Short stories
Strange Forces
Las fuerzas extrañas
Leopoldo Lugones · 1906
Opening lines
No éramos sino tres amigos. Los dos de la confidencia, en cuyo par me contaba, y el descubridor de la espantosa fuerza que, sin embargo del secreto, preocupaba ya á la gente.
We were but three friends. The two who shared the confidence, of whom I was one, and the discoverer of the dreadful force which, in spite of the secrecy, was already troubling people.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
The collection brings together twelve stories, often built on a scholar's invitation to a friend who comes to share his experiments. In “La fuerza Omega”, the power of sound is put to the test; in “Yzur”, the narrator tries to teach a monkey to speak, convinced that no scientific reason stands in the way, according to Reynaldo Riva. A gardener wants to give flowers the power to kill, and another story materialises thoughts. An essay on cosmogony in ten lessons closes the volume.
Context
The collection appeared in 1906; the official Argentine site ranks it among the precursors of the fantastic in the country. Riva recalls that it is seen there as the birth certificate of Latin American science fiction and that the final essay, published with the stories, is in dialogue with “Yzur”. It was on its release the author's least well received book; in the second edition, in 1926, he noted that some of his theories were now accepted by science.
Who it is for
Twelve short stories and an essay, in Spanish; translated twice into French, by Allia in 2016 and by Quidam.
Prizes and reception
Regarded, according to Reynaldo Riva, as the book that founded the science-fiction tale in Latin America.