(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: main Chrononauts theme)
introductions, non-podcast reads, background on the apocalypse
Nate:
Good evening and welcome to Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. I'm Nate and I'm joined by my co-hosts JM and Gretchen. How are you guys doing tonight?
Gretchen:
I'm doing good. I'm in the middle of winter break and even though I do have a winter course, it's definitely not as heavy as a workload as it was during the semester, so that's been nice.
Nate:
Yeah, that is nice to hear.
JM:
Yeah, a bit of a crazy time, just finished with the holidays and everything finally and family stuff and taking care of some personal issues and yeah, it's gotten really cool. So yeah, we're just blasting the heat in here for a few minutes before we started, so that I could keep warm during the recording. Typical winter in Ontario though.
Nate:
Yeah, certainly cold here and tonight we're definitely going to be talking about several stories that deal, I guess with, permanent winter in a sense that is the apocalypse and the end of the world. But before we get into all that, you can find us on every major podcasting platform, so Spotify and Apple. We are also on YouTube.
You can also follow us on Twitter at ChrononautsSF or facebook.com/chrononautspodcast or send us an email at chrononautspodcast@gmail.com.
We also have a blogspot where we post texts and translations including two stories we're going to be covering tonight and I've also recently posted one story by Ignacio Covarrubias "Saturnino Fernandez, Hero", which is a fantastic ode to the bottle. And there's going to be a whole bunch more stuff coming up soon. I think there's six stories in the pipeline that I've early drafts done and I think should be completed by the end of January. So definitely stay tuned to the blogspot and look for more stuff out of Latin America in the coming months.
JM:
Yeah. The story about the power of alcohol that one.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's just like "The Wondersmith", I suppose, saving the world. One drink at a time.
Nate:
Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.
But I guess before we get into our main stories for tonight, what have you guys been reading recently off the podcast?
JM:
Well, I haven't really been reading much at all, actually, just been too busy dealing with other stuff. Every now and then, short stories, I've been reading the collection of "The Opal, and Other Stories" by Gustav Meyrink, I think he was Austrian. You can find one of his stories in "The Weird" collection. I think it's the, I can't remember. It's not in this collection. It's kind of weird, dark, sort of satirical stories. Pretty good. Kind of unusually, I wasn't expecting it to be funny, but there's a lot of kind of funny satirical kind of stories.
And I've also been reading "War of the Newts" by Karel Čapek, which I know we're going to do on the podcast at some point soon.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
I just wanted to refresh myself about it and why it was so good. And I was watching a video recently where somebody was talking about the history of Czech literature. And it's kind of, as we discussed in that episode, it's kind of a short history due to the uncommonality of the Czech language in more upper class, I guess, circles until basically the 19th, early 20th century, late 19th century. And yeah, they specifically talk about "War of the Newts" and it's such a cool book, so many really awesome observations, again, a lot of humor.
I know we covered "RUR" and I think we all liked it, but I do think that Čapek's strength was probably more in the prose area. And as interesting and influential as that play is, I do think that probably as a novelist and short story writer, Čapek is more, I don't know, more significant, probably in a lot of ways. So I'm looking forward to doing that book on the podcast. Funnily enough, it would also fit a little bit into the apocalypse theme that we're discussing.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
In fact, they did it on the Apocalist Bookclub, which Nate, I think you're going to mention at some point.
Nate:
I am, yeah.
JM:
They actually did two Čapek books, surprisingly. They're obviously quite enamored with him and that's cool. He's really great and "War of the Newts" is a pretty special book, so you can get ready for that at some point, maybe this year. War between humans and weird salamander creatures that live in the ocean and I guess the point of it is really to expose all kinds of human foibles and frailties and just sort of comment on the human condition and especially as it relates to things like colonialism and exploitation and it's really something, a really powerful work. So yeah.
Nate:
Cool. Yeah. Looking forward to doing that one. I think it'll be a lot of fun to talk about. Yeah. What about you Gretchen?
Gretchen:
I think the last time we talked about the books we've been reading, I mentioned Marie de France, which was for my medieval women writers course. For that class, I ended up reading Julian of Norwich, which is a religious text that I ended up doing my final paper on, which was just really, really interesting. Her theological ideas about Christ and the visions that she had were just really fascinating to look at and like analyze.
