Vacation Stories: FIVE SCIENCE FICTION TALES [Paperback]

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

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2006

Fearing they would compromise his scientific career, neurobiologist Ramon y Cajal waited almost twenty years to publish these stories: five ingenious tales that take a microscopic look at the nature, allure, and danger of scientific curiosity. Now available for the first time in an English paperback edition, Cajal's stories reveal a great deal about the collusion of human ambition and greed that prey on the hapless, 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 written a substantial introduction that describes Cajal as a scientist and an artist. She has also 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.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"[Otis] 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.... [this book] should be read for the insight it provides into the mind of one of history's most important neuroscientists."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (May 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 025207355X
• ISBN-13: 978-0252073557
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,674 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