The figure of the artificially generated human double permeates the science fiction genre from proto-science-fictional times to the present. The methods of creation or re-creation, and the forms that the double takes, reflect the technology of the day. They also serve as a gauge of society’s reactions to that technology, and as a vehicle for further exploration of the age-old question of what makes us human. The current fascination with the clone, for example, has been incarnated in years past in the cyborg, the android, and the robot. Because the term “robot” was not coined until 1920 (by Karel Čapek in R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots), we must look even further back—to figures such as the automaton, the golem, and the homunculus, and to works such as Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” [Der Sandmann] (1816) and Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818)—to locate the literary influences on the texts discussed in this chapter: Holmberg’s “Horacio Kalibang or The Automatons” [Horacio Kalibang o Los autómatas] (1879), Alejandro Cuevas’s “The Apparatus of Doctor Tolimán” [El aparato del Doctor Tolimán] (c. 1911), and Horacio Quiroga’s The Artificial Man [El hombre artificial] (1910), “The Portrait” [El retrato] (1910), and “The Vampire” [El vampiro] (1927).1 Cultural and technological influences, particularly from the United States, also are important issues in these works. Practical North American engineering and inventions, also seen in Doctor Benignus, make multiple appearances, and the exports of Hollywood’s popular culture industry begin to gain a foothold in the Latin American imagination. In these texts on the double, we will see the modernization and the Latin Americanization of earlier Northern works as well as the transition of Latin American science fiction from a more elite, science-centered genre to one with a broader, more popular audience garnered through the increasing presence of technology in daily life.
Whereas any doubles appearing in the more fantastical texts discussed in chapter 3 are evoked through the powers of strange forces, the doubles here are produced by less overtly mysterious means. In these works of relatively hard science fiction, there are mechanically and biologically constructed doubles, revivified doubles, and two- and three-dimensional doubles reproduced or incarnated via emerging technologies. All of the scientists and inventors in these texts are men. When their creations are male, the predominant issues are generational: the creator’s own father, the creator’s self-image, or his descendance (“Horacio Kalibang,” “Doctor Tolimán,” The Artificial Man). Females are created less often; in these cases, frustrated love and subsequently stunted biological reproduction are sometimes at issue (“Horacio Kalibang”), or the story is concerned with the degree of a past or present emotional attachment (“The Portrait,” “The Vampire”).
All of these texts consider two other topics common to this subgenre: the definition of humanity and the line of separation between life and death. When the power to erase the line of demarcation between life and death is posited as achievable in a text, overtones of technophobia often ensue (though they tend to dissipate under close scrutiny), as do religious questions regarding the morality of usurping the position of God as Creator. The question of what it means to be human was also a central topic in the evolutionary tales of chapter 2, and the Latin American tendency toward Lamarckian interpretations of the laws of heredity revealed in those texts continues to appear in texts of the double. Rather than looking back along the Scala Naturae for missing links and racially based vestiges of past barbarity, however, these texts look toward the future, seeking to construct and reconstruct life forms that will imitate and improve upon humanity as we know it. An analysis of this corpus of texts reveals something of an inventor’s “to-do list.” First, make the created being look human, then make it move/function like a human. Next, in an ever-important mark of humanity, the creation must be able to speak like a human. Beyond this, it must have the capacity to reason like a human and, finally, it must possess that special ingredient, variously defined as a soul, emotion, or the experience of humanity as a species.
As a subgenre, the creation of the double is also useful for illustrating how science fiction went from being a fairly elite genre in Latin America to one more associated with popular/mass culture.2 The process in Latin America differed from that either in the United States, where a pulp tradition in science fiction developed earlier, or in Great Britain, where the persistence of the scientific romance affected the timing of the arrival of the pulp era.3 The framework that Beatriz Sarlo lays out for Argentina and the River Plate region in The Technical Imagination [La imaginación técnica] provides a valuable tool for explaining this sea change in Latin American science fiction. Sarlo describes the process by which the hegemony of the “knowledge” of science in Argentine literature and culture makes room for the “know-how” of technology and engineering (8).4 The writings of a Holmberg or a Lugones are informed by a science based in universities, libraries, and laboratories; they are associated with a discourse of ultimate but remote authority (27–29). Sarlo locates the beginning of what she calls “a new accent” in the work of Horacio Quiroga (4). Quiroga, she says, differs from writers of earlier generations in the relationship he establishes with his readers and in his relationship with science. While his mentor, Lugones, located himself in a position of authority with respect to readers (“Lugones thought himself superior to his own,” says Sarlo), Quiroga put himself on equal footing with them (2). For Quiroga, science did not reside in an ivory tower but functioned, in the form of technology, as a part of the fabric of life and of narrative:
The masterly, oracular style that Lugones used in Las fuerzas extrañas [Strange Forces] did not allow the “science” in his stories to be anything but the most superficial kind of plot element; Lugones’s poetics, like his life, remained unaffected . . . . Quiroga distinguished himself from Lugones by incorporating technology into his life, both aesthetically and pragmatically. (2)
With Quiroga we begin to have a generation of writers and readers from more diverse walks of life, for whom technology was an integral part of their daily existence. The transition from science to technology in Latin America, and elite to popular in early Latin American science fiction, is particularly clear in these science-and-technology-heavy tales of the double. These stories provide examples of modernization or “technologization” of earlier works, employing emerging and extrapolated advances in knowledge and know-how in their quest to imagine—and to question—the future of technology and of humanity.
The first Latin American writer to center a narrative on the construction of a human double was none other than Eduardo Ladislao Holmberg, in the short story “Horacio Kalibang or The Automatons.” According to Antonio Pagés Larraya, the tale was an immediate success and the original sixteen-page booklet rapidly sold out (76–78). It has remained one of Holmberg’s most frequently reprinted works. Although sales of “Horacio Kalibang” were good for the time and place, and although Holmberg wrote in multiple genres considered “popular” today, Sarlo is correct in associating both author and work with remote, elite science rather than with readily accessible popular technology. Besides the fact that Holmberg was a scientist, access to his works was still restricted to a fairly small percentage of the population, based on who could read them and who could buy them. In 1879 literacy rates in Argentina had notyet experienced the increases seen after 1884, when for the first time Law 1420 guaranteed a free education to children six to fourteen in Buenos Aires, or after 1905, when this guarantee was extended to the entire country. Likewise the Argentine middle class had yet to grow to the respectable proportions achieved around the turn of the century, which further limited Holmberg’s readership to those with the disposable income to purchase books, booklets, and magazine subscriptions.
At first glance “Horacio Kalibang” seems to be a something of a departure from Holmberg’s longer, looser works of science fiction, Nic-Nac and Two Factions. Rather than scientific debates in Buenos Aires or journeys to occasionally utopian Martian countries, here we have the case of an inventor of automatons in Germany. Despite the difference in setting and subgenre, there are clear narrative and philosophical continuities with the earlier works. If there is no marvelous journey to Mars in “Horacio Kalibang,” there is a strong element of estrangement in the work’s Germanic setting.5 If we are not presented with a utopian society in which science is valued equally with religion, we are given a glimpse of the dystopia that would result were technological, materialist tendencies taken to extremes. If there is no open debate between the Darwinists and the creationists, there is an opposition presented between those who profess themselves materialists and those of more faith-based personal philosophies. Holmberg continues to explore the question of what makes us human, though this time no clear answer—or missing link—emerges. If the influences of Verne and Flammarion are less apparent in this text, there are strong echoes of other works of early science fiction such as Shelley’s Frankenstein and Hoffmann’s “The Sandman.”
