Reviews and Comments

(em português → sol2070.in/2024/10/conto-spill-cory-doctorow/ )

‘Spill’ (2024, 111 pgs.) is a contemporary cyberpunk novella set in the universe of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother series.

As a fan of the trilogy(1), I was delighted to have hacker-activist Marcus back, as well as protest organiser Tanisha, a character from ‘Attack Surface’ (2020), the third volume.

Over the course of the series, Marcus grows up - the first two volumes are aimed at young people, and in the third, he's already an adult. In ‘Spill’, in his spare time between freelancing as a digital security consultant, Marcus sets up a mighty personal server in a hacker friend's datacenter, which ironically ends up hacked and hijacked as a vector for ransomware attacks.

In a parallel story that intertwines, a civil disobedience movement protesting the fossil fuel corporations wreaking havoc in California is being accused of terrorism and cyber-attacks, suffering brutal violence and repression.

It's a page-turning thriller about activism, climate emergency and hacking, intelligently, engagingly and inspiringly reflecting the dystopia we're entering.

Read online: reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/ Buy: torpublishinggroup.com/spill/

(1) In addition to the Little Brother Trilogy, there are three other smaller stories that I haven't read yet: Lawful Interpetion (2013), Force Multiplier (2020) and Vigilant (2024).

(em português, com links → sol2070.in/2024/10/utopia-ursula-le-guin-always-coming-home/ )

"Always Coming Home" (1985, 640 pgs.) is Ursula K. Le Guin's most ambitious novel, which took her five years to complete. The format is a collection of documents, illustrations and anthropological studies on the Kesh people, inhabitants of valleys in northern America thousands of years in the future. The complete edition was even accompanied by a cassette tape, as if they were recordings of Kesh songs and ceremonies.

In this future, the current civilisation was lost so long ago that it has been almost completely forgotten -- all that remains are sparse myths and legends about environmental catastrophes (the effects of which are still being felt) and self-annihilation.

The Kesh people are presented both through the reproduction of their own literature (biographies, novels, poetry...), art and religion (a kind of natural pantheism), and in the description of the elements of their culture by a visiting anthropologist. It is implied that the Kesh culture is exotic and isolated, compared to the people of this anthropologist narrator and the supposed readers of the study, who seem to have a sensibility not very different from ours.

As in the more harmonious societies of Le Guin's other stories, these people are free in the anarchist sense: there is no authority or hierarchy, but rather the self-organisation seen in nature itself. There is some high-tech here and there -- including AI -- but overall it's a fairly low-tech and natural society.

For those who appreciate the work of the visionary writer, it's a feast, as it describes in detail the most complete utopia she imagined.

The plot part is in the autobiography of a woman, whose name changes throughout her life, divided into three parts, in the chapters referred to as ‘Stone Telling’. The character is linked to an aggressive invading people, and her dramas revolve around her conflicting alliances. It's a gripping and grand story, spanning a lifetime, that can be read independently of the rest -- it takes up half the book.

The other parts of the book, on the other hand, greatly expand the understanding and appreciation by detailing the entire cultural context of this other world. There are things as minute -- but significant -- as, for example, the explanation of why the Kesh don't know the meaning of the word ‘pets’, using ‘commensal’ instead; or how the concept of ‘person’ is not restricted to humans.

I confess that I haven't read 100% of this extra material -- Ursula herself writes in the introduction that the appendices are optional. I followed Samuel R. Delany's (another acclaimed speculative fiction writer) tips on the essential parts of the book, which he commented on at the time of its release in 1985. An extract from his effusive review:

“Always Coming Home is a slow, rich read, full of what one loves most in her work: a liberal utopian vision, rendered far more complex than the term ‘utopian’ usually allows for by a sense of human suffering. This is her most satisfying text among a set of texts that have provided much imaginative pleasure in her 23 years as an author..”

For me, although it wasn't her most engaging book, it was the most fascinating and profound, requiring re-reading in order to be better absorbed.

"Limite de Caracteres – Como Elon Musk destruiu o Twitter" (Character Limit, 2024, 488 pgs.) é um livro-reportagem sobre o X/Twitter, focado em sua tomada por Elon Musk, escrito pela dupla de repórteres de tecnologia do New York Times, Kate Conger e Ryan Mac.