So that was what I read for that class.
I ended up also reading "Coriolanus" for the first time.
Nate:
Cool.
Gretchen:
Yeah, which was really great. It's one of the, I'd say, there's still a handful of Shakespeare plays I still need to read and that was one of them. So it was really great to read that one. Those were for my courses, for pleasure. I have done a little bit of pleasure readings, surprisingly. I have managed to squeeze in a little bit of that.
I'm a big fan of Tuva Jansen, who I believe I've mentioned once or twice before. And I read "Fair Play", which was sort of a collection of vignettes about two specific characters that kind of live together in the same apartment.
JM:
That one was really a nice read.
Gretchen:
That one sounds pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, it was a pretty good book. Then I did manage to read another Red Dwarf novel, which I had started earlier in the semester but put down when coursework got a little too heavy. I read that around the Christmas season and I started a book called "Wedding of Zein", I think is how you say it. And it's written by this author I've read before, Tayib Salih, which I read for a post-colonial class. I don't remember exactly which country he's from, but I really enjoyed his previous work I read, "Seasons of Migration to the North". So I saw this when book shopping and bought it and I've been enjoying it so far. It's kind of a novella with a series of short stories. I haven't gotten to the main story yet, but the short stories I've read have been really interesting.
Nate:
Cool. Yeah, definitely sounds like some good stuff.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
For me, last time I mentioned Eudora Welty's "A Curtain of Green" and I finished up that short story collection and I really want to mention this one story, "Old Mr. Marblehall", which while not science fiction gives the science fiction pulps a pretty scathing rebuke. It was written in 1941 and mentioned two pulps that were active then, namely Terror Tales and Astonishing Stories and I want to read the full paragraph here.
It says:
"And she goes on, while her husband bends over the zinnias, to tell what Mr. Marblehall (or Mr. Bird) does in bed. She does tell the truth. He reads Terror Tales and Astonishing Stories. She can’t see anything to them: they scare her to death. These stories are about horrible and fantastic things happening to nude women and scientists. In one of them, when the characters open bureau drawers, they find a woman’s leg with a stocking and garter on. Mrs. Bird had to shut the magazine. “The glutinous shadows,” these stories say, “the red-eyed, muttering old crone,” “the moonlight on her thigh,” “an ancient cult of sun worshipers,” “an altar suspiciously stained.. Mr. Marblehall doesn’t feel as terrified as all that, but he reads on and on. He is killing time. It is richness without taste, like some holiday food."
So if you want to find out what happens to Mrs. Marblehall and her dislike of ancient cults of sun worshipers, you'll just have to read the story. But it was a really fun thing to read and overall I really, really like this collection and strongly recommend it to anyone who has any interest in Southern Gothic-type stuff.
Speaking of Southern Gothic, I then did William Faulkner's "A Fable", which is notably non-Southern or at least mostly. There's one extended incident that's roughly novella-length. That's one of Faulkner's Southern picaresque type stories that feels like another story just kind of pasted onto it, which I think is exactly what happened. But the main portion of the novel is this really vague and opaque World War I setting where French regimen mutinies and then triggers a whole series of events that simultaneous obviously feels like tons of stuff happens, but nothing happens at the same time. Definitely really heavy-handed in its religious symbolism, and I think that turns a lot of people off, but I really enjoyed it and I think the weakest aspect is that about a quarter of it does feel just like another story pasted on that's totally different in tone and style. Faulkner intended this to be his masterpiece and spent like 10 years working on it, and I can't really say that I'd put it in the upper third of his works, but I did really like it and probably wouldn't recommend it though to someone who hasn't read any Faulkner before, definitely one to read after he read all of his other major works.
I read Elizabeth Gaskell's "Cranford", which was this like super fun and zippy 19th century comedy, and then read Audrey Niffenegger's "The Time Traveler's Wife", which I didn't really like. I thought she could have done a lot more with the basic concept, and it just felt like I was reading YA a lot of the time. Some of the passages on that punk music just made me cringe a little bit, like I get that the character wouldn't be going to see Crossed Out and Dropdead and stuff like that. I don't know, a lot of music related character shading of which there is a fair amount just feels strangely inauthentic and kind of put me off.
