André Carneiro (1922–2014) was an all-around Renaissance man born in the small town of Atibaia, Brazil. He is regarded as Brazil’s best-known science fiction writer and was one of the founding fathers of Brazilian science fiction. But in addition he was a giant in the creative arts who gained national and international fame in many fields, including photography, film, painting, clinical hypnosis, advertising, and poetry. It is for poetry that he is best known in Brazil, having founded an influential Brazilian poetry journal along with a movement (Generation 45) and publishing his verse in influential magazines and anthologies. Some of his photography, representing the best of Brazilian modernism, is on permanent display in the Tate Modern museum in London. Among many honors, Carneiro received a medal from the French government for cultural exchange between France and Brazil and was chosen as Person of the Year in 2007 by the Brazilian Yearbook of Fantastic Literature. In 2009, he received a special award from the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and his hometown in 2014 and 2015 held a week of cultural events in his honor.
In terms of science fiction, Carneiro published several novels and many influential short stories, translated into sixteen languages. He was the first South American member to join the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He also appeared in such anthologies as The Penguin World Omnibus of Science Fiction (Penguin Books, 1986), edited by Brian Aldiss and Sam J. Lundwall, and represented Brazil in the international collaborative science fiction novel Tales from the Planet Earth (1986), edited by Frederik Pohl and Elizabeth Anne Hull.
His novella “Darkness” (1963), reprinted here, is a unique end-of-the-world story. It is considered an international classic and won the Nova, the Brazilian Hugo Award. Fans of the story included Arthur C. Clarke and A. E. van Vogt, who wrote that “Darkness” was one of the greatest science fiction stories ever written, comparing Carneiro to Kafka and Camus. The story preceded by several decades Portuguese writer José Saramago’s Blindness (1995), which shares some similarities with Carneiro’s tale with its depiction of a world where people are suddenly blind.