16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant early science fiction/horror tales, October 26, 2006
This review is from: Strange Forces (Paperback)
I decided to take a chance on Leopoldo Lugones' "Strange Forces" when the title popped up in Amazon's list of recommended books for me. It was advertised as a 1906 collection of short science fiction/horror pieces from an Argentine writer that I will admit I had never heard of. I was hoping to be "surprised by joy" (C.S. Lewis' term) as I had been a few years ago when I took a chance on Stefan Grabinski's collection of short horror masterpieces "The Dark Domain".
I was not disappointed. The twelve stories in "Strange Forces", skillfully translated by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert, are a unique mixture of science fiction and horror tales that I found to be highly individual and imaginative, especially considering their early vintage. They are not so much precursers of the "magic realism" school that began to emerge in South American literature 20 years after these stories were written, as they are short gems of rather grim speculative fantasy in the vein of H.G. Wells, Erckman-Chatrian, Briusov, Marcel Schwob, or Gustav Meyrinck's short stories. They were equivalent to these works in merit as well, which is saying something.
Two of the stories, "The Firestorm" and "The Pillar of Salt" are apocolyptic fantasies presenting first hand accounts of scenes from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Both are thought provoking and atmospheric. "The Miracle of Saint Wilfred" is a fantasy of the first crusade, and "The Horses of Abdera" recounts a full revolt of a herd of pampered horses against Thracian townsfolk in the time of ancient Greece. Five of the stories are pure science fiction, telling of brilliant scientists and their strange discoveries and/or inventions which, in the thematic tradition of "Frankenstein", usually prove fatal to their discoverers. One such machine transforms music to corresponding colors, while my favorite of this group, "The Omega Force", tells of a device which amplifies sound into a deadly force that can deconstruct matter (note to scientists - include an aiming device when inventing weapons of incredible destructive power!). The scientist protagonists of this group of stories uniformly describe the theories behind their machines and the actual workings of them in mystical/scientific terms which in itself is fascinating.
"Yzur" is a heartbreaking little tale of a man obsessed with teaching his pet ape to speak and the theory he develops about apes and language which is stunningly confirmed at the story's conclusion. "Origins of the Flood" is the most imaginative piece in the collection. Predating by decades the speculative mega-fantasies of Olaf Stapledon about the origins and history of man and the universe, this story recounts the progression of life on earth before the great flood introduced water to the planet. The creative splendor of these strange, intelligent life forms and the global catastrophe that caused their extinction provides for an intense imaginative experience condensed into 7 short pages.
Lugones was brilliant, articulate, and highly educated. These stories can be read as specimens of early prototype "science fiction by gas light", as entertaining wonder tales, or as the unique expression of a creative artist clothing universal truths in the habiliments of speculative fantasy. The stories succeed on all of these levels.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Scientists Gone Wild: Leopoldo Lugones & the Perils of Being a Crank, December 31, 2008
This review is from: Strange Forces (Paperback)
Judging by the personal descriptions of author Leopoldo Lugones that translator Gilbert Alter-Gilbert offers up in his introduction to Strange Forces, Lugones was kind of a crank. I have no problem with that; I like cranks, even ones who are "inflexibly doctrinaire," "histrionic, vain, and precocious from infancy," and a "systematic bore," or who pal around with military cabals and oligarchs and change philosophical and religious ideologies as if they were underwear. It's all forgivable--provided one can produce superb fiction. And though it's admittedly unfair to judge Lugones on the basis of one collection of short stories--even a collection that had a significant influence on Borges--I came away from Strange Forces more bored by the crank than awed by the author.
Strange Forces contains 12 stories, and it's a qualitatively motley group, short on humor and atmosphere and long on pedantic, quasi-scientific theorizing. Unlike Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Allan Poe, or similar authors to whom he's been compared, Lugones is more interested in postulating occult theories than in setting a mood that might just make those theories believable. The result is that many stories in Strange Forces contain an exhaustive setup and short anticlimax. In his introduction, Alter-Gilbert tries to place the by-now threadbare mantle of "prescience" on Lugones' shoulders by ascribing to him an anticipation of the "destructive potential of science," despite the fact that the same thing is said of virtually every science fiction author from Verne to Huxley. Such authors can keep their prescience. I'd rather have a little pleasure.
So what is there to like about Strange Forces? Well, The Pillar of Salt, the book's penultimate story, was the only piece that made me "read with my spine," as Nabokov has so nicely put it. It's about an aged Armenian monk and his encounter with a pilgrim who suggests the potential redemption of Lot's wife. Viola Acherontia, the tale of a gardener who wants to create a "flower of death," carries its pseudo-scientific setup to a creepy conclusion. And the final story, Psychon, features a startlingly whimsical and genuinely funny ending in which a little subconscious lunacy creeps out from beneath the intellectual decadence.
Ultimately, my impression was that Lugones, who took his own life after being spurned by an "immortal girl" 30 years his junior, was in love with the sound of his own voice--or more precisely, the cleverness of his own thoughts. Then again, perhaps he was just a true believer, madly (and I do mean madly) trying to convince his audience of the likelihood of his latest theory. As Alter-Gilbert writes, "The difference between Lugones and other authors in this line was that for Lugones, his notions of supernatural operations and secret forces were not merely framing devices or dramatic pretexts on which to hang his stories, but actual verities; confirmed truths to which he wholeheartedly subscribed." If so, then God help Gomorrah.
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