/lit/ - Literature

A Strange Manuscript found in a Copper Cylinder - James De Mille (1888)

This is considered to be one of the earliest works of Canadian speculative fiction and a precursor to the Lost World genre. It was published posthumously because the author was supposedly unsatisfied with its ending, which is reasonable because it's rather abrupt.

Even though this was one of the books voted for in in this second month of my ill-fated reading experiment, now ended, I strongly considered not finishing it early on several times. It's not that it's badly written, or even the racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and other derogatory material. I simply found it to be terrible satire, in both the frame story and the the story itself. It's definitely worth an "AUUUGGGHHHHH" rating. Maybe it would be tolerable if I saw as it more than contrarianism for the sake of it.

Almost of all the novel explores the idea of "What if Western Traditions were inverted?" and also what if there were dinosaurs still around. Within the context of the story, it doesn't make any sense at all. It tries to present an entirely serious satire explained in detail about their customs and general way of life, but I couldn't get past how they hadn't entirely collapsed from attrition. It's possible that the speculative ideology is the entire point, but if it is, it's maddening and I didn't care about it at all. Unfortunately it falls into several different categories that I tend to dislike.

The frame story is somewhat better metacommentary on the work itself, which they're reading aloud. It alternates between academic lecturing and literary criticism. I don't know nearly enough about literary history to say whether this was an early example of postmodernism, or if it falls into some earlier tradition. The characters speculate what others would think about the book and provide arguements both for and against possible theories. This is mildly amusing, but is irrelevant compared to how atrocious I found the rest to be.

What this made me think about the most though what how even at this time it was difficult to locate a reasonably unknown place where some previously unknown civilization could exist. I wonder if this sort of concern was a primary driver of the secondary world fiction fantasy that was to come. The world was no longer mysterious, exotic, or had a sense of wonder, so elsewhere had to be created. The concept is still used today, but it almost always entirely abandons any sense of realism or plausibility.

That also relates in a way to the racism, where a people are described in an entirely monstrous and grotesque way, and while unpleasant, shows how alien the narrator thought them to be. That too lost appeal and fantastical races and other alien sorts had to be created to approximate the the disgust that was felt. That too seems be quickly losing appeal. Perhaps it's now beliefs rather than being. That's just idle speculation on my part though.

Rating: 1/5