“Horacio Kalibang” is prefaced by a dedication to Dr. José María Ramos Mejía. Holmberg and Ramos Mejía had known one another since adolescence and were classmates in medical school. Holmberg dedicates the tale to his friend as an homage to Ramos Mejía’s recently published book, Cerebral Traumatism [Traumatismo cerebral] (1879). Holmberg calls the book the “delight of materialists” and accuses its detractors of desecrating “your pages of light” (“Horacio Kalibang” 147). When Holmberg acknowledges that “Those of us who write works of this genre cannot keep from giving some of the characters at least a trace of our own character” (147), he also introduces the first of the doubles in the story. There is a great deal of our author in the tale’s sentimental materialist, Burgomaster Hipknock. At the same time, there is also something Holmbergian about Hipknock’s nemesis, Oscar Baum, the mad mechanical genius. While Holmberg was an avowed supporter of what he terms the “marvelous school” [escuela formidable] of materialism (147), he does not hesitate to reveal the weaknesses of a strict adherence to materialistic tenets, with his usual sense of humor and irony.
The text begins with a dinner party at Hipknock’s home on the occasion of his daughter Luisa’s fifteenth birthday. The good burgomaster and his nephew, Lieutenant Hermann Blagerdorff, are discussing the talk of the town, one Horacio Kalibang, described as “the man who has lost his center of gravity” (151).6 Young Hermann is convinced that the existence of such a man is cause for belief in the supernatural (“I have come to understand that there are strange phenomena which human science does not explain, and which perhaps it will never be able to explain”; 148). His uncle denies the possibility of any such superstitious interpretation: “Do you presume to suspect that you are talking with a religious fanatic who is going to accept your biases that are based on convictions or on faith?” (148). He expresses an unwavering materialistic certainty based on “the truths revealed to man by his unceasing work and application to the study of nature” (148). Several puns are made by the company on the word “gravity,” so as to remind the reader of the spirit of levity that underlies this “debatable toy” [juguete discutible], as Holmberg describes the story to Ramos Mejía (147). At this point our narrator introduces himself to the reader as Fritz, another of Hipknock’s relatives. He announces that he has arrived just in time to witness the above conversation as well as the subsequent arrival of Horacio Kalibang himself.
Kalibang is described in detail. He is 1.443 meters in height, his expressionless face looks like it has come out of a “mold from a mask factory,” and his lips make the same unvarying movement no matter what words come out of his mouth (151). He has come, it seems, for no purpose other than to demonstrate his existence. Leaning at a humanly impossible angle, he declares to all present, “Nowyou see that I am not a myth,” then takes his leave (152). Burgomaster Hipknock’s materialist logic will not allow him to rest until he finds a rational explanation for Kalibang’s feat, so he sets off in pursuit. Fritz follows Hipknock at a suitably narratorial distance. Kalibang is eventually joined by Oscar Baum. Baum takes a small object from his pocket and uses it to wind up his oddly leaning companion, who repeats the same words he has uttered moments before at the dinner party. Hipknock recognizes what he is seeing and says—with the satisfaction of one whose faith in physics has been confirmed—“Horacio Kalibang, now I know that you are no more than an automaton!” (157).7
The burgomaster, after the fashion of the true materialist, believes in neither God nor the devil (he and his descendants have been excommunicated unto the fifth generation), and does not have favorable feelings “either toward spiritualists or toward clerics” (159). Still, he is something of a sentimental scientist:
He is a materialist for inescapable reasons, but he does not believe that an atheist people exists, nor that it should or can exist. “Scientific societies,” he says, “have reason on their side; the people have only sentiment on theirs; for sentiment, there is God; for sentiment, there is an immortal soul. (155)
Es materialista por la fatalidad de las razones, pero no cree que exista pueblo alguno ateo, ni que deba o pueda existir. Las sociedades científicas—dice—tienen derecho de ser la razón; el pueblo no tiene más derecho que el sentimiento; para el sentimiento hay Dios; para el sentimiento, hay un alma inmortal.
Hipknock’s attitude toward Christianity (and religion in general) is not that of either the traditional believer or the nonbeliever. Like Nic-Nac (and, likely, Holmberg), he might say he interprets such matters “in my own way” (Nic-Nac 97).
Baum invites Hipknock to view his automatons. In his letter of invitation, Baum states that nationalism and a competitive spirit have been motivating factors in his work, declaring that “the latest discoveries of Edison have wounded my national pride” and that these discoveries have also inspired him to design “an independently functioning brain” [un cerebro con funciones propias] (158).8 The burgomaster expresses no surprise at the news of Baum’s daring aspirations. During the visit Baum intimates that he can not only build a brain but also a soul, asking “What is the brain but a great machine, whose exquisite springs move by virtue of impulses transformed thousands and thousands of times? What is the soul but the combination of those mechanical functions?” [Qué es el cerebro, sino una gran máquina, cuyos exquisitos resortes se mueven en virtud de impulsos mil y mil veces transformados? ¿Qué es el alma, sino el conjunto de esas funciones mecánicas?] (161). The burgomaster is unfazed, “I am a materialist, and your words are neither frightening nor news to me” (161).
However, Hipknock does value the ability to differentiate between an automaton, or constructed being, and a human, a being “created” in the Judeo-Christian tradition. At Baum’s factory, the automatons put on a series of tableaux mécaniques for the delectation of Hipknock and the narrator. The pièce de résistance is a representation of the previous night’s dinner party, with each guest portrayed by a perfect copy. During the visit, Fritz immediately discerns that, in addition to the admittedly mechanical performers, the doorman and two different Oscar Baums also are automatons. The burgomaster, on the other hand, is unable to tell that his hosts are not human beings until the first Oscar Baum’s leg falls off (due to technical difficulties) and the second removes his own arm. Fritz attributes this lack of discrimination to the fact that Hipknock is “somewhat shortsighted” (160).
The burgomaster’s initial confusion between humans and mechanical doubles only grows worse once the first automatons are revealed:
“If these are automatons, it must be confessed that they do not differ very much from us,” said Hipknock.
