescue. Some of them from absolute oblivion. Others, like Mary, from a relative oblivion.

From the overwhelming weight of a single one of his works. Like Conan Doyle, who was also devoured by one of his creatures. The task of the critic and the historian must do justice to those valuable men and women from the past, restoring their life and work. So we, readers of the present, will feel their presence again and hear their voices.