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 …