Adorei a leitura por desmistificar a suposta genialidade desse bilionário. Na biografia autorizada de Musk, de Walter Isaacson, ele é quase endeusado dessa maneira. Já em Limite de Caracteres, aparece como alguém que nutre uma ideia extremamente inflada de si, alienado da realidade, que não admite ouvir “não” e que basicamente não tem ideia do que está fazendo.

Sabe aquela pessoa que imagina estar cercada de idiotas e que a única maneira de fazer algo bem feito é mostrando aos “idiotas” como fazer? A sucessão ininterrupta de trapalhadas narrada no livro acaba sendo hilária porque Musk parece viver 100% nesse tipo de fantasia, sem desconfiar que o idiota talvez seja ele mesmo.

Por exemplo, tendo que mudar um datacenter de lugar, ele não se conforma com os cuidados que precisam ser tomados e o tempo que levaria. Então, decide ele mesmo, com um sobrinho e outros seguidores, enfiar os servidores em caminhões e fazer a mudança. O resultado foi meses de lentidão e falhas no serviço em todo o mundo, até conseguirem consertar a mudança mal feita.

Musk basicamente tenta restruturar o Twitter seguindo a mesma fórmula — de cortes radicais, e ideias espontâneas — com que administra suas outras empresas, “afinal, (o Twitter) é só um site que rola para baixo”. Imagina que seria uma tarefa simples, mas falha miseravelmente, vez após outra. Chega a dar dó de tamanha falta de noção e alienação.

Uma personagem da história também simplifica as empresas do bilionário, dizendo algo como: “A SpaceX é uma questão de física; a Tesla, de fabricação; mas a lógica do Twitter é psicológica e social”. Talvez seja por isso que ele não consegue acertar uma, além do fato de ele mesmo ser um viciado terminal em ficar postando e conferindo reações na plataforma.

Em certo momento, ele não se conforma de que o número de visualizações de cada tweet seu caiu de 20 milhões para seis milhões. Marca reuniões de emergência, demite quem insinua que as pessoas podem estar perdendo interesse nele e termina alterando o algoritmo para que todo mundo que usa a plataforma veja seus tweets. No final, foi mais ou menos para isso que ele pagou o preço inflado de 44 bilhões de dólares — hoje, a empresa desvalorizou 80%.

Uma qualidade do livro é se ater ao formato de reportagem, a dupla de autores evita ficar tecendo comentários. Cada fracasso é descrito de forma até que bastante objetiva, do ponto de vista das pessoas próximas ou que trabalhavam na empresa.

Jamais imaginei que leria uma biografia — muito menos duas! — de Musk. Mas é um personagem tão emblemático da atual distopia — em que existem milhões de fãs de produtos, corporações e até de bilionários — que não resisto.

Li a versão em inglês do livro, cuja tradução será lançada nos próximos dias.

(texto integral com links, em português → sol2070.in/2024/09/livro-playground-richard-powers/ )

"Playground" (2024, 400 pgs.) by Richard Powers was one of the books I was most looking forward to. After all, "The Overstory" was probably the best fiction I've ever read -- I wrote about this last year and it still holds up.

It didn't disappoint. It's magnificent speculative fiction (bordering on science fiction), now forming the author's ecological trilogy, with "The Overstory" (2018) and "Bewilderment" (2021). Instead of the word ‘ecological’, he prefers the term ‘trilogy about belonging to the world’, in the sense that it goes against the dominant narrative that humans, because of a supposed superiority, are practically beyond nature and can then do whatever they want with it. This is at the root of the current environmental emergency. In these books, nature is not something separate, a backdrop or a source of resources. It is the protagonist. Nature doesn't belong to us; on the contrary, we belong to her.

As one reviewer put it, what "The Overstory" does with trees -- many people felt transformed and began to actually recognize nature -- "Playground" does with the ocean. But it's a book with a smaller focus and a less expansive narrative arc, which interconnects four characters (there were nine in the first book).