“If the burgomaster will permit me,” observed Baum, “I would invert the proposition.” (162)
Two pages later, Hipknock’s befuddlement is complete. The burgomaster declares: “Whether it is they who are the automatons or whether it is we who are, I do not know” (164). Another automaton then emerges, offering a more oblique version of the standard Holmbergian warning against mob violence: “I am not only the greatest of the automatons, I am all of humanity, and when humanity speaks with force, reason is the most insignificant of children’s toys” (164). The automaton answers some of Hipknock’s questions, revealing that Baum has been manufacturing automatons for quite some time, that they have infiltrated human society throughout the world, and that this infiltration, combined with Baum’s newest technology, represents a threat to humanity. “When what you call their winding-up and what our leader calls their ability has run out, they will return to receive new power, and then, Burgomaster, then . . . good night” [Cuando se les acabe lo que ustedes llaman la cuerda, y que nuestro conductor llama su habilidad, volverán a recibir nuevas fuerzas y entonces, señor burgomaestre, entonces . . . buenas noches] (164, ellipsis in the original). By the time Hipknock and Fritz leave, confusion is turning to paranoia: “Could Fritz be an automaton?’ the burgomaster asks himself. ‘Could the burgomaster be an automaton?’ I ask myself” (165).
In the final scene, the wedding banquet of Luisa Hipknock and Herman Blagerdorff, the burgomaster seems to have gone over the edge. He asks the guests if any of them are automatons: “They all looked at each other: some because they did not know what an automaton was; others because they knew all too well” (165). Our narrator’s description of the guests’ responses gives Hipknock’s paranoia a solid foundation, implying that the automatons have infiltrated even to the level of one’s own family and friends. Fritz himself is noticeably absent from the banquet, but his means of learning what is happening there are soon revealed—in a letter that Kalibang delivers during dessert. In the letter, Fritz states that he himself is Oscar Baum, the inventor. On two earlier occasions—at Luisa’s birthday party and on the visit to view the automatons with Hipknock—Fritz has been represented by an automaton of himself (his sources for what happens in his/its absence must, then, be his other creations among the company). Fritz reveals that he too is in love with Luisa but, thwarted in his intentions by Hermann, has made an automaton of her “that will love me perpetually” instead (165). As a wedding gift, the letter continues, Fritz is sending Kalibang to tutor Luisa and Hermann’s future children.
Fritz warns the couple that Kalibang, an early model automaton that looks noticeably machinelike, is the only being they should trust. The later models not only look and move like humans, they possess that most human of characteristics, language. His most advanced models, with their independently functioning brains, will have the ability to reason and to produce original conversation, and may even be endowed with mechanical souls. Holmberg underscores the question of what makes us human by having Fritz add intentionally unhelpful tips to his letter on how to tell his constructed beings from created beings. Mechanical doubles, Fritz implies, give themselves away by their own illogicalities: politicians who lack reason and honor, scientists who base their arguments on the mysteries of faith, doctors who kill, lawyers who lie, patriots who deceive. Fritz’s true intentions become clear, however, in his conclusion: “I have the world in my hands, because I control it with my automatons . . . . I have filled the world with the products of my manufacture” (166).
The burgomaster’s materialist side seems strangely reassured—even encouraged—by Fritz’s letter. He tells his daughter that she will have children if she obeys her “organic automatonism” [automatismo orgánico] (166). But even the shortsighted Hipknock senses at least a blurry outline of what Fritz’s inventions mean for the future of humanity. The burgomaster closes with the advice he will pass on to his first grandchild: “My son, before distributing the aromas that gush forth from your heart, examine with care whether the cup that receives them is not an automaton” (167). But our narrator—also an automaton?—has the lastword: “The reader will pull the remaining strings” [El lector tocará los demás resortes] (167).
There is a tendency to forget that artificially constructed human doubles did not spring fully formed out of the computer age or the years immediately preceding, as can be seen in Angela Dellepiane’s affirmation: “[Holmberg] was many years ahead of Karel Čapek, the inventor of robots, creating them in his ‘Horacio Kalibang and [sic] The Automatons” (“Narrativa argentina de ciencia ficción” 516). While the automaton was an important precursor of the robot, to retrolabel Holmberg’s automatons as early examples of robots is to tell only half the story. Perhaps more impressive than Holmberg’s anticipation of things to come is how, in doing so, he reshaped what had come before him.
Probably the most famous tale of the construction of a human being written after the book of Genesis is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, often cited as the first work of science fiction. While there is no specific evidence that “Horacio Kalibang” was influenced by Frankenstein, both texts deal with the effects of unprecedented scientific progress on society and tell of brilliant scientists who construct humanlike beings that pose a threat to humanity. A brief comparison sheds light on their very different approaches to this subject matter and on the effects created by the almost diametrically opposite endings. Both the nameless Frankenstein creature and the automatons are brought to life by scientific means, and both function at least somewhat independently of their creators. But while both induce fear in the human members of society, only Frankenstein’s creation inspires sympathy as well. In Frankenstein, creator and creation are eliminated at the end of the story, leaving the world to rest easy, while in “Horacio Kalibang,” characters and readers are left with sleepless nights.
Victor Frankenstein constructs his creature out of bits and pieces of human and animal remains obtained from charnel houses, dissecting rooms, and slaughterhouses. Frankenstein then “infuse[s] a spark of being” into the creature through a scientific technique not revealed in its entirety but which is clearly meant to indicate that he has penetrated the mysteries of electricity further than any scientist to date (Shelley 52). Once the creature is imbued with life, he possesses a will, and indeed a soul, of his own. By the next page Frankenstein is referring to his creation as a “miserable monster,” and he abandons it (53). Frankenstein’s “monster” eventually becomes a sympathetic figure, however, when he describes how the hatred and scorn of others have caused him to act like the fiend that he resembles physically.
In contrast, Fritz constructs Kalibang and the other automatons out of mechanical parts. His creations have no spark of being, neither the crude wind-up models nor the later versions with the soon-to-be-completed, independently functioning brain. Rather than possessing free will, the automatons have so far been programmed—or the nineteenth-century equivalent thereof—according to the will of their manufacturer. When the models with autonomous brain function are completed, it is implied that Fritz’s plans will be included in their design (at least at first), though these plans may merely consist of a chaos-inducing element of illogic. Fritz’s automatons inspire no sympathy either in Holmberg’s human characters or in the reader. They are represented as the cogs of a spurned inventor’s plot for replacing friends, family, a narrator, oneself. Like Hipknock and his circle, the reader begins to wonder where (and if) their infiltration ends.
Frankenstein and Fritz both suffer from something of a God complex. Each tale moves beyond the initial creation to address the possibility that a creation may one day gain independence from its creator. Frankenstein’s project stems from a desire to create, to give life, or to reverse death, not unnatural preoccupations for a scientist whose mother has recently died. His error lies in letting this desire to do something good grow beyond his control. He later repents for being one who “aspires to become greater than his nature will allow,” admitting that “life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source . . . . No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve their’s [sic]” (48, 49). When his creation turns out to be not a child but the monstrous double of his own presumption and neglect, Frankenstein’s conscience will not allow him to grant the request for a female partner—an Eve for his Adam—even to save his near and dear from the creature’s wrath. The threat to all of humanity was too great, Frankenstein realizes with horror: “One of the first results of those sympathies for which the dæmon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I a right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?” (163). In the end, an epic chase leads to the destruction of both Frankenstein and his creation. The reader is left with Shelley’s warning to the presumptuous—Frankenstein has been destroyed not by his scientific creation but as a result of his own ambition. The threat to society has been eliminated, however, and the world has returned to normal.
