Reflexionando sobre la vida y la muerte con "Kaleidoscope" de Bradbury

Mi versión de Kaleidoscope, de Bradbury. Intervención digital fotográfica.

Como contaba en el post anterior acerca de mis comienzos con el ereader, uno de los primeros libros que pasé desde mi PC es The Illustrated Man, o El Hombre Ilustrado de Ray Bradbury, y estoy sintiendo el placer de leerlo por segunda vez y con muchos años de diferencia.

Esta serie de cuentos fue mi primer contacto con Ray Bradbury, y bastó para que lo adorara, aunque sus últimos trabajos no me han atrapado.

Lo bueno del paso del tiempo, es que la lectura es distinta y nuestras interpretaciones, también. Cuando  leí el cuento Kaleidoscope o Calidoscopio, lo que registré en mi memoria fue la conversación -amigable- de dos hombres que caían en el espacio, hacia su muerte, y pensé, qué diría uno al saber que sólo le resta una hora de charla. Pero, a mis quince años, sin mayores preocupaciones, no reparé en que el cuento iba más allá de eso.

Un cohete explota en el espacio, y su tripulación, (alrededor de una docena de astronautas), cae a toda velocidad, mientras se van separando a miles de millas de distancia. Aún pueden intercomunicarse, tal vez por una hora. Uno caerá en Plutón, otro quedará atrapado en un calidoscopio de meteoritos, otro terminará en la luna, y uno solo, Hollis, atravesará la atmósfera de la tierra y arderá.

En esa ¨charla,¨ hay quien grita desesperado, hay acusaciones, resignaciones, disculpas. Lo más importante son las palabras que cruzan Hollis y Lepere. Éste último, había disfrutado la vida, tenía dinero, mujeres en distintos planetas, ansias por hacer cosas. Mientras que Hollis, se reconoce como un hombre temeroso, aislado de la sociedad, cauteloso, celoso. Cuando Lepere cuenta sus anécdotas de vida, Hollis, maliciosamente, le dice que al fin de cuentas, ambos morirán. Pero Lepere tiene hechos para contar, mientras que  Hollis tiene sólo sus pensamientos y deseos; uno ha estado lleno de vida, el otro, ha sido un muerto en vida. 

El reconocimiento de esta situación, hace que Hollis reflexionara, que ya no tiene tiempo de dar marcha atrás, sin embargo, así como hay diferentes vidas, hay DESTINOS de distintas muertes, aunque la razón, sea, como en este accidente, la misma: ¨La calidad de la muerte, como la de vida, debe tener infinitas variedades, y si uno ha estado muerto ya una vez, qué queda entonces para buscar de bueno en la muerte?¨  (Mi traducción).

Finalmente, al atravesar la atmósfera, la muerte de Hollis tiene un significado importante para un niño.

Hermoso cuento, y les dejo el link para que lo lean en  un sitio on line.

http://www.scaryforkids.com/kaleidoscope-by-ray-bradbury/

How Tolkien imagined the landscape of Middle Earth

In the upcoming of The Hobbit, I'm reading at guardian.co.uk that Tolkien was an artist himself, and this is how he imagined the Middle Earth.

" Tolkien imagined his otherworld of hobbits, elves and wizards in pictures, as well as words. The Hobbit was first published in 1937. As he wrote it, in the 30s, he made beguiling pictures and designs that map and depict the landscapes through which Bilbo Baggins was to journey.

Tolkien designed the cover for that first edition of The Hobbit. It immediately promises a rich and strange world within: layers of trees in green, white and purple fold over one another towards stylized mountain peaks and the great disc of the sun. Runes are inscribed along the edges of the design. Runic writing is the script of the elves in Middle Earth – but Tolkien did not invent it. Runes were used by the Vikings to inscribe memorials and spells. The Viking connection is telling, for Tolkien's art has a Scandinavian quality. The dreamlike elegance of The Hobbit's original cover is reminiscent of modern northern European art as well as ancient Viking designs." 

Read the article in full:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/nov/29/jrr-tolkien-fine-modern-artist

First edition of The Hobbit. Cover book

The Demon-Haunted World. By Carl Sagan

I´ve only read one book by astronomer Carl E. Sagan: Cosmos, this was a gift I had from one of my best friends.

It is still inside a box in my native city, and though I have seen it many times on the bookshelves at the library, I don´t buy it again, thinking that the concepts are too old, and the amazing pictures can be better seen at Google Earth, just to start with.