The plot revolves around the (real) island of Makatea, in Micronesia, a region of archipelagos between the Philippines and Hawaii. Trying to recover from the mining that devastated it last century, and faced with rising sea levels, its small community receives a proposal for re-industrialisation, to build a floating city for a group of techno-billionaires who want to escape regulations and taxes.

Another central theme is information technology and the life of a techno-billionaire. We follow the character Todd Keane from his teenage years in the 1970s to his transformation into an omnipotent Muskian tech-bro. I felt a little divided by the sympathy this billionaire arouses, but on second thoughts, perhaps a humanised portrait of megalomania is worth more than a simplistic condemnation.

As Powers was a programmer before turning to fiction, computers are a constant in his stories. In addition to the biosphere, a parallel and central theme is artificial intelligence. There's no way of commenting too much without spoiling, but I can say that it was one of the best portrayals of this I've seen in fiction, including a bewildering twist.

It's also a book about an intense and touching friendship (practically a ‘bromance’), that of this billionaire with another displaced genius, only more traumatised, a black boy with whom he became inseparable at school.

Although the author wanted to make nature touch the heart in the same way as human drama, I personally felt that people were more moving in this book. Another difference is that the ecological message is less incisive. It's there all the time, but it leaves the initiative to be indignant more to the reader. Perfect dosage.

I compare it so much to the first book because it made such an impression on me. But "Playground" is totally independent, and may even work better for certain audiences, such as young people, due to its more sci-fi feel, and its open-ended conclusion, without a very definite ‘moral of the story’.

Its optimistic tone is also a relief from the apocalyptic tones prevalent in ecological fiction. In interviews, he explained the logic of this optimism, which is far from the naïve Pollyannaism of imagining that everything will end well: humans are not the main characters, life on Earth is the protagonist; this natural process has always coped well, with infinite creativity, even in the face of the greatest planetary catastrophes. In other words, whatever happens to us humans, the greater life will take care of itself, as she always has.

(texto completo, em português → sol2070.in/2024/09/crise-ecologica-reconstru%C3%A7%C3%A3o-sociedade-murray-bookchin-the-next-revolution/ )

"The Next Revolution" (2015) brings together articles from the 1990s and 2000s by the influential revolutionary author Murray Bookchin. As the subtitle says, it's about direct democracy and popular assemblies.

After abandoning socialism, the american Bookchin became one of the most influential anarchist authors in the 60s. In the 1990s, he also distanced himself from anarchism - not because he disagreed with its principles, but because he felt trapped by others' definitions of the movement and the resulting accusations.

As this is a book that brings together articles from his final phase, the ideas have the flavour of a synthesis of a life dedicated to revolutionary thought, which he condensed into what he called ‘social ecology’. His revolutionary theory is ‘municipalism’, with an undeniably anarchist flavour.

Legendary writer Ursula K. Le Guin writes in the book's introduction:

‘Murray Bookchin spent a lifetime opposing the rapacious ethos of grow-or-die capitalism. The nine essays in this book represent the culmination of that labour: the theoretical underpinning for an egalitarian and directly democratic ecological society, with a practical approach for how to build it. He criticises the failures of past movements for social change, resurrects the promise of direct democracy and, in the last essay in this book, sketches his hope of how we might turn the environmental crisis into a moment of true choice-a chance to transcend the paralyzing hierarchies of gender, race, class, nation, a chance to find a radical cure for the radical evil of our social system. Reading it, I was moved and grateful, as I have so often been in reading Murray Bookchin. He was a true son of the Enlightenment in his respect for clear thought and moral responsibility and in his honest, uncompromising search for a realistic hope.’

To summarise roughly, municipalism is a theory of radical but gradual and non-violent change in societies based on small communities adopting the political model of direct democracy, in which the people themselves decide what is best for them, rather than voting for rulers and delegated parties to decide. The results of implementations of this model around the world have proved to be much more satisfactory for the communities involved. Based on this effectiveness, the model could gradually and exponentially expand into a federation of associated self-managed communities.

Below is one of the articles, which links the environmental crisis - which he already recognised as a catastrophic threat in 1992 - with the urgency of a political model beyond socialism (and, of course, capitalism).