Fritz also suffers from delusions of deity (“I have the world in my hands”), but shows no sign of possessing Frankenstein’s conscience, proceeding to create his own Eve (an automaton Luisa) as well as a mechanical version of Frankenstein’s feared “race of devils” (“I have filled the world with the products of my manufacture”; 166). At the story’s close, Holmberg does not present us with a dying figure who recognizes the error of his ways; rather we have a scientist at the height of his powers whose imitations grow more and more indistinguishable from their models. Fritz’s automatons, while a threat to society, are not self-reproducing and do not, at this point, involve multiple, independent wills that are out of his control. He is the master puppeteer—the “leader/conductor” [conductor] (164)—and his minions work in concert to carry out his diabolical plans. The risk that Fritz’s ever-improving human doubles might one day escape his control is, however, implied. The reader, “pulling the remaining strings,” may wonder if the automatons have their own agenda, or whether they might develop the ability to procreate (proconstruct?).
For the moment, however, Fritz’s declared intention is to control the world through his superstitious scientists, lying lawyers, and so on. He seems to delight in perversity (in Poe’s sense of “The Imp of the Perverse”), sowing doubt and mistrust, forcing humans to wonder if those around them have been replaced by his machines. Since there are human lawyers who have been known to stray from the truth and human scientists who rely on faith rather than evidence, the key that Fritz gives us to differentiate the born from the built contains an inherent flaw. The threats that exist at the close of “Horacio Kalibang” arise as much from the inhumanity of humans as from the rapid technological progress that enables megalomaniacal individuals to gain power over others through science. While one side effect of the narrative is a certain sense of technophobia, this is neither the primary impact of the story nor a dominant theme in Holmberg’s work. Holmberg is a sentimental materialist who pokes gentle fun at the illogical, “immaterial” nature of his own spiritual beliefs, and a writer who, with his own absence of “gravity,” uses humor to invite his readers to consider just what it is that makes them human.
According to Pagés Larraya, the author who had the greatest influence on Holmberg’s work was E. T. A. Hoffmann, particularly upon texts such as “The Haunted House” [La casa endiablada], “Hoffmann’s Pipe” [La pipa de Hoffmann], and “Horacio Kalibang” (43–45). Hoffmann’s story “The Sandman” is usually classified as a fantastic or gothic tale, but it is also recognized as an important precursor to robot and android sf stories (Clute and Nichols, “Hoffmann” 576–77). Although Holmberg models his automaton army after Hoffmann’s construction, Olimpia, his more perfect doubles represent a far greater threat to society.
“The Sandman” is the story of a young man called Nathanael, whose childhood fears that “a mysterious destiny has hung a dark veil of clouds about my life,” are revived with the apparent reappearance of Coppelius, a former business associate of his father’s, who has somehow been involved in his father’s untimely and violent death (42). Nathanael feels that Coppelius has returned to ruin his life. When his sweetheart, Clara, responds to his premonitions by telling him that they are all in his head, Nathanael calls her a “damned lifeless automaton” (55). He spurns the love of this “intelligent, childlike, large-hearted girl” for the perceived affections of a professor’s daughter, Olimpia, whose rhythmical dance steps put his own to shame, and whose cold lips say “Ah! Ah! Ah!” in agreement with his every impassioned declaration (51, 62). To Nathanael’s friends, Olimpia seems “singularly statuesque and soulless,” her movements “strangely measured . . . as if they were dependent upon some wound-up clockwork” (64). His friends sense that something is not quite right with the object of Nathanael’s affection, and tell him frankly, “We felt quite afraid of this Olimpia, and did not like to have anything to do with her; she seemed to us to be only acting like a living creature, and as if there was some secret at the bottom of it all” (64).
In Kalibang’s case, his apparent ability to defy gravity causes people to believe in the existence of strange phenomena beyond the ken of modern science. Hoffmann’s wooden doll and Holmberg’s automatons are purely mechanical beings, with no actual human flesh or life-giving spark involved (with the possible exception of Olimpia’s eyes, a discussion for another day). Fritz’s creations are more high-tech than Olimpia, with physical appearances that can deceive even those who know and love the original human models, and the ability to speak, ranging from the preset lines of the crudest models to the completely original utterances that the soon-to-be produced, independently functioning brains will be able to invent. Nathanael, like Hipknock, only recognizes an automaton for what it is when he sees it disassembled before his eyes; he is blinded by love. His friends and family, however, learn from Nathanael’s mistakes and gain at least a chance of discovering whether or not their lovers are human by performing tests for detecting mechanical behavior:
The history of this automaton had sunk deeply into their souls, and an absurd mistrust of human figures began to prevail. Several lovers, in order to be fully convinced that they were not paying court to a wooden puppet, required that their mistress should sing and dance a little out of time, should embroider or knit or play with her little pug, &c., when being read to, but above all things else that she should do something more than merely listen—that she should frequently speak in such a way as to really show that her words presupposed as a condition some thinking and feeling. (69)
Although the burgomaster is not blind but merely suffers from shortsightedness, he has little chance of distinguishing Fritz’s automatons from the humans they have replaced, endowed as they are with the ability to perfectly portray human imperfection.
Hoffman’s story is set around 1816, and Nathanael’s professor describes Olimpia as “my best automaton—at which I’ve worked for twenty years—my life work” (67). Over his entire career, therefore, he has managed to produce only one functioning mechanism—and it fools only one man of delicate mental balance. Although this single deception plants seeds of doubt in the town, the “automaton test” will likely serve to improve rather than destroy human relationships. By the latter part of the same century, however, Holmberg is speculating about a fairly young scientist who controls mass-produced automatons that have already infiltrated society, taking the places of humans in influential professions, and insinuating themselves among the protagonist’s friends and family. Forewarned by revelations earlier in the story, the reader is still surprised to learn that the narrator himself has been replaced at some (or all?) points by a double. If the reader can be fooled, then these more humanlike, more numerous automatons—this more advanced science—pose a real threat to society. The absence of a reliable test for humanness seems destined to lead to chaos and uncertainty. Or to a new automaton order and another end of the world as we know it.
“Horacio Kalibang” goes beyond the secret life forces and handcrafted wooden dolls (and the apes and the Akkas) of the doubles of its predecessors, giving us gears and springs assembled on a wide scale into facsimiles of ourselves. Here science threatens to change not only a people’s way of life, but the very ways in which those people perceive and define themselves. In “Horacio Kalibang,” Holmberg satirizes the extremity of two opposing worldviews. He is dismissive of those like Hermann who do not question their faith but content themselves with the answer that there is no logical explanation. But he also issues a warning to extreme or literal materialists who, like Hipknock, believe that humans are utterly explainable, like a machine that acts in accordance with “the destiny of its permutations” [la fatalidad de sus permutaciones] (161). Be careful what you wish for, Holmberg seems to say, because you may not like what you get.
