Vacation Stories: FIVE SCIENCE FICTION TALES [Hardcover]

Santiago Ramon y Cajal (Author), Laura Otis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 2001

A world-famous neurobiologist, Santiago Ramn y Cajal won the Nobel Prize for his scientific research in 1906. The previous year, he published these stories: five ingenious tales that take a microscopic look at the nature, allure, and danger of scientific curiosity. Ramn y Cajal waited almost twenty years to publish these stories because he feared they would compromise his scientific career. Featuring the cutting-edge science of the mid-1880s (microscopy, bacteriology, and hypnosis), they probe the seductive power that proceeds from scientific knowledge and explore how the pursuit of such knowledge alternately redeems and ensnares humanity. Here revenge is disguised as research and common fraud as moral purification. Critical thought vies with moribund tradition and stifling religion for a hold on the human spirit; rigid divisions of class and wealth dissolve before the indiscriminate assault of microbes. One man's faith in science gives him the tools to outwit superstition and win the true love and happiness for which he has sacrificed. Another's bitterness and disillusion are cured by a supernatural intervention that melds the epiphany of A Christmas Carol with the macabre detail of an Edgar Allan Poe story.Now available for the first time in English, Ramn y Cajal's stories reveal a great deal about human nature and the collusion of ambition and greed that prey on the hapless and thoughtless, whether in the name of science, religion, or the state. Laura Otis, whose dual background in literature and science echoes that of the author, has crafted a sparkling translation that captures the wit and imagination of the original.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Newly translated by Laura Otis, these five wordy, didactic stories, first published in 1905 under the pseudonym "Dr. Bacteria" by Spanish neurobiologist Cajal (who would later win a Nobel Prize for medicine), are both intensely philosophical and heavy-handedly satiric. They feature a series of brilliant and often unlikable scientist protagonists. In "For a Secret Offense, Secret Revenge," a bacteriologist named Dr. Forschung (whose name translates as "research") becomes enraged when his beautiful and much younger wife begins a flirtation with his lab assistant and arranges to have them both secretly infected with tuberculosis. In "The Fabricator of Honor," another scientist, Dr. Alejandro Mirahonda, convinces the population of an entire city that he has an antitoxin that "has the singular property of tempering the activity of nervous centers where the antisocial passions reside." Inoculation, he claims, will make it impossible for anyone to act in an immoral fashion. Cajal uses his stories to play with a variety of what were at the time cutting-edge scientific theories and to push a variety of philosophical and political ideas. A liberal by the standards of his day, he was nonetheless both a decided misogynist and an anti-Semite. At times rather unpleasant, these stories are of some historical importance, but are unlikely to be of interest to anyone but academics.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Stories focus on the uses and misuses of science as it affects both the scientists and their families and contemporaries... Ramn y Cajal was himself an eminent scientist who retained a faith in the scientific method and its potential for progress if properly used. Otis translates these stories skillfully, giving the flavor of the author's convoluted 19th-century Spanish, high diction, and technical terms without allowing his style to overwhelm the reader." -- Choice "Explores the allure and danger of scientific curiosity in these tales first published in 1905, a year before [Ramn y Cajal] was awarded the Nobel Prize." -- Discover Magazine "The translator has done a remarkable job of translating nineteenth-century Spanish into twenty-first century English, making these works accessible to the modern non-Spanish reader... Should be read for the insight it provides tino the mind of one of history's most important neuroscientiests." -- Daniel E. Greenblatt, Journal of the History of Neurosciences "Many aspects [of these stories] have a disturbingly perennial relevance, not least the deliberate use of bacterial contamination for revenge. Cajal's target is less the marvels and methods of science than the minds and machinations of scientists, and there is stringent criticism of those who manipulate scientific knowledge to dehumanize and suppress ignorant people. At the same time, science, used benevolently, represents Cajal's only faith for the future of humanity." -- Roslynn Haynes, Bulletin of Historical Medicine ADVANCE PRAISE "Those in the scientific world who know him only though his scientific works will find a different Cajal in the Vacation Stories: less constrained by the formulaic demands of anatomical description typical of the era in which he wrote, and at liberty to indulge wit and flights of fancy that, while commonly showing through in his scientific works, are here unbounded... Laura Otis has done a fine job of producing a readable and at times racy account which preserves much of the lan of the original." - Edward G. Jones, director, Center for Neuroscience, University of California at Davis "Fascinating reading ... Laura Otis provides a superb introduction to Cajal's visual thinking as well as to the relationship between his creative writing and his science. Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended to anyone interested in neuroscience or the thinking of this great neuroanatomist!" - Hugh R. Wilson, York University, Toronto

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (April 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252026551
• ISBN-13: 978-0252026553
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,350,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Science-oriented fiction, not science fiction, November 7, 2010

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wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vacation Stories: FIVE SCIENCE FICTION TALES (Paperback)

Ramón y Cajal wrote Advice for a Young Investigator, an inspiring work written when the Nobel winner was at the peak of his powers. When I found out he had written fiction, too, I couldn't help my curiosity. Unfortunately, that part of his work hasn't aged nearly as well.

Rather than 'science fiction' in the usual sense, these are just fictions featuring scientists. In one, the lead character works with dangerous pathogens, BL3 in modern terms, and uses them in a bizarre revenge. Another features a dialog between an ineffectual man regretting his education in classics and religion, and a successful, free-thinking, humanitarian, and patriotic scientist. Although I live in the technical world too, and am proud to do so, this came across as a bit ham-handed. Even these stories (and the other three, as well) could have been enjoyable if the writing didn't tend toward half-page sentences and two-dimensional characters.

Another ten or so of Ramón y Cajal's stories were destroyed in a fire during his lifetime. Having seen these, I can't call it a loss. I'm still interested in his other non-fiction. Now that I've read both, I can say with certainty that his strength lies in the non-fiction.

- wiredweird