In the book, this text comes after the chapter detailing the workings of municipalism, also called ‘communalism’; it is therefore more focussed on discussing the failings of merely reformist, or authoritarian and hierarchical models.

Perhaps in the future I'll also reproduce the chapter on municipalism.

( sol2070.in/2024/09/livro-ubik-philip-k-dick/ )

Desculpem o título, mas foi o que pensei após sentir certa decepção ao reler "Ubik" (1969), resistindo à primeira impressão de que o livro envelheceu mal. Depois do sucesso de "Matrix" (1999), a ideia de estarmos vivendo em uma realidade falsa virou lugar-comum — a pílula que nos faria acordar já é até símbolo de machistas reacionários “red pill”.

A visão do escritor Philip K. Dick se entranhou de tal maneira na cultura que talvez alguns de seus livros tenham perdido parte do impacto existencial. Ficou ruim por ser tão bom.

Li "Ubik" pela primeira vez na adolescência, muito antes de "Matrix". Atingiu-me tanto que considerava seu melhor livro. A releitura só não cumpriu minha exagerada expectativa, está bem longe de ser um livro ruim. Na verdade, é uma de suas histórias mais profundas política e existencialmente, após uma análise do símbolo principal, o produto Ubik, um tipo de remédio anunciado como a panaceia absoluta.

A história gira em torno de outra tecnologia, que preserva uma parte da mente após a morte, se o cadáver for encapsulado. A pessoa não sobrevive, mas também não morre, fica em um limbo — um tipo de sonho em loop — e, às vezes, pode interagir com parentes, chefes, empregados etc.

O tom de sátira é explícito, diferentemente de outros do autor, que tiram sarro de forma sutil. Por exemplo, o protagonista na penúria não tem dinheiro nem para usar a porta alugada de seu apartamento, que exige moedas para abrir e fechar (mais ou menos como tudo hoje exige uma mensalidade).

Nessa sociedade distópica, há também um embate entre telepatas ou precogs (com precognição) de corporações e as pessoas normais que contratam tecnologias para se defender dessas habilidades e manter a privacidade.

E paira uma misteriosa analogia teológica sobre o bem e o mal — a palavra “ubik” vem de “ubíquo”, um sinônimo para “onipresente” com boa carga religiosa.

Foi uma surpresa me sentir decepcionado com a atmosfera de ficção barata carregada — não senti isso nem um pouco na primeira vez que li. Mas, como já disse, boa parte se deve às ideias de Dick terem se mesclado à cultura pop.

Em todo caso, quem gosta de ficção científica mais doidona não vai se decepcionar.

( sol2070.in/2024/09/livro-ainda-estou-aqui-marcelo-rubens-paiva/ )

Em "Ainda Estou Aqui" (2015), Marcelo Rubens Paiva conta a história de sua mãe Eunice (e da doença de Alzheimer que a acometeu), do assassinato de seu pai pela ditadura brasileira, da luta pela admissão do crime pelo Estado, além de suas memórias de infância e juventude.

É uma narrativa poderosa não apenas sobre a tirania militar, mas também sobre família e trauma. Como é uma mistura de memórias com reportagem, o estilo fluído coloquial característico do autor alterna com trechos de documentos e depoimentos. Também é o livro que eu estava procurando sobre a ditadura, mais de experiência de vida do que de história. Provoca não apenas revolta, mas também gargalhadas e lágrimas.

Está sendo bastante comentado devido ao novo filme de Walter Salles — a ser lançado. Marcelo é um dos autores brasileiros que mais gosto, tinha marcado seus livros que não li e a notícia sobre a efusiva recepção que o filme ganhou no festival de Cannes fez essa obra — responsável pelo terceiro prêmio Jabuti do autor — furar a fila de leitura.

Seu livro que mais me marcou foi "Blecaute" (1986), uma história apocalíptica em que sobram três jovens em São Paulo. Foi a primeira leitura obrigatória na escola que me deixou realmente fascinado.