Alejandro Cuevas (1870–1940) was a practicing lawyer who argued cases at a variety of levels, including the Mexican Supreme Court. He was a well-known composer and playwright, and published one collection of short stories, Macabre Tales [Cuentos macabros] (1911). Some of the stories had previously been published in the Illustrated Sunday Supplement [Suplemento ilustrado] of the Mexico City newspaper El Diario in 1908 (Larson 129). It is unknown at this time whether “The Apparatus of Doctor Tolimán” appeared in El Diario, but it was almost certainly written prior to August 27, 1909, the date with which Juan de Dios Pesa signed his prologue to Macabre Tales. In the prologue Pesa cites the great influence of French literature on Cuevas (the best known from this extensive list of writers are Alexandre Dumas, fils, and Zola), and notes commonalities between Cuevas’s work and Hoffmann’s tales of gothic suspense, specifically the use of “characters from real life” (ii). Pesa compares Cuevas’s combination of “the fantastic” [lo fantástico] and “facts” [realidades] to the work of other Mexican writers, among them two writers of early science fiction, Ignacio Altamirano (1834–93) and Pedro Castera (iii). Larson calls Cuevas “Mexico’s master of terror” (12). The most science fictional of the Macabre Tales is “Doctor Tolimán.” This is not a classic tale of a constructed human being, because the doubling in the story is more mental than physical. Still, “Doctor Tolimán” is best discussed in the context of this chapter. The work deals with the fine line between life and death, as well as issues of paternity and descent based on a Lamarckian interpretation of heredity. In addition, the “apparatus” that Tolimán uses to revivify the dead does not belong purely to the realms of the scientific but incorporates elements of Sarlo’s “everyday” technology.
As the story begins, our narrator is visiting a cousin’s home in the Mexican capital. The city cousin, Luciano Bernaldez, is a well-known psychiatrist and director of one of the Federal District’s principal asylums for the insane. The narrator has a particular interest in visiting the asylum, as he subscribes to a literary magazine that publishes a section of works by the mentally ill. The cousins are received at the asylum by Dr. Tolimán, “a man of around thirty-five, medium height, and a somewhat rickety constitution” with “a vague air of wariness/distrust” [una vaga expresión de desconfianza] (168). Dr. Tolimán gives the narrator a guided tour of the facilities, impressing the visitor with his “vivid imagination and cultivated intelligence” and his technical explanations of the patients’ cases (168).
Once the two cousins are alone in the director’s office, the narrator is astounded to learn that Dr. Tolimán is not a physician at the asylum but a patient. Beyond the evidence of Tolimán’s intellect and urbane manners, the narrator had been convinced of the man’s position by his “scientific appraisals and classification,” a classic association of science with truth and reason (170). Bernaldez tells his cousin that Tolimán suffers from an incurable case of speculofobia; for the most part he appears completely sane, but he goes into an almost epileptic frenzy when he sees his own image in a mirror. The psychiatrist gives his cousin Tolimán’s diary, saying it may contain an explanation of the man’s strange malady. Our narrator closes his contribution to the text with an affirmation that he is providing a faithful copy of Tolimán’s words, edited only to remove entries extraneous to the principal story. To the reader he allots the task of using reason to establish logical links among the diary entries and imagination to fill in “any gaps he may believe he has found” (172).
Tolimán’s diary begins with a rather melodramatic declaration of teenage angst:
I have reached the age of eighteen years . . . Today I begin this book that no one will ever see, impelled by the need to confide my sorrows and my impressions to someone, even if only to a sheet of paper . . . Joys I have none nor have I ever had any: a rickety and sickly boy . . . (172, all ellipses but the last in the original)
He cumplido dieciocho años . . . Empiezo hoy este libro que jamás conocerá nadie, impulsado por la necesidad de confiar á alguien, siquiera sea á una hoja de papel, mis tristezas y mis impresiones . . . alegrías no tengo ni jamás las he conocido: niño raquítico y enfermizo . . .
He speaks in stirring tones of a childhood filled with poverty and abuse, both at home and at school. In primary school, he writes, “my delicate and sickly appearance, my somber character and my unpleasant physiognomy attracted the taunts, the torments, and the ill will of my schoolmates” (172). At home his godfather don Cástulo abuses him mentally and physically. Tolimán states his hatred for his godfather repeatedly and passionately. He likens don Cástulo’s sallow, pockmarked face, his long irregular nose, and his scanty hair to that of Shakespeare’s Shylock, and he carries the association with Shylock further, recounting a story he has heard at school that his once-wealthy guardian has not really lost his business to bankruptcy but hides his stolen wealth behind an appearance of penury. He also accuses his godfather of false religious piety and madness. Given this background, Tolimán asks, is it any wonder that his soul is filled with “skepticism and misanthropy” or that he is “pusillanimous and impressionable” of spirit (172–73, 176)? When don Cástulo decides that Tolimán must go to medical school, the boy is incapable of standing up for himself: “I have no strength to rebel, my will is of wax and my godfather’s of steel” (176). When don Cástulo refuses to let Tolimán marry the girl that he loves, Tolimán again concedes, but his hatred grows.
Although Tolimán had not wanted to pursue medicine, his professors believe he has a talent for it. While still a medical student, he reads an article that impresses him greatly. A doctor has seemingly brought a deceased patient back to life, at least temporarily, by opening his chest and manually compressing his heart. (At this point, the text’s sole footnote seeks to establish a factual basis for this story. Although it is unclear whether the footnote is attributed to the narrator or the author, it affirms that the experiment has been mentioned in a newspaper in the capital.) The article makes such an impression on Tolimán that he devotes an entire diary entry to questioning the significance of the experiment, writing, “Where does life end? . . . . . . Where does death begin? . . . . . . What is the precise instant when day expires and night begins?” (179–80, ellipses in the original).
Descriptions of his growing interest in the topic alternate with evidence of Tolimán’s abilities as a doctor and as a scientific inventor.9 He successfully performs a risky surgery that eminent physicians had refused to attempt. He uses spark-producing electrical circuits, watch works, magnets, and batteries to build the apparatus of the story’s title. This device will produce the regular, mechanical compressions lacking in the experiment described in the article. He also discovers a formula that reverses blood clotting and breaks up calcium deposits. After carrying out trials on animals, he injects the formula in a gravely ill human patient, instantly curing him. Tolimán’s first impulse to share his marvelous discovery with his medical colleagues rapidly gives way to caution. His decision to wait until he has more data before taking the formula public is a prudent one. However, an equally strong motivation for secrecy stems from the skeptical and misanthropic nature developed in his youth; he suspects his colleagues would conspire against him: “Won’t they brand me a charlatan and then steal my invention?” (182). With his medical experience, his apparatus, and his formula, Tolimán possesses everything he needs to erase the line between life and death.
Unlike the scientist-inventors of Hoffmann, Shelley, and Holmberg, Cuevas’s protagonist does not seek to construct new life but to reclaim once-living beings from death. When don Cástulo dies of a chronic liver condition, Tolimán has the chance to put his discoveries into practice. After caroling his freedom from his “tormentor” [verdugo], Tolimán realizes that this is a perfect opportunity: another doctor has signed the death certificate, the hour is late, and he is alone with the body (185). He hauls the cadaver to an operating table in the most isolated room in the house. The light from his petroleum lamp is insufficient, so he brings the funeral candles to illuminate the proceedings. The expression on his godfather’s face is “serene, gentle, bathed in a tranquility and a sweetness of which I was never able to believe him capable” (186–87). After a few more ghoulish details (the removal of the handkerchief that prevented don Cástulo’s jaw from dropping, the first flies laying their eggs on his dead face), Tolimán connects the body to his apparatus, injects his de-clotting liquid, and closes the electrical circuit. He expresses his hopes of producing a “marvelous phenomenon no mortal has ever witnessed,” though at the same time he feels “a particular uneasiness” that he associates with stepping into the mysterious and supernatural territory of death (189).