Then I read Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose", which was just totally awesome novel that I couldn't put down. Detective murder mystery story in a medieval monastery with Eco's great attention to detail in terms of language and church history. I think I liked "Foucault's Pendulum" a little bit more, but this was still totally great, if you like that detective story type stuff with a little bit of the weird going on, definitely definitely want to check out.
Then I read George Eliot's "Felix Holt", which is described as her quote unquote "political novel". And while it does get into the weeds of the British political and legal system, those aspects feel more like backgrounds of the characters rather than being the point of the novel to comment on those things. I did like this a lot, and despite the fact that it touches on pretty much all the same major themes that "Middlemarch" does, it does it in a completely different way with a much different set of characters and feels altogether like a much different novel.
And last but certainly not least, in fact, by page count, it's by far the greatest Alexandre Dumas's classic, "The Count of Monte Cristo", which is an enormous work, enormously awesome. There are a lot of parts that do feel like it has very convenient coincidences and the characters are a bit one dimensional. And you can tell the twists are coming from like 300 pages away, but it's still really great and gripping, especially the first 300 or so pages. It's obviously not science fiction, but like Sir Walter Scott, who we talked about in our Twain episode, he is a major influence on the genre. I'm sure, our readers are familiar with Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination", which is basically this novel with a bunch of random hodgepodge of fifties science fiction tropes slapped onto it. Jess Nevins cites it as a proto-Batman, and there's some cool talking about the telegraph in this, the visual telegraph and some speculation on ooo, what's this newfound electrical thing going to be like, you know, what's that going to do? So that was pretty fun to read and definitely a very awesome and very long novel. I think my copy of it is the Robin Buss Penguin Edition, which is like 1,250 pages long. So definitely not a quick read, but not a really heavy one either. It's very easy and pretty much hard to put down. So yeah, a lot of really cool stuff.
JM:
Yeah, that's not your first read of that, right?
Nate:
No, it is. Yeah.
JM:
Oh, it is. Okay. Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, I read "Three Musketeers" previously and I have one of the later D'Artagnan romances on my shelf that I have yet to read, but I don't have the volumes in between "Three Musketeers" on that one. So I want to read them like an order and not out of order.
But yeah, he was an incredibly prolific author and it's crazy that he was basically writing "The Count of Monte Cristo" and the D'Artagnan romances at like the same time, even though these were serialized over the course of two, sometimes three years, it's still a pretty impressive body of work, considering the novels when put together are like all roughly a thousand pages. We almost did him on the podcast, but I discovered that the book we were covering was severely abridged and the unabridged version of the novel that is "Joseph Balsamo" is kind of hard to find in English, and it's also like 400,000 words. So it would be a bit of a challenge to do.
JM:
That's definitely a cool collection of stuff there.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah, a great couple of reading months and definitely looking forward to doing stuff in the future, both off the podcast and on the podcast.
But for tonight, we are going to be talking about the apocalypse and the end of the world. And apocalypse themes are one of the oldest tropes in science fiction's history. And as such, this episode was one of the episodes that we mapped out and researched in the very, very early days of the podcast and has gone through several revisions over the last four or so years. And since then, we've been bringing in a lot more stuff from the early 20th century and now the golden age and even a bit of stuff afterwards. So this particular episode has changed shaped a bit over time. And I think for the better, as this allows us to explore a wide variety of themes that the end of the world brings out, but also see how people's fears may have changed or may have stayed the same over the course of roughly 50 years in which a great deal has happened, not only within science fiction literature history and how the genre has progressed, but obviously enormous global geopolitical events that shaped how we perceive the world and as possible ending.
I'm sure it's possible to find pre-19th century precursors, but perhaps the two significant earliest science fiction novels that explore these themes in depth is rather confusing as they're both titled "The Last Man".
The more well known, of course, was written by Mary Shelley and one we covered on the podcast in our Mary Shelley episode way back in episode two, as when we covered our "Moreau" episode, the same disclaimer applies that the very early days of the podcast are a little bit hard to listen to for technical and other reasons. And we definitely be able to do a much better segment on it now. But I can say that I really liked that one. And it's definitely a totally different style and tone than "Frankenstein". Written nearly a decade after "Frankenstein" was published in 1826.