(original, com reprodução de entrevista → sol2070.in/2024/09/livro-parabola-do-semeador-entrevista-octavia-butler/ )

"A Parábola do Semeador" ("Parable of The Sower", 1993) talvez seja o livro mais admirado da estadunidense Octavia Butler. Além dos prêmios que recebeu há 30 anos, voltou a ser muito lido recentemente por ser, além de um ótimo romance, um dos mais vívidos retratos da catástrofe climática — boa parte da história se passa entre 2024 e 2027.

Apesar de não ser leitura fácil, está entre as melhores distopias que já li. O horror dos primeiros anos de um colapso social total devido à emergência climática e ao sistema econômico é chocante a ponto de precisar baixar o livro e respirar de tempos em tempos. Ouvi gente dizendo que não suportou e largou.

É uma predição assustadoramente plausível do que pode acontecer, incluindo até a volta da escravização — a culminação da atual piora constante das condições de trabalho apontaria para onde?

Li nesses dias uma resenha sobre outro livro — "Alerta Vermelho", de Marha Wells (está na minha lista) — em que o autor reclama do cenário de capitalismo distópico como sendo um lugar-comum pouco criativo. Ele parece preferir cenários otimistas, que ajudam a imaginar futuros mais plenos. Já eu gosto de histórias de distopias catastróficas justamente porque abrem os olhos para o presente — sem isso, não teremos a menor chance. O desconforto, ou até angústia, fazem parte. Parece-me um negacionismo sutil querer evitar o desagradável. Além disso, essas histórias retratam como as pessoas lidam com a situação. Acabam sendo bem práticas para o momento atual.

Entretanto, acho sim certa falta de imaginação aquele cenário comum em que, sem governo e polícia, as pessoas passam apenas a predar umas às outras. Isso não falta em A Parábola do Semeador. Mas como é um tempo de transição, em que os valores da civilização sendo destruída ainda não foram substituídos, faz sentido.

Na história, acompanhamos Lauren, uma adolescente com hiperempatia, a capacidade (fictícia) de sentir involuntariamente em seu corpo a dor e prazer de seres próximos. Após a comunidade murada onde vive ser destruída, ela precisa enfrentar a estrada. Ao buscar sentido, seus questionamentos acabam dando forma a uma nova filosofia-religião, em que “Deus = mudança”, ou seja, o único princípio universal é a constante transformação. Por questão de sobrevivência, pessoas vão se reunindo em torno dela, e a compaixão da comunidade que vai se formando acaba sendo uma tocante utopia dentro da distopia.

Octavia Butler disse que escreveu essa história como se fosse a autobiografia (a narração é feita em um diário, que parece reproduzir até os erros de grafia que existiriam em um original do tipo) da fundadora da religião que se disseminou pelo mundo devastado.

"A Parábola do Semeador" é o primeiro volume de uma série interrompida pela morte da autora, em 2006, após o segundo volume, "A Parábola dos Talentos". Entretanto, a história vale por si só, independentemente dos volumes que não chegaram a ser escritos.

(em português → sol2070.in/2029/08/livro-jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind/ )

"Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind" (2023), by Molly McGhee, is a stupendously sad satire that's hard to put down. Dystopian science fiction about meaningless work, depression, romance and loneliness.

The atmosphere is very reminiscent of the Brazilian classic "The Hour of the Star" (1977), by Clarice Lispector, as well as the film "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" (2004). But there's a macabre humour.

I didn't catch the spirit of it at first and abandoned it within the first twenty pages. I didn't get the tone, which seemed too derogatory: the protagonist of the title is dull and miserable in every way, and spends his time filling his mind with self-help affirmations, like the phrase that gives the book its name.

As I kept hearing praise for the book from people I trust, I gave it another go. What I hadn't picked up on was the nuance in the way the story is told (there are revelations about this at the end). No, the story doesn't make fun of the victims of hyper-capitalist misfortune, quite the opposite.

The book finally got going and I finished it in a few days. It was one of the best dystopian stories I've ever read. It ravages the heart without mercy, but there are also memorable breaths of tender beauty. When I finished the book, I kept trying to understand what had just hit me.