Rather than bestowing the gift of life, however, the apparatus proves to be an instrument of torture. Don Cástulo cries out in horror, suffering worse pain than he has experienced while dying. His demand that Tolimán turn off the apparatus is met with sarcastic laughter and a look that Tolimán himself describes as “diabolical” (191). Cástulo begs for mercy, only to hear Tolimán’s taunt, “the science you forced into my brain with blows delivers you today to my justice . . . . . . or to my revenge; it is all the same to me” (192). Tolimán’s interest in scientific progress and his commitment to the healer’s oath are outweighed by his hatred. The doctor thus reveals himself to be one of those characters who Josefina Ludmer has termed “the men of science ‘in crime’” (73). With Frankensteinian disdain, he tells Cástulo that he is indifferent to the fact that his resurrection is “against your will and that of nature itself” (192). Displaying a God complex much like Shelley’s Frankenstein and Holmberg’s Fritz, he compares Cástulo to a “new Lazarus who rises at my voice,” casting himself in the role of Jesus (192). Don Cástulo refutes this characterization, accusing his erstwhile charge of sacrilege, crying out, “You profane the kingdom of death . . . . . . which belongs to God!” (192). Cástulo then declares that it must be God who is punishing him for the sins he committed during his life, for which his efforts at atonement have not been enough. This reminds Tolimán of the rumors of hidden fortune, and he demands to know the location of Cástulo’s riches. “Ask your mother about them . . . . . . that is, if you can find her,” Cástulo replies (193).
Don Cástulo proceeds to reveal the truth of Tolimán’s parentage and the reasons behind his own actions. Cástulo himself is Tolimán’s father. Tolimán’s mother deserted both her husband and Cástulo for a third lover and ran off with Cástulo’s fortune, leaving him penniless and destroying his good name. His harsh treatment of Tolimán has been due partly to an inability to love the product of his own broken relationship, and partly because, as he tells his son, “you have, infiltrated in your blood, the poison of your criminal origin. . . . your rebellious nature had to be punished . . . . . . subdued . . . . . . in order to cleanse your sins and save you” [tienes infiltrado en la sangre el veneno de tu origen criminal . . . . tu naturaleza rebelde debía ser castigada . . . . . . dominada . . . . . . para limpiarte de culpa y salvarte] (194, long ellipses in the original). It is notable that the only maternal figure who appears in all of our tales of creation is mentioned solely in her capacity as the carrier of criminal blood. Cástulo prohibited Tolimán from marrying to prevent him from passing on this trait. This notion of criminal tendencies as acquired characteristics, passed on from generation to generation, reveals the same Lamarckian interpretation of the laws of heredity that underpinned Latin American eugenics movements.10
Tolimán’s experiment ends with Cástulo cursing his son, using the same term that Tolimán had previously applied to Cástulo: “Patricide! . . . . . . Patricide! . . . . . . Curse you! . . . You are my son. The issue of my offense and you are my tormentor . . . . . . ! Curse you!” [¡Parricida! . . . . . . ¡Parricida! . . . . . . ¡Maldito seas! . . . Eres mi hijo. El hijo de mi delito y eres mi verdugo . . . . . . ! ¡Maldito seas!] (194, long ellipses in the original, emphasis mine).11 Upon hearing his father’s words, Tolimán faints, disconnecting the apparatus in the process. He awakens the next morning to find Cástulo dead once more, the rictus of the cadaver’s open mouth seeming to curse him again. Tolimán hides the evidence of his medical malfeasance, weeping tears of repentance. But his father’s curse weighs on him in the days after the funeral. He cannot eat or sleep. Finally, in the last entry of the diary, Tolimán notes a horrifying transformation in himself. The complete entry reads:
What is happening to me? . . . . . . I’m not me! . . . . . . Am I him? . . . . . . It is impossible for my face to have changed so much in two weeks! . . . . . . It is his; it is my father’s . . . . . . his expression . . . . . . his gesture . . . . . . everything! . . . . . . No! It is that his vengeful ghost places itself and will always place itself between me and the mirror! (196)
¿Qué es lo que pasa en mí? . . . . . . ¡No soy yo! . . . . . . ¿Soy él? . . . . . . Imposible es que en dos semanas mi rostro haya cambiado de tal manera! . . . . . . Es el suyo; es el de mi padre . . . . . . su mirada . . . . . . su gesto . . . . . . ¡todo! . . . . . . ¡No! ¡Es que su fantasma vengador se interpone y se interpondrá siempre, entre mí y el espejo!
Tolimán’s “strange mania” is now explained: he cannot tolerate the reminder that he has become what he most hated (170). The reader is left to determine the causes and extent of doubling in “Doctor Tolimán.” While it is possible that Tolimán now notices family resemblances to which he had previously been blind, we know that his appearance has not, in fact, changed to any significant degree. His physical description, as noted in his diary, is easily recognizable in the patient who the narrator meets at the asylum, and this appearance differs markedly from that of Cástulo. These descriptions agree with his own perception of reality, as his last diary entry reveals that he does not believe that he looks like don Cástulo to others, but only to himself. In conjunction with other elements of the gothic macabre in the story, Tolimán’s claim that Cástulo’s “vengeful ghost” causes his reflection to resemble that of his tormentor/father/victim might appear to push the reader toward a more fantastic interpretation of events, but this explanation is negated by the strong suggestion of psychological trauma in the text. In his diary, Tolimán seems to indicate that mental and emotional chemistry, rather than supernatural causes, are at the root of his speculophobia.
The reader must then determine the relative weights of nature and nurture in the case. Were Cástulo’s actions toward Tolimán at all justifiable? Did Castulo’s belief in Tolimán’s “criminal blood” warrant, if not the abusive treatment of his son, then Castulo’s decisions to prevent Tolimán’s marriage and force him to follow a lucrative career that would allow the rebuilding of the family fortune? Or was it Cástulo’s cruel treatment that corrupted Tolimán’s character and ultimately destroyed his life? The first-person narration in the diary prevents an absolute apportionment of fault, either by a neo-Lamarckian or a contemporary reader. Impassioned descriptions of Cástulo’s misdeeds are counterbalanced by hints that he may not actually be the ogre that Tolimán portrays. A comparison of “Doctor Tolimán” to texts of other scientist-inventors “in crime”—such as Frankenstein and those of our Latin American corpus—suggests that Tolimán bears a significant degree of responsibility for his own destruction, though this is due less to hubris than to the desire for revenge.
