Reading Cosmos Latinos started off as an attempt by me to expand my reading repertoire and hopefully get exposed to interesting science fiction that I’d never read. By the end though, the reading experience became like eating my vegetables. Clean your plate and they are good for you. For the most part the stories selected for this anthology were ones I did not like much. A few were good. Overall the mood set by the selections was quite depressing. The best of the stories ended on hopeful notes. None except the Utopian screed that opened the volume were out and out positive experiences. One or two were ironically positive types though.
Perhaps it suffered because an academic press published the book and it’s geared toward those who want to study Spanish language literature rather than regular
readers. Everything was so serious. And depressingly political. I’m not against politics in my books unless I disagree with the politics, but a lot of the stories here just bashed you over the head with the politics to the exclusion of the story. Or it may have been the literary
aspect that put me off. I don’t know for sure.
A lot of the effect was to me cumulative. Nothing wrong with these elements in one story. But repeat them over and over and the reading becomes a slog.
The Distant Future
(1862) by Juan Nepomuceno Adorno- This isn’t really a story. It’s a description of a utopia in the future. What’s interesting isn’t so much what he sees as predictions, but instead what he sees as a reflection of his own values. In utopia, women are the weaker sex and are timid. An undefined morality rules the day. Written in 1850, it reflects that time more than it does anything else. What are the things that people then saw as evil?
On the Planet Mars
(1890) by Nilo María Fabra- A bit in a similar vein, though with an actual story. A utopian Mars discovers life on Earth and begins communicating with it.
Mechanopolis
(1913) by Miguel de Unamuno- Traveler accidentally ends up in a city of robotic souls, and doesn’t exactly like what he finds. Is technology so soul-sucking?
The Death Star
(1929) by Ernesto Silva Román- A mysterious star appears in the sky, travels to earth at the rate of one light year per second, and issues a deadly radiation as it gets closer! What will humanity do to survive??!
Baby H.P.
(1952) by Juan José ArreolaConvert your children’s vitality into a source of power.
That sentence from the first paragraph about says it all.The Cosmonaut
(1964) by Ángel Arango- A first contact story, Cuban style. In some ways it’s the same sort of hilarious miscommunication way that is a staple of first contact stories. But it does have pretty weird aliens that really do stuff not quite like I’ve read before.
The Crystal Goblet
(1964) by Jerônimo Monteiro- Scry into the future using a blue glowing crystal goblet and you may not like what humanity does with itself. Drink Coca-Cola!
A Cord Made of Nylon and Gold
(1965) by Álvaro Menén Desleal- Distraught by personal problems, an astronaut on a spacewalk cuts his tether (the cord made of nylon and gold). Then it gets weird. This one underwhelmed me.
Acronia
(1966) by Pablo Capanna- I really couldn’t follow this story. I think machines are running the world, but people think they are. Or something like that. Maybe this could be called slipstream, just because what the hell is going on is so ambiguous. Or not. I don’t know.
The Last Refuge
(1967) by Eduardo Goligorsky- A country has isolated itself from the rest of the world, kind of like North Korea. It’s to keep the country
safe
from materialism. Interspersed with a narrative about a citizen keeping forbidden photos of what the country was like ages ago, handed down in the family for years, is text from a scene where the man stands next to a spaceship, seeking escape. This is a really good story. Post-Boomboom
(1967) by Alberto Vanasco- Another story I really liked. It’s a post-apocalyptic story. I’m a sucker for those kinds of stories. This one is a little different. Instead of savage people fighting each other Mad Max style, these folks try to help each other. Only… well I’m not going to say. I think they match up well with real-life humanity. If you’ve ever worked retail before, you’ll recognize these characters.
Gu Ta Gutarrak (We and Our Own)
(1968) by Magdalena Araceli Mouján Otaño- Basques invent a time machine in order to learn the origin of the Basque people. You can probably guess where this one is going.
Future
(1970) by Luis Britto García- Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Hated that crap in school. Don’t think much of it in a story-like thing either.
When Pilate Said No
(1971) by Hugo Correa- Humans visit aliens, who have their own Christ that predicted the arrival of humans. I kind of liked this story, though the character are all ham-handed.
The Falsifier
(1972) by José B. Adolph- A take off on a historical tale of a Christ-like figure of the Andes. This kind of story works so much better if the reader has a connection to the original tale that an author uses as the basis for updating. If I wrote a story updating an apocryphal legend about Ballard, I and people from Ballard would have quite a bit better chance of connecting with the story. Those of you living in Charleston, West Virginia, your eyes would glaze over.