The protagonist, Abernathy, lives the reality of terminal indebtedness, which is now common in the USA, especially among young people. In the country that would be the richest in the world according to the GDP metric, it is common for recent college graduates not to get jobs in their fields, sometimes spending decades underemployed just to pay the interest on the debts they took out to study.

This isn't exactly the case for Abernathy, his story is even worse. But he does get a job as a ‘dream auditor’. Corporations and the government are dealing with the epidemic of mental disorders (not at all fictitious) with a new technology capable of removing the disturbing elements from their minds by invading their night-time dreams. In this way, the massive drop in productivity that threatens the economy can be reversed. By day, Abernathy sells hot dogs; by night, when he goes to sleep, he has to immerse himself in other people's nightmares and traumas.

Fiction with a visceral political critique done in an exemplary way.

(em português com links → sol2070.in/2024/08/livro-sun-house-david-james-duncan/ )

A few books are more than literature, they are a major event in life. ‘Sun House’ (2023), by David James Duncan, is one of the three or four in which I've felt this.

It's a nearly 800-page epic about how a handful of people in the US, facing the various degenerations of the world in recent decades, end up converging in a natural area in the state of Montana.

I laughed a lot at the ingeniously miraculous scenes. I cried not only at major or minor calamities, but also at the transcendent melting in the reconnection with the essence of nature that permeates the story - although this sounds new age, it's far from it.

Yes, it's an intensely spiritual book, but it clashes head-on with institutions, dogmas and preaching, based more on direct experience of the lost essential dimension. For example, one of the characters - a wanderer who says ‘the fuck!’ every two sentences and spends the day interacting with random people on the street - ends up inspiring the emergence of ‘rubbish bin Catholicism’, which revives the experience of people executed or excommunicated as heretics by the Church.

All the familiar spiritual references in the book really resonated with me - although I don't write much about it here, the secular mystical experience is an essential part of my life - especially how it connects with nature and the current planetary polycrisis.

But the spirituality of "Sun House" -- which actually takes up about 30 per cent of the pages -- doesn't eclipse the rest, it runs through it. There is no shortage of romance (even love at first sight), family trauma, friendship, music and natural adventure.

In the afterword, David says that it took him 16 years to write the book:

‘Seventeen years ago, in a world in which the problems facing humanity and every living thing had overwhelmed our politics and many a politician’s sanity, I came to feel the world situation is so darkly mythic; epic; overwhelming, that only a collectively mythic and epic response stood a chance of righting the countless wrongs. But though I’d seen countless op-eds calling for a change of consciousness if humanity is to survive, I’d seen zero op-ed descriptions of what this consciousness looks, feels, tastes, sounds, and lives like as it addresses inescapable biological and spiritually realities with the love, truthfulness, and justice they demand.’

Despite the immensity of the project, this is what he has managed to do with Sun House, his third novel, after two cult countercultural bestsellers - ‘The River Why’ (1983) and ‘The Brothers K’ (1992), which I haven't read yet.

The profuse inventiveness reminded me of writers like Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon's ‘Gravity's Rainbow’, with the advantage of being an author whose political, spiritual and cultural inclinations seem perfectly aligned with my own.

It's one of those books where you come away loving the characters wholeheartedly, as if they were part of your life. Almost half of the book delves into the stories of each character and, little by little, they all become intertwined.

Towards the end, it's revealed what the ‘Sun House’ of the title is, in one of the most vividly sweeping natural pantheistic mythologies I've ever seen. The ending itself is epic enough to take to the grave.

If you read in English and are interested in nature, utopia, the search for meaning and spirituality without hauntings and institutions, all tied together in a very well-told story, ‘Sun House’ is the book.

Link to how they're praising the book → www.davidjamesduncan.com/sun-house ).

(resenha publicada em sol2070.in/2024/08/livro-a-travessia-cormac-mccarthy/ )

"A Travessia" (1994) é o segundo volume da Trilogia da Fronteira, do estadunidense Cormac McCarthy. É um dos autores que mais admiro e esse foi não só seu melhor livro que já li, como entra fácil na lista de melhores de todos os tempos.