One feature unique to the story is that only Tolimán (along with the narrator and reader) knows of his double’s existence. It has no physical presence, yet it rules his life and determines his future just as surely as the monster rules Frankenstein. In contrast to Frankenstein’s creation, however, Tolimán’s electrically regenerated being cannot be discussed in terms of the engendering of a new species. Like Frankenstein, Tolimán suffers from lost love and has no prospect of offspring, but—unlike the scientist-inventors of Shelley, Holmberg, and Quiroga—he is also incapable of generating life through science. While Cástulo was alive, Tolimán could not act independently of his father’s will. After Cástulo’s death—and Tolimán’s experiment on the cadaver—that influence continues in the particular form taken by Tolimán’s madness. Tolimán is unable to literally or figuratively “conceive of” a being that might continue after him, because he cannot escape the destructive relationship with his own progenitor.
Horacio Quiroga (1878–1937) is frequently discussed in the context of Argentine literature, although he was born and raised across the River Plate, in Uruguay. His father was from Argentina, a descendant of the caudillo Juan Facundo Quiroga, and Quiroga himself lived there for many years. He resided both in cosmopolitan Buenos Aires and on the virgin frontier in the north. He produced some of the country’s most celebrated regional literature, based on his years spent as something of a pioneer in Misiones province. Quiroga’s compelling biography of personal tragedy is well known. He was a master of the short story, and is one of the most canonical writers discussed in this book. It is his less canonical side, however, that is of particular interest to us here. Quiroga is a key figure in the transition of Latin American science fiction from the elite, scientific form of the nineteenth century to the more popular, technology-driven genre of the twentieth. The text that best exemplifies this transition is The Artificial Man.
In a society in which the knowledge and authority of science were accessible only to the relatively small portion of the population that attended university, a familiarity with technology was seen as an alternate route to improving one’s financial and social status. In a situation somewhat analogous to that of information technology today, those who understood the design and function of radios or motor vehicles in early twentieth-century Argentina enjoyed unprecedented opportunities for advancement: “Technology made up for the knowledge and skills that one might lack in other areas. It had a dual purpose: cultural modernization, on the one hand, and compensation for cultural differences, on the other” (Sarlo 5). Quiroga had an abiding fascination with technology throughout his life. From the more mechanical sphere of cycling, boat building, and a Model T Ford, his interests expanded to chemistry, photography, galvanoplasty, and beyond (Sarlo 13–18). He launched a variety of experimental ventures over the years, partly out of intellectual curiosity, but also in hopes that technology would give him the financial independence to escape the “burden of poorly paid writing for newspapers and magazines” (Sarlo 14). Paradoxically, his most technological text belonged in this category of obligatory writing and remained unpublished under Quiroga’s name during his lifetime. Like several other Quiroga folletines [narratives appearing in serial form], The Artificial Man was published under the pseudonym S. Fragoso Lima in the popular Argentine magazine Caras y Caretas. Noé Jitrik locates The Artificial Man, along with five other Lima narratives, on the margins of Quiroga’s oeuvre, saying that Quiroga viewed them as “mere instruments for earning money” (7).
The text was written during a transitional period in the life of this transitional writer. Quiroga was pulled between old and new in terms of literature, science, readership, and genre. The influence of Spanish American modernism was starting to wane as Quiroga began to develop the more realistic style that would characterize his Misiones narratives.12 The influence of the modernists and of Shelley and Poe jostled in his work with narrative innovations suggested by film and by recent advances in science and technology. While he was part of a new technological generation, Quiroga could not escape either the theoretical power or the ultimate authority belonging to more established Science. With The Artificial Man, Sarlo explains, “Quiroga, a writer fascinated by knowledge of a practical kind, wrote a work of fiction in which such knowledge was projected onto the ‘scientific’ backdrop that made it possible” (36).13
Although Quiroga aspired to write exclusively under his own name, free from the requirements imposed on his fiction by the market, he was also cognizant of the emerging Argentine middle class, and his technological folletín was designed to appeal to this new reading public. As for the nascent science fiction genre, at the same time the Gernsback years were on the horizon in the United States, we find Quiroga at the juncture where the science fictional was becoming science fiction. Both Sarlo and Cano locate Horacio Quiroga, the writer, and The Artificial Man, the text, on this cusp. As we have seen, Sarlo distinguishes the part that Quiroga’s work plays in the transition from science to technology in Argentine literature and society. In his study of Spanish American science fiction, Cano identifies The Artificial Man as the point in Latin American literature when the science fiction tradition is able to break free of the fantastic and stand alone, and when the influence of the canonical sciences predominates over that of the occult (141). We have witnessed this transition to a slightly lesser degree in Cuevas’s “Doctor Tolimán,” but Quiroga’s text is more firmly grounded both in the foundational works and tropes of the genre and in twentieth-century technology. At the same time, Quiroga placed greater emphasis on the Argentine locus of his tale and on the role of geography, economic class, and social status in power relationships. He also showed himself to be in tune with tendencies in genre readership that would solidify during the 1930s and ’40s in the United States and during the late 1950s in Latin America. The Artificial Man is thus representative of global trends in science fiction and of the alternative perspectives that Latin American writers had been contributing to the genre for over five decades.
The story opens with three scientist-inventors huddled around a rat on a laboratory table. Donissoff, whose “angelic beauty” contrasts with his “hard, implacable tone” and “terrible will,” coordinates their activities and is clearly the leader of the group (95). Ortiz mans the electrical switches connecting the rat to some of the “complex apparatuses for chemistry, anatomy, and bacteriology” (96). Sivel injects the motionless animal with a “red liquid” (96). The rat’s heart begins to beat. After three years of hard work, they have created a living being: “They, they alone had made that which was lying there!” (96). The characters, setting, and terminology make it plain that no magic or inexplicable forces have been employed in the creation process, though the theory and techniques push the limits of science and technology to such an extent that the three associates are described, at the close of the first chapter, as “three warlocks whom three hundred years earlier the Inquisition would have burned without hesitation” (98).
Nicolás Ivanovich Donissoff is the last descendant in a line of Russian nobility. His parents died when he was a child, but he was very close to his guardian, Prince Dolgorouky. During his days as a medical student specializing in bacteriology, Donissoff loses his respect for the czarist regime and becomes an anarchist. A true devotee of the cause, he renounces his noble title and his fortune. He even goes so far as to advocate the assassination of his beloved but elitist guardian, but the prince’s death leaves Donissoff “forever wounded” and unable to continue in the revolutionary movement (101). Departing the fatherland, he continues his scientific studies in Vienna, Paris, and London before going to Buenos Aires in late 1905.
