On Mon, 10 Mar 1997, Umberto Rossi wrote: > Ah, did anybody know if Juenger dealt with genetic engineering in > some of his texts? >
Not come across it as such. But there's bound to be a little comment in one of the "Siebzig Verweht" volumes. > And, second, would you accept the definition of Eumeswil as > "Science-fiction novel"? (ok, we often mistrust definitions, but > sometime we have to deal with them...) > Well, as Hans-Peter Schwarz has pointed out, it was a bit with its Phonophors and total information systems, in which history can be called up as virtual reality, notions which were a little ahead of their time. To put it briefly, I would suggest that in "science-fiction" the fictional exploration of the possibilities of science is the essential feature of the genre. I do not really think that this is quite the case in "Eumeswil". On the one hand, any novel which wants to reflect on the condition of humanity/the individual within a highly technicised and media dominated society like ours, does deal in fictional terms with scientific and the technical, but "Eumeswil" does not make technical/scientific practice the centre of its interest, nor does it depend on a fictional elaboration of this practice. Rather - I would see the central axis of the novel as the struggle of Venator to assert his own self, even if only internally, in the face of political and technical domination from outside. It does offer a bleak vision of the future, but its post-histoire scenario is not essentially dependent on gizmos or fictionalised scientific theory. > (John, with "real politics" you have translated Realpolitik, didn't > you? is that a customary translation?) > Erm no. I meant "real life politics" - like elections, state affairs, the encounter with contingent situations. Realpolitik is often left as such in English and thus counts as a Fremdwort ;-) John.
