Clifford D. Simak: Way Station (1963)

Possibly one of the most original plots ever conceived within the often astonishing SF frame. Way Station is a somewhat forgotten classic from 1963 which will surprise the reader with a strange, if perfectly defined, scenario.

Over the last decades, Clifford D. Simak has lost much of the popularity he used to enjoy among readers of the genre. In the 1970s, the Wisconsin-born master had been included among a handful of greatest SF writers. He is in any case responsible for some of the most important classics in scientific fiction, a branch of literature so full of ideas and clever designs of the future. Even though many of the Simak works (including his best) could be a bit difficult to get hold of today, at least outside the second-hand book market. 

Simak is a representative for what was called no less than "pastoral" science fiction, a label that can give the reader a clue on the nature of his universe. In Simak´s novels we may have characters inserted in an American mid-west rural environment, fond of traditions of country life and with a longing for a long gone past, this being mixed up with an unmistakable SF atrezzo. In Way Station we will have alien races, a inmense galactic background and an inconceivable technology sharing stage with nature, country landscapes and in some case a mid19th century nostalgia. A funny mixture.

Way Station tells the story of Enoch Wallace, a veteran from the American Civil War. Problem is he is now living in 1962 (the time Simak writes) which means that the civil war was a hundred years ago, which means that the guy should be something like 120 o 130. But he doesn´t look any older than, say, 30. During all these years and decades, he has been regarded as a distant figure by his fellow country mates, who have of course noted that there is something really weird with the youngish centenarian. But as Simak suggests, in deep rural America, people do not give a second thought on stuff wich is not of their bussiness.

So here we have this Wallace who never ages, who has memories from the 1860s, who has inhabited the same old family farm for all those years. He walks out every morning carring a rifle he never uses. He small talks with a a couple or three people here and there, including the postman who delivers to him letters, commercial leaflets, and subscription scientific magazines. And that is it. 

We soon learn of his secret. His old midwest rural farm is not at all what it seems. It is a country house only from the outside, as it is actually a way station, no less: one galactic station which serves as a kind of changing post for interstellar travelers, of alien races from all corners of the galaxy. Wallace is the station guard and his duty is to greet the travelers and take care of their needs, like a cosmic hotel host. Through those alien peoples, he will interact with many cultures and visions of the universe, political and social systems, traditions, literature and science.

Of course, Way Station is a product of  the time it was written, the 1960s, which means that one of the main concerns of Wallace (along with the rest of the Galaxy) is the possibility of the self destruction of the human race as a result of nuclear war. Some math-based alien sociology that Wallace learnt from some star visitors he once hosted, has proved him (through complex developments never glimpsed by humans) that devastation is coming.

Underneath his appearance of a country guy, Enoch has in his hands all the Galaxy's richness, sources of artistic culture as well as scientific knowledge that no one on Earth can imagine. Closer to the poetic tone of a Bradbury than to the hard scientific touch of a Stephen Baxter, Way Station evokes the immensity of the universe in a pleasant scene of lakes and trees and mountains. It is also a reminder of what rich complex lifes could be led by ordinary, apparently grey, lonely people. 

Way Station, 1963. Clifford D Simak

Thomas Mann: Death in Venice

Death in Venice was first published in 1912. A short novelette of less than hundred pages is one of Thomas Mann´s best narrations, still under 40 when he wrote it. This is perhaps worth noting, as some claim that his best novel was Buddenbrooks, published at 25 and one of the key works responsible for his 1929 Nobel Prize. 

Death in Venice is a very introspective novel, filled with subtle and complex ideas. The clever references from classical culture will be esential in the protagonist´s intellectual path and the evolution of his increasingly disrupted inner world.

 It is also an enigmatic story, which has been the object of many interpretations since its first appearance a century ago. Also there is a celebrated 1972 movie version by Luchino Visconti, with Dirk Bogarde as Gustav Von Aschenbach. The movie´s elegant images, the talented interpretations and the suitable soundtrack of Mahler´s 5th Simphony have strongly contributed to the picture we still have today of Death in Venice.

The story is known. Van Aschenbach, a respected writer and critic from Munich is going through the usual creative block. One day, he goes out onto the city streets to try to grasp some ideas for his writing. At some point, he encounters one stranger whose vision will give rise in him some sort of fascination and an irresistible wish to leave Munich, set out to travel and see the world.

As a first stage of this proposed new set of experiences, he will choose Venice. Once there, he will first enjoy some pleasant iddle days, keeping himself entertained with walks and seeing monuments, his sensibility in full swing, his mind constantly generating ideas and outlines for future works.