The Violet’s Embryos
(1973) by Angélica Gorodischer- My not finishing the story does not bode well for my upcoming (someday) reading of Kalpa Imperial. I read only eight pages and had to force myself to get that far. Its
literary
style consists of lots and lots of disconnected sentences that do not lead from one to the other. I had no idea what was going on at all. I putliterary
in quotes because I’m a firm believer that literature can be both good and not obscure. If it takes a class to understand the basic text, it’s not for me. The Brain Transplant
(1978) by André Carneiro- Another writer who eschews the science fiction label and wants to be called
literary
. You can have it! Gah.The Brain Transplant
was a little more comprehensible than Gorodischer’s story, but not by much. Brain transplants make it so you get all the sensation from someone else, which apparently unglues reality. The only thing you can trust are your own senses, according to the editor’s introduction. I suppose that’s as good an interpretation as any, because in the made up world where you feel other’s senses of this story, the writing doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.From above, an enormous head came down over the table. The professor picked up a scalpel, and with great skill and speed made an incision in the hair and opened up the bone with a small hammer to get at the brain. He inserted something down in there and pushed a pedal. The scene filled with people. There was a new baby doing number two, a nude man in the lotus position, two girls cutting each other’s public hair, and a monk, a cross painted on his chest, with an old paperback book in his hands.The professor kicked the baby, which rolled aside crying.
I’m not saying this doesn’t make sense with some explanations. Bell and Yolanda-Gavilán selected it because it has meaning to them. But I don’t have a degree in literature, so this sort of thing requires some background I don’t have. The Annunciation
(1983) by Daína Chaviano- This is the story I point to in my commentary on
The Falsifier
that I didn’t know I was pointing to. It’s a science fictional retelling of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary where he told her she was to be the mother of God’s child. That’s a story I know! I have a connection to it, and so the retelling is something I grok much better than I did Adolph’s story. It’s pretty fun, by the way. Maybe a little sacrilegious for devout Christians, but I approve. A Miscalculation
(1983) by Federico Schaffler- Young kid dreams of space and looks to the skies. A depressing sensawunder kind of story, if you can really combine both terms.
Stuntmind
(1989) by Braulio Tavares- Aliens have technology. We have … contentment? Slower lifestyles? Spare brainspace for sure. It’s a good exchange in this story.
Reaching the Shore
(1994) by Guillermo Lavín- A father becomes a guinea pig for his company’s product, but he gets defective implants and no one will help him. But really the story is about his kid’s adoration for dad and the lengths he’ll go to to make his dad okay. Good story.
First Time
(1994) by Elia Barceló- Another Lord of the Flies effect. Character study of future kid in a society with no morals. Violent and depressing.
Gray Noise
(1996) by Pepe Rojo- This one was pretty inventive. Media companies hire reporters to record first hand the news events of the day, with their eyes. In return for paying for the ocular recording implant operation, the companies get first dibs on six hours of footage every day. Really good.
Glimmerings on Blue Glass
(1996) by Mauricio-José Schwarz- Investigators look for people who are only pretending to be dumb in a future anti-union economy, because employers don’t want smart people who will just rabble-rouse and want more. But the investigators have to be smart to do their job.
The Day We Went through the Transition
(1998) by Ricard de la Casa and Pedro Jorge Romero- Time travel special ops team has to go back in time to fix disruptions to history. That whole thing has been done to death. But the love story between two of the operatives is kind of interesting.
Exerion
(2000) by Pablo A. Castro- Eternal life through video games.
Like the Roses Had to Die
(2001) by Michel Encinosa- Gave up on this one ten pages in. No clue what was going on in this absurdist riff.
Title: Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain
Editors: Andrea L. Bell, Yolanda Molina-Gavilán
Cover creator: Raúl Cruz
Imprint / publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Format: Paperback
Length: 330 p.
Publication date: 2003
ISBN-10: 0-8195-6634-9
Subject: Science fiction, Latin American — Translations into English
Subject: Latin American fiction — 20th century — Translations into English
Subject: Science fiction, Spanish — Translations into English
Subject: Spanish fiction — 20th century — Translations into English
LC classification: PQ7087.E5C67 2003
