Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

"Typescript Of The Second Origin". Counterculture And Politics In The 1970s'., Antoni Maestre-Brotons

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

This article explores how, like other science fiction and fantasy novels, Typescript of the Second Origin relates to 1970s counterculture, radical politics and anti-establishment movements. Pedrolo, a leftist and pro-independence strongly committed author, echoes the radical left’s breakaway from the bourgeois reactionary way of life and consumer society in the novel. The beginning of a post-apocalyptic era in the novel stands for some of the values attached to hippie culture: the search for an ‘authentic’ —natural, primitive, non-technological— life; anti-establishment activity —as shown in self-organisation and the dissolution of the political system—, universal solidarity —the first member of the new …

Political Wishful Thinking Versus The Shape Of Things To Come: Manuel De Pedrolo’S "Mecanoscrit" And “Los Últimos Días” By Àlex And David Pastor, Pere Gallardo Torrano

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Despite almost forty years separating Manuel de Pedrolo’s novel Mecanoscrit del segon orígen (1974, trad. Typescript of the Second Origin) and the brothers Àlex and David Pastor’s film “Los últimos días” (2013, US tit. “The Last Days”), it is not difficult to find several socio-political areas of intersection which converge on a biological issue at the end of both works: the pregnancy of one of the characters at the end of each story.

Yet, such an interpretation would be rather limited as it ignores the socio-political landscape from which each work originated. Published in the aftermath of the first …

Eugenia En Su Contexto: Utopía Y Proyecto Alterno De Nación, Miguel García

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

En fechas recientes la novela Eugenia: esbozo novelesco de costumbres futuras (Mérida, 1919), escrita por el doctor, funcionario público y pedagogo Eduardo Urzaiz, se ha vuelto una pieza clave para entender la ciencia ficción mexicana y latinoamericana, al ser uno de los ejemplos tempranos de especulaciones futuristas y por integrar en su discurso a la eugenesia, una ciencia alrededor de la cual se desarrolló un movimiento global cuyos alcances se siguen mapeando hoy en día. Sin embargo, dos problemas principales han impedido el entendimiento cabal de la novela: 1) una insuficiente comprensión de la relevancia de las ideas eugenésicas …

The Amazon In Brazilian Speculative Fiction: Utopia And Trauma, M. Elizabeth Ginway

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

There are two key moments when the Amazon is used as the setting for Brazilian science fiction, both during periods of dictatorship in the twentieth century. The first takes place during the authoritarian government of Getúlio Vargas (1930-1945), the second after the decades-long push for modernization and technological change imposed by the military government from 1964 to 1985. My study shows that, for writers of the first half of the twentieth century, the Amazon is a place of adventure, a setting for stories whose imaginative events ignore the region’s anthropology, history and indigenous cultures. Among the early Brazilian Amazonian adventure …