But perhaps more interestingly for fans of obscurity is the other "Last Man" is even earlier.
JM:
Yeah, I was going to mention that one.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah, from 1805, written by French author Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville. We haven't covered this one on the podcast and I'm not sure that we will as apparently it leans very hard into the Hand of God type thing as the end of the world. I haven't read it, but I believe that the apocalypse described is the biblical book of revelation in that it the events of the novel are what lead up to and trigger the biblical apocalypse.
JM:
It definitely sounds very atmospheric, also like very steeped in religious iconography and stuff like that.
Nate:
Yeah. And I mean, I guess it's arguable for that case on how much science fiction is it really? But it does take place in the future. And these themes are obviously present in more explicitly science fiction stuff, both the religion and the end of the world that, well, it brings on. Should it be too surprising, given how much influence the church has had over the world until comparatively speaking very recently. But yeah, this one has been translated into English. So if you want to check that out, it shouldn't be too hard to find.
There is a decent chunk of 19th century and early 20th century novels that revolve around apocalypse themes, rather getting too deeply into the weeds of what happens in apocalypse fiction between Shelley and the authors we're covering tonight. We'll largely refer you to another podcast and we've mentioned them before tonight. And that is the Apocalist Bookclub, which explores the early stuff in depth, basically going in chronological order of stuff they were able to find. There are a couple 19th century, early 20th century things that they didn't get around to covering, which I thought might be neat to cover at some point.
These are Fred White's "The Doom of London", a 1903 short story collection from an extremely prolific author, one of those guys who had literally hundreds of stories in the British magazines, and "The Violet Flame" by Fred T. Jane from 1899, who is probably best known for doing the illustrations to "Angel of the Revolution". Maybe we'll cover these someday. Maybe we won't, but they're out there. And for the rest of the 19th century and early 20th century stuff in lieu of doing an in-depth history here of every title, instead, we'll definitely refer you to the Apocalist Bookclub, as they really do get pretty deep into the weeds of this stuff up until the 1930s. They cover 10 novels up to the point that we're starting off our episode in 1906.
We've covered some of the stuff they've covered on the podcast in this period, like "The Last Man", and very well may cover some others like "War of the Worlds".
JM:
And "War in the Air".
Nate:
Yeah, right. We've also done "War of the Air", which is from a little bit later.
But yeah, tonight what we're going to do is take a look at a different set of five stories spanning from 1906 to 1954. Most of these are pretty short, but they all touch upon a wide array of themes that will be interesting to explore, compare and contrast, as all authors tonight are approaching things from different angles and come from a wide range of backgrounds, cultures, and political mindsets.
We'll also be able to trace how human fear has progressed through the first half of the 20th century from comets and religion to nuclear weapons and religion.
As always, we like to highlight the obscure stuff in addition to the well known. So we're presenting two original translations for you tonight. The first one is Amado Nervo's, "The Last War", which Gretchen will be telling us about.
(music: Charles P. Scott's - "The Cat with the Baritone Voice" played on heavy synth)
Amado Nervo's "The Last War" non-spoiler discussion, plot summary, spoiler discussion
We have covered Amado Nervo on the podcast before, looking at his story, "The Soul Giver", in our episode, I believe, 28, looking at brain transplants and transference. For more background on Nervo, please give that episode a listen.
But as Nate said, we are covering his story, "The Last War", tonight, which was written sometime between 1898 and 1906, because there are claims that it first appeared in the earlier of those two years, but the earliest known record of its appearance that we have at the moment is the 1906 anthology, "Souls That Pass".
JM:
Yeah, so it's definitely an interesting, very short story. It was very different from "The Soul Giver".
Nate:
Yeah, it was.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Also seemed to, I'm not sure. I'm sure if it was aiming for, like, I kind of wondered if Nervo actually, like, if he believed in the social revolution and stuff like that. And if he's like, I'm not sure I understood all the social commentary he was going for. And I felt, I kind of did feel like maybe if I was a little bit more familiar with him, although we did go into a bit of that earlier on, I might have gotten a little more of that. But I definitely did see a lot of satire in there and a lot of interesting future commentary. There was some technology that definitely put this into the science fiction camp.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Most certainly. And interestingly, it's kind of not unique to science fiction writers. Like, even something like some of the older, like the really old works we did, like "The New Atlantis" and stuff like that. They had a tendency to stop the plot to try to explain how something worked, which I just think is really interesting because that sort of is a tradition that's carried on by like the hardcore Gernsbackian science fiction writers.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
Nervo does a little bit of that here. Not too much because the story is really short, but there's certainly a little bit of that. Yeah, I don't know. It was pretty good. I actually forgot to read the other translation of this.