Today, I´ve been reading this review by Tim Radford, the science columnist at Guardian.co.UK, here, some excerpts:

Carl Sagan. From thefamouspeople.com

¨Carl Sagan published The Demon-Haunted World in 1996, in a very different world. Cellphones were used only for phone calls and most people didn't have one; the circulations of newspapers were counted in millions and cynics said the world wide web was a passing craze. (.....)

Sagan spent most of his life taking other people seriously: he considered their fears, anxieties and obsessions; he understood the appeal of easy explanations and glib answers; and he made it his business to present the reality of the cosmos to readers and listeners in language that they could enjoy.

He did not expect people to know the facts of science – and he was conscious of science's own occasional complacencies – but he did want people to understand the substance of science: the notion that startling claims should be supported by evidence that can be tested and challenged. He enjoyed writing for the magazine Parade, which was syndicated to more than half of all US newspapers, because through it he had access to 80 million readers. He also enjoyed addressing the marvels of the world and the things ordinary Americans wanted to marvel at: these were not necessarily identical.

Many of the chapters in this book were originally written for Parade, which is why, even though we need people like Sagan more than ever, it has an oddly dated feel. This sense of being caught up in the receding past is simply explained: in the decade before the publication of The Demon-Haunted World, many Americans believed that they were at risk of alien abduction. Little green creatures with cadaverous faces might whisk them up into spaceships, penetrate their torsos and collect their vital bodily fluids before returning them to their beds in perfect condition. (....)

When this book first appeared, aliens were still reportedly creating crop circles in England and committing improper acts on mysteriously unmarked adults in America. A few years later, Ming the Merciless and his minions had boarded their flying saucers and fled: vampires and werewolves and other grisly phenomena had begun to displace aliens, joined by the psychokinetic athletes, crystal therapists, faith healers and spiritualists who feed on fascination with the unknown. (...)

After reading a book like this, scepticism seems a warm, positive thing: a tool with which to expose the real wonder of the world around us, as well as to dismiss the delusions. In the course of enjoyable dissections of human folly, he tells some lovely anecdotes. He is confident enough to tease the Dalai Lama; he is aware enough to speak knowledgeably about Leviticus, Exodus, Numbers and the Gospels; and he takes aim at embedded attitudes in American and other cultures that dismiss education and reject systematic curiosity.

His range of reference is phenomenal. In one essay he illuminates US constitutional history at the time of Thomas Jefferson; witchcraft trials of Wurzburg, Germany, in 1631; the manipulation of historic memory in Russia under Stalin (he confesses to smuggling Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR); the monopoly of media ownership; Linus Pauling and the test ban treaty of 1963; and Edward Teller's enthusiasm for the hydrogen bomb.

Nor is he afraid of going back to the things that matter, arguing in the next essay that Thomas Jefferson "believed that the habit of scepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared to the cost of ignorance, of leaving government to the wolves."

He may not always be right (he says that the word "demon" means knowledge in Greek, although the Oxford Dictionary of Etymology says it means genius, or divinity) but he is always on the right side: the side of generosity, freedom, tolerance and scholarship. (....)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/20/demon-haunted-world-carl-sagan-review

III Antología Caligrama de Cuentos de horror, Fantasía y Ciencia Ficción

Este post no es sólo para promocionar la III Antología Caligrama de Cuentos de Horror, Fantasía y Ciencia Ficción, sino también para homenajear al arquitecto Luis Roberto Makianich, quien ganara, junto con el resto de los autores, la posibilidad de publicar -por concurso- una de sus novelas cortas: Wicca. Aquelarre de Inmolación.

No he leído la Antología aún, pero sí he leído Wicca. Aquelarre de Inmolación, que es de horror psicológico. La novela trata de una mujer esquizofrénica, de la cual se supone tiene un don que es aprovechado por miembros de la religión Wicca. La mujer es raptada, se la inicia en dicha religión mientras su marido la busca desesperadamente, internándose así en ritos y reuniones que nos van mostrando cómo se desarrolla Wicca en Estados Unidos. 

Le he preguntado a Luis sobre Wicca, y me dice que está declarada religión; que él se inspiró en una historia real de un señor esquizofrénico que se había iniciado en el Espiritismo. Su objetivo, fue desarrollar una novela que muestre los posibles desenlaces de religiones que, si bien no están fundadas en la magia negra, son llevadas al extremo por el fanatismo de algunos de sus miembros. He invitado a Luis a participar del post dándones más explicaciones al respecto.

No contaré el final esta vez, sí les digo que el texto es atrapante. Y ya comentaré nuevamente sobre las demás novelas cortas cuando tenga oportunidad de leerlas.

Arq. Luis R. Makianich, 2012. Foto archivos personales