McCarthy se consagrou com suas grandes histórias atemporais, que poderiam se passar em qualquer lugar em qualquer tempo, realçando os contornos míticos da realidade. Sabe aqueles filmes em que cada quadro é uma pintura? Ele faz o equivalente na literatura.

Os elementos principais de A Travessia são estrada, amadurecimento, violência, natureza e ruína humana. Se passa na fronteira entre EUA e México, nos anos 40. Uma loba fora do lugar — a espécie estava extinta na região — perturba os arredores de uma fazenda de gado, e um adolescente é encarregado de caçá-la. Esse é o fator que desencadeia uma série de andanças pelas ruínas da Revolução Mexicana e a conflagração completa de sua vida. É aquela história humana primordial: um problema bate na porta e ao sair para tentar resolver a situação, aprende-se um tanto enorme sobre o que é o mundo.

O talento único de McCarthy que o distinguiu como um dos maiores autores norte-americanos do século 20 é esculpir narrativas, desde o nível de frases e (ausência de) vírgulas, que evocam a dimensão lendária da existência humana.

Ao mesmo tempo que é literatura no estado da arte, envolve completamente, quase como um vira-páginas.

A transmissão é feita nas entrelinhas das frases lapidares. Por exemplo, a loba. O rapaz sente um temor fascinado por tudo o que ela encarna. É um portal encantado como a baleia de Moby Dick. Isso está na coração do protagonista, é como ele enxerga o mundo, um anseio ancestral. Em nenhum momento ele diz nada a respeito, mas não há dúvida sobre isso.

Havia lido o primeiro volume da trilogia, "Todos os Belos Cavalos" (1992), há 25 anos. Era muito diferente do que costumava ler — ficção científica e beatniks — e, apesar de ter sentido o poder da história, devo ter capturado só uns 30% da beleza. Vou reler. São livros para a vida toda.

(em português → sol2070.in/2024/07/death-by-landscape-elvia-wilk-ficcao-era-da-extincao/ )

"Death by Landscape" (2022) brings together essays by New York-based author and novelist Elvia Wilk. Most of them are about one of my favourite themes in speculative fiction, the merging of people with their environment. The description on the back cover adds: ‘a book of “fan nonfiction” about living and writing in the age of extinction’.

There are two or three essays at the end, out of a total of 13, that I skipped -- for example, one on virtual reality and a chronicle of isolation during Covid. But I loved the rest.

The book's title is the same as a short story by Margaret Atwood, famous for "The Handmaid's Tale". In this story, a girl inexplicably disappears in a forest grove. Over the years, her best friend becomes increasingly haunted by signs that the missing girl has merged in an extraordinary way with the forest landscape. This is the theme of many of the essays. The interdependence between humans and nature is a primordial fact that is not new, but is often overlooked. In recent decades, the theme has become increasingly relevant in the cultural imagination, due to the era of environmental collapse that we are entering. As we are inseparably integrated with nature, the catastrophe is also the great human collapse.

The presence of this theme at the forefront of speculative fiction is a sign of this crucial transition in the stories we tell.

The articles alternate between literary and film criticism, autobiographical reminiscences and even hagiographic analysis (hagiography is the biography of mystics). I especially liked it because many of the books and films analysed -- most of them science fiction -- are among my all-time favourites.

I love Jeff Vandermeer's novel "Annihilation" and I thought the author's essay on the work was brilliant. The connection between mystical experiences and science fiction is that visions of what used to be called God, spirit, etc., are nothing more than revelations of the unknown, the deep mystery of reality. One of the author's specialities is the lives of medieval women visionaries. For example, the Englishwoman Juliana of Norwich, the first woman credited as the author of a book: "Revelations on Divine Love", from the 14th century. She confined herself in a cell and had full contact with an extraordinary reality that she identified as the Christian deities (I also have this book, which I consider to be highly psychedelic literature).

Christian vocabulary was the only thing that people immersed in this kind of culture had to describe ‘first contact experiences’, as the author says. Essentially, it's not so different from the phenomenon of the "Annihilation" story, or legends of natural ‘paganism’.

Elvia Wilk has also written a highly praised sci-fi dystopian novel (which I haven't read): "Oval" (2019).