Nate:
Yeah, there is another translation of this. This has happened a couple of times on the podcast before where I post something and like a week later, I find out that somebody else has pretty much done the same thing.
JM:
Yeah, the timing is sometimes interesting, isn't it?
Nate:
Yeah, right. So I don't know if they are sourcing from a different text or what, but their translation is a lot different than mine. Feels a lot more modern and they don't omit a lot, but they do omit a couple words. Like there's a couple author footnotes that author, like as the narrator puts in, not like Nervo himself, but yeah, there's a couple like narrator footnotes where he explains like how some future gadget works that the other translation didn't put in and the other translation also emits one really awesome science fiction word, a "transetherlunar", you know, like as a transport between the earth and the moon. And just, yeah, just the word evokes such cool science fiction imagery.
JM:
And they didn't even really acknowledge that.
Nate:
Yeah, no, they just dropped the word all together. So I'm not sure if there are different versions of the story floating around or why they... Yeah, so I'm not entirely sure on that. But we'll post a link to their translation in the description. That's also another podcast that they discuss a little bit about the stories themes as well as do a complete reading of their translation. So if you're interested in digging into the story a little bit more, definitely check that out.
Also, if you know Spanish, the full text of the Spanish story is freely available online as well. So yeah, it's kind of an interesting coincidence that, you know, when we posted this "Symzonia" episode, then we immediately found that New Yorker author attribute attribution piece. Right after I posted the Lugones translations, I found out that somebody else had posted their version of the translations on Amazon. And then after I posted this one, I shortly found that other podcast. So yeah, it does happen from time to time. I mean, it's kind of funny coincidence that, yeah, we took a look at the same thing at the same time.
But yeah, no, this one I thought was definitely cool. And it foreshadows some future works that are rather obvious with its themes that it presents. And I guess we'll probably talk about that towards the end, because I mean, it is a rather short story and it's kind of hard to discuss in non-spoiler terms. But I think that it fits into the themes very nicely tonight. And it gets a really unique approach because none of the other stories we're taking a look at tonight take this angle of apocalypse.
Gretchen:
It's a short and sweet story, but it is interesting. And there's definitely quite a few other pieces of media I was reminded of when reading it.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
JM:
Well, I was just going to say that I was actually reminded a little bit of "City" by Clifford Simak because of the future where animals and dogs specifically are pretty much like the next inheritors of the earth. That's kind of a reminder me of that. And then, you know, it's like in "City", which I do have on our shortlist for the podcast at some point, the framing devices like this debate between the dogs over whether humanity as in the historical legend of humanity actually existed the way it was depicted. So I don't know, this is kind of interesting. I'm sure, I kind of doubt that Simak was aware of this story, but it's just kind of interesting the way it's just kind of reminiscent.
Nate:
Yeah, those coincidences are fun, even though, yeah, it's unlikely the stuff I'm thinking of, probably wouldn't see it there. But yeah, talk about that at the end because it is a fun little story.
Gretchen:
Yeah, yeah, I will get into the summary as it's not too long. It's the bare bones plot here.
Nate:
Yeah, I think it'll take you maybe 15 minutes to read this.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I mean, I only have a couple paragraphs.
So the last war begins with the naming of the three most significant revolutions in human history, the Christian Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Socialist Revolution. The latter, as the narrative informs us, occurred in the year 2030, after which time began to be recorded as before and after this revolution. The revolution was so immense that the apparent physical differences between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, such as workers having more calloused hands and extra sixth finger, disappeared.