One day, while having lunch at the hotel restaurant, Aschenbach spots a Polish family. One of the members is a preadolescent boy of some 14 years of age, named (he finds out) Tadzio. In the next days and weeks, Aschenbach will gradually become obssesed by the kid´s classical beauty. This the artist seems to consider some sort of incarnation of all greek and classical aesthetics, and he goes through, or attempts to, a process of intellectual sublimation. It has been said that Death in Venice is about repressed homosexuality or even pederasty. Some have even claimed that Mann´s novel made pederasty acceptable for the upper-middle classes.

This is a narrow vision and the novel goes further beyond that. It talks about the intangibility of life, a risk of some artists or intelectuals, with an excesively "platonian" view of life and culture. Theirs is a magnificent mental existence, of forms and ideas, a purely working of the mind. This full spirituality may be fascinating and beautiful. But its inevitable coldness gets in the way sooner or later. The "study of the flame", its contemplation, its chemical mechanism, could be a first aesthetic and philosophical experience, but the knowledge we may get is uncomplete if we dont also dare to put our hand on it, get a little bit "burnt". Science and theoretical knowledge, or pure aesthetics, must be at some point complemented by first hand experience, the adition of a a bit of sensuality. Life is a body-and-mind matter, and must have some tangible dimension. The issue is then building up, at one´s risk, a moral system which is neither excesively narrow nor self-referential, that makes it all compatible.

The mind has infinite possibilities and culture, as the product of the human mind, is as powerful as to compete with the richness of material reality. We have a mind potentially capable of the creation of huge worlds, but we also have a body. And this was not programmed by evolution to be ignored at no cost in the only benefit of the huge brain that this same evolutinary process gave us.

Aschenbach´s error was the radical choice he made at a young age, a choice he thinks was free: that of denying the physical and imposing himself an exile in an all-mental world of forms and colours, visual impressions, verbal constructions. But the "senses", widely speaking, should not be absent, and we are not necessarily talking of leading a torrid erotic life. Only that sensuality should be within the lot, otherwise we may run the risk of getting it bursting at the wrong stimuli later in life. Which is what happens to Aschenbach and it is expressed by Mann in a Jamesian, encapsulated way.

The book is an enjoyable read that leaves you intellectually "exhausted" with its many ideas, arguments and beautiful images.

Death in Venice, 1912. Thomas Mann.

Henry James: The Turn of the Screw

One of the most perfect ghost stories ever written, it has gathered lots of interpretations since it first appeared in 1898. Universally acclaimed as a masterpiece, its ambivalence and its mistery on what is the authentic reality it narrates, still perplex us today.

We don't even know, beyond the first impression, what kind of person is telling the tale. Who the narrator really is. She talks about scary riddles, insinuating (or plainly claiming) the presence of the supernatural. But nothing in this story has to be necessarily what it seems.

The story starts off as follows. A rather unexperienced 20-year old governess is called by a wealthy London gentleman. A job is offered to her. She has to take care of Miles and Flora, his nephew and niece, who stay in a splendid mansion in the countryside at Bly, with a housekeeper and a full bunch of servants. She will settle there and be in charge of the children's education. One condition for a nice job: she must not bother her employer with any problem relating to the children, which she should solve herself by her own means.  She will be paid accordingly of course, no worries. She accepts. At some point in her narration, the young governess will discreetly insinuate that she may fancy her employer. Even if this is not entirely clear to herself. Henry James as always, is a master of psychological subtlety.

Miles and Flora seem to be the nicest and best behaved-children you can think of. There is, however, in the governess's eyes, as days and weeks go by, something increasingly weird about the children, like a shadow of corruption. The insinuation of something fatally wrong, as if evil were thinly in the air. And it is unknown who or what is abducting this. As the governess carries on with her teaching duties, a slight but pure horror seems to materialize, or so she will claim in her narration. Two undesirable guests turn up in the house. Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. The first was an ancient servant at Bly, while the second is no other than the previous governess. Problem is they are supposed to be dead.

This disturbing description of the facts (some of them supernatural) is made by a woman whom we only know through her own words, and a short introduction by a secondary character in the prologue of the book. What kind of beings are those two, Quint and Jessel, apparently come from among the dead? And what kind of being is the governess herself from whom we learn it all? Where is evil here, or corruption, on what side of the mirror? Which shore of the lake?

Insanity, sexual repression, moral corruption, child abusing, truly supernatural events. Everything we might find in here. This is a superb tale written by a master of ambiguity. Ironically, Henry James was someone horrified by the possibility of misunderstanding in his everyday life, but he had this strong talent to recreate it in literature. And he himself had a few secrets. It is hard to know what is really going on in The Turn of the Screw, what is the game here, what the characters are like, or even which ones exist. But one thing is certain: this story is not only an aesthetic feast, it is also a psychoanalitic one. An achievement of complexity and concision.

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.