The Socialist Revolution also resulted in universal peace and stability for humanity, making them comfortable and unaccustomed to any sort of violence. However, while conflicts between humans had been lessened due to the bridging of gaps between classes, other animals still remained inferior to humans. The humans' tranquility and their refusal to learn the language of the other animals allowed the animals who felt their mistreatment to plan what would be a fourth revolution against the humans. One meeting between the animals before the start of this revolution is recounted, where a dog named Can Canis spoke of the evolution of humanity, despite their seeming weakness relative to other creatures and their mastery over other species.
He calls for the other animals to rise up, to gain freedom from humans who refuse them the same rights. The war against humans rages for a decade, as animals use humanity's own technology, which they studied in secret against them. The narrator states that he is one of the few humans left, and that his kind will eventually die out, killed by these humanized animals.
He finishes his account:
"Come then, congratulations. To us, for having reached the divine serenity of complete and definitive spirit, we have nothing left but to die sweetly. They are human and will be pious in order to kill us. Later, in their turn, perfected and serene, they will die to leave their place to new races that today ferment in the dark bosom of an even lower animality, in the mystery of an active and impenetrable genesis. All this until the old flame of the sun is gently extinguished, until its enormous globe, already dark, revolving around a sun in the constellation of Hercules, is fertilized for the first time in space, and new humanities emerge from its immense bosom, so that everything begins again."
Nate:
Yeah, it's a real cool end of like this cyclic existence of conflict. Nobody comes out on top, everybody eats everybody, and the chain and cycle just continues and continues forever.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I mean, that is very reminiscent of socialist ideology, the struggle, the struggle between the classes that's always kind of a constant conflict with each other.
JM:
Yeah, but it's interesting that he's like, well, there was the socialist revolution, and then there was equality and peace for all humanity, but we forgot about the animals who are, I guess, like now they're filling the places of all the formerly exploited human workers and everything like that. And so things are kind of back to the way they were before, almost.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
So I kind of wonder, like, there's definitely a cynical, a cynical bent to this, I guess, about the future socialist revolution that he thinks is coming. Maybe he still thinks it's a good thing, but I guess humans will be humans, right? Seems like we have to exploit somebody. So there we go. I mean, it's a cycle continuing yet again.
And I don't know, I do kind of feel like we do fall in this position very readily. And we get machines to do all our work for us, right? Machines get smarter and smarter. And it's like "The Book of the Machines" all over again.
Nate:
Right. Or Butler's other classic is the rights of plants. So after the animal seize power of the earth, well, what about the sentient Venus fly traps that evolve in two million years or whatever? What about their rights or what about the rights of trees that?
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
The cycle continues and goes on. And I think what Nervo is saying here is that it's bigger than humanity, but something intrinsic in the universe itself. Which is, yeah, it's a cynical way of looking at things for sure.
JM:
Yeah. He kind of touched on some of those Samuel Butler-ish "Erewhon" concepts, but in a way that felt more, a lot more modern and a lot less wandering into weird, personal territory that didn't really make a lot of sense. And a lot shorter.
Nate:
Yeah, it's much shorter.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yeah. A lot, I'd say, more concise.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah.
Nate:
But despite that, I think it's a really effective and heavy read. It reminded me of a major precursor to the "Planet of the Apes" series, particularly some of the later movies in the original franchise. I haven't really seen too much of the the new ones, but I think they follow some of the plot elements as well, or same plot elements as well.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I haven't seen the new ones myself, but I can definitely see the parallels with that. For me, because it's very funny, we all had a certain piece of media we were reminded of, and I feel they're all kind of, they all differ in quite different ways. Because I was kind of reminded a bit of "Animal Farm", just because of that link between like the animals and this socialist ideal and like the struggle between human and animal.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. I don't exactly remember how much we went into this before, but I mean, I'm guessing Nervo is probably somewhat Christian, but what about his politics? What did we know about that?
Nate:
I don't know if we got too much into his political writing. He obviously is big into using mysticism and that kind of stuff as imagery in his works. Apparently that's a bigger part of the stuff that he typically writes more in line with "The Soul Giver" than this, but those are the only two things I've read by him, and it doesn't really look like there's much in English. A lot of the stuff didn't really seem science fiction adjacent, so I haven't really looked into it down too too much, but yeah.
Gretchen:
Ferreira didn't really cover much about his political, I mean, it was more of a brief biography about his work, but I don't really remember much about politics.
Nate:
Yeah. She more analyzes the stories themselves, which yeah, I guess kind of makes sense, but yeah. Yeah, I know he is really well known for his poetry in Mexico and Latin America, but yeah, I'm not sure if he did a lot of political writing, though he served as a diplomat, so presumably he was involved in politics in some way.
JM:
Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of wondering about like, because of the time period, socialism is definitely in a lot of people's minds.
Nate:
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
JM:
So just kind of wondering like what he actually, what he really thought of that, like, I feel that this is pretty cynical, but I also feel like it could be positive, like it could be welcoming the oncoming peace, but maybe advising caution, I guess, and that the next level of exploitation doesn't assert itself.
Nate:
I mean, he does make a point to note that while the animal revolution is the next link in the chain, it is also incredibly violent and bloody, and they take no prisoners and I guess you'd call it inhumane, but yeah, the animals are not kind to the human race.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And I also think it is very interesting that beginning section where he's talking about like, oh, well, after the socialist revolution, these differences that existed between classes like physical differences disappeared. And the socialist revolution happens about 100 years after Nervo is writing this.
JM:
Yeah, about 10 years from now.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if that's supposed to be sort of like, if he's saying like, that's something that's going to happen over the next century, or if that is the narrator thinking, oh, we used to be so much different, so much more different than we used to be before the revolution happened. I feel like that might be a bit of a sly jab at like, well, maybe we aren't that different.
JM:
Yeah, I guess in a lot of ways it seems more optimistic than, well, like the next story, for example, which just seems very angry. Yeah, it's interesting because the next story does come from Russia. So that's an interesting contrast.
Nate:
And certainly socialism would have been much on his mind too. The Russian revolution, the failed Russian revolution, I should say from 1905, is again, one of those frustrating things where we're not able to pin down an exact date of publication for this one, because that could have very well been on Nervo's mind when he wrote this, if indeed he did write it in 1906, and not like 1898.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, even if it wasn't written before then, I mean, even the choice of publishing it in that anthology, it still might have been something that was on his mind.
JM:
Yeah, definitely seems like an oddity in his literary catalogue. And that's pretty cool. But again, it just seems like some of these classic writers were just very willing to just delve into these weird futuristic waters at any point. E. M. Forster, not really known for this stuff. And yet he produced this one science fiction masterpiece, right? And, you know, here's Nervo doing some weird future speculation. Although, yeah, it does seem very influenced by the political movements of the time and stuff. So as it should be.
Yeah, cool little story. I don't know that I really have a lot of thoughts about it. But I think it was definitely a good read. A fun thing to do, and to translate, I'm sure, Nate. Yeah, we have the more science fiction translation. So go to Chrononauts.
Nate:
Yeah, and it'll be interesting to compare and contrast. I mean, this is probably going to be the last one of the translations that I did like four years ago, which were primarily Latin American stories from the turn of the centuries. So, you know, late 1890s and early 1900s. And this block I'm doing now is very much 1950s science fiction, and the language and the beats of the story and the tropes used are very, very different, despite an only 50 year difference. It'll be interesting to see later this year when we cover more of those 1950s how that evolves through Latin America, primarily Argentina and Mexico.
So yeah, this was definitely a fun one to do. Again, it's super, super short. I wish more stuff was translated into English by Nervo. It seems like he's very well respected and known as a poet in Mexico, but not so much in the English speaking world, which is a shame, because it sounds like he has some pretty cool stuff, maybe not too much in common or to do with science fiction, but interesting sounding stuff regardless.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I did like both of the works we've read for this. And I'd be really interested to read some of the poetry that he wrote.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah. So I guess for now, should we take a quick break and go to the Russian Empire?
Gretchen:
Sounds good.
JM:
Yeah, we'll be under the comment very soon. Yes.
Bibliography:
Ferreira, Rachel Haywood - "The Emergence of Latin American Science Fiction" (2011)
Tres Cuentos Literary Podcast #41 - "The Last War - Amado Nervo" https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/tres-cuentos/41-the-last-war-amado-nervo-1czSFyqr9Mh/
Scott, Charles P. - "The Cat with the Baritone Voice" (1903) https://www.loc.gov/resource/musapschmidt.10006914/
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