FIGURE 4.1. Donissoff, Sivel, and Ortiz create a rat. The Artificial Man, drawing by José Friedrich. Caras y Caretas 588 (8 January 1910), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Long before Luigi (sometimes called Stefano) Marco Sivel synthesized the red liquid for the rat in the laboratory, blood had played a central role in his life. He was born into a poor Italian family of smalltime crooks. His mother has died, presumably when he was very young; we hear of her only when Sivel thinks of his “dearest mother” while awaiting a beating from his abusive father (103). Unlike Tolimán, Sivel eventually stands up to his progenitor. In response, Sivel’s father truly acknowledges their kinship for the first time, saying “I recognize my blood. You are a worthy son of mine” (103). Unable to tolerate any challenge to his authority, however, he casts his son out of the house. Despite these inauspicious beginnings, the brilliant Sivel manages to attend medical school and become a celebrated doctor. The story of his broken engagement is another matter, requiring its own chapter in the novella. One day a young woman is brought to Sivel’s hospital in Rome. She has lost a great deal of blood, but Sivel’s fiancée forces him to promise not to donate any of his own blood to the patient. Incapable of watching the woman die, Sivel breaks his promise, and his fiancée ends their relationship. His blood saves the patient’s life, but he contracts an infection and is horribly disfigured. When the patient declares both her gratitude and her love for him, Sivel cruelly rejects her, and she throws herself under a bus. Physically and emotionally scarred, Sivel believes his life to be “forever shattered,” but eventually replaces his human relationships with his love for science: “His passion for science took hold of him again, this time with great ardor. All of his faculties seemed to have been reborn with an intense orientation toward the study of anatomy” (106). He arrives in Buenos Aires in 1904.
The third member of the trio is Ricardo Ortiz. Born into a wealthy Buenos Aires family, he studies electrical engineering in the United States, that fount of practical know-how. Upon his return to Buenos Aires, Ortiz does not practice his profession or take his place in society. Instead he becomes an inventor, researching and experimenting with electric batteries in search of “a new element of amazing intensity and constancy” (106). With the disdain of the Latin American upper class for anything resembling manual labor, Ortiz’s family decries his “hands [that] were often impossibly filthy” and considers his studies of little use, “his science wasted” (106). Ortiz’s father declares his son a disgrace and cuts off his allowance, saying “I’m embarrassed!” (107). The young engineer breaks off relations with his family and pursues his work with electricity. A year later, when his father is dying, Ortiz renounces his sizable inheritance.
These three characters are representative of the population of Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century, when a great wave of immigrants poured into Argentina’s capital. In addition, all of the young men are outstanding in their various scientific specialties. None is married, nor is there a love interest in the picture. All have rebelled against their respective father figures, and all have tragic personal histories. Each seeks to forget the past and begin anew, and they meet and establish their partnership in Buenos Aires circa 1906. Sivel puts up the money to furnish their laboratory with “the most perfect types of machines and instruments ordered expressly from the United States,” and they immediately embark on the rat project, “the highest work of genius of which humanity is capable: to make a living organism” (108). They construct the rat beginning at the subcellular level, using carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen as building blocks. Progress is often slow. After one of many setbacks, Ortiz questions their venture saying, “It is impossible! . . . We are tempting God or the devil with this!” (108). On August 23, 1909, the “artificial rat” is finally complete but, only hours after its heart has begun to beat, the rat’s bones dissolve and it dies. However, the team soon identifies and solves the problem with its physical composition. On that same day, they decide that their next project will be to construct a man (the possibility of building an artificial woman is expressly rejected by Donissoff).
With the rat, our scientists had completed the first two steps on the inventor’s “to-do list” (discussed in the introduction to this chapter); they had constructed an artificial living organism that both looks and moves like the original. Three additional levels are involved in constructing a human being: language, reason, and that final je ne sais quoi. They agree that their artificial human must possess an adult’s capacity for thought and reason from the beginning. A grown man with the nervous system and abilities of a newborn would be “an eternal embarrassment for us” (110). According to Donissoff, adult-level thought and understanding could only be achieved by endowing the being with the sum of the experiences of the human race as a whole. By writing a sort of genetic memory onto the tabula rasa of their creation, they will imbue it with humanity at a stroke. Donissoff clarifies the scientific (not spiritual) nature of this X factor for Ortiz, insisting, “No, electrician; it is not a question of soul, but of heredity” (111). He elaborates using an electrical analogy evocative of Tolimán’s apparatus:
Vivid though the sensations may be, his brain will lack the habit needed in order to perceive, firstly, and in order not to confuse the sensations, later. I think it is the same with your batteries. When they are newly made, they accumulate very little electricity, and they do not release any. All of the current is used to make the battery, to tune it. The successive charging and discharging gradually modify it until it becomes capable of storing electricity and releasing it normally. This will happen with the man that we make. (111)
Por vivas que sean las sensaciones, le faltará hábito al cerebro para percibir, primero, y para no confundir las sensaciones, después. Con sus acumuladores pasa lo mismo, creo. Cuando están recién hechos, acumulan muy escasa electricidad, y no devuelven nada. Toda la corriente se emplea en hacer el acumulador, en afinarlo. Las cargas y descargas sucesivas lo van modificando, hasta que llega a almacenar electricidad y devolverla normalmente. Esto pasará con el hombre que hagamos.
Technical progress will enable them to accelerate the process of reproducing the neural pathways, developed over millions of years of human evolution, that are inherited by “natural” humans. Ortiz and Sivel are daunted by the task, but Donissoff, whose beauty is now described as that of “a rebellious archangel,” urges them to take advantage of the abilities, science, and technology at their disposal (111). He admonishes them, “We are thinking like created beings and not like creators” (111). Donissoff sets the condition that he alone be responsible for the “tuning” that will allow their artificial man to attain the level of development exclusive to adult humans (112).
The progeny of the three bachelors, then, will be a man; no newborn, but their peer, their double. They name him Biógeno, “Biógeno, that is: I engender life. (In truth, they themselves were the ones engendering life; but the name had passed)” (116). The inverted name reflects both the unique confusion of the familial relationship between the inventors and their creation, and also something of the trio’s unresolved issues with their own father figures. The construction of Biógeno occupies the standard ten-month gestation period for a human, and he is completed on June 11, 1910.14 Physically he is a flawless specimen, and the narrator waxes poetic about the “marvelous proportion” of “that marvelous being that lay there naked, breathing harmoniously” (115). Biógeno appears to be around twenty-five years of age. A younger self from happier times? Or another chance, perhaps, for Donissoff, Sivel, and Ortiz to begin anew as sons or as fathers.
Donissoff now attempts to put Biógeno’s mental capacity “in tune” with his physical appearance. Sivel and Ortiz surely expect Donissoff to display further scientific and technical brilliance. What they do not expect is that Donissoff’s means of accomplishing his self-appointed task, so neatly sanitized in his argument ten months before, will involve torture using a very low-tech pair of pliers. Donissoff brings in a thin, poorly dressed man and explains to his colleagues (in English) that this is the “definitive element” in his plan: “The production of an intense amount of pain, of a high-pitched current of pain, is indispensable for provoking a sensitivity in his nervous system that only years of experience would give it” (117–18). Donissoff continues to use English, then French, to keep the poor man from understanding his orders to Sivel and Ortiz.15 Despite the repugnance they feel, they tie the victim down with ropes. The narrator remarks that, “The torment of a poor innocent human being could not be an obstacle to the triumph of their scientific ideal. There was nothing purer and simpler than the hearts of those three men” (118). But this defense is contradicted by a single glimpse from the victim’s perspective. At a slip of the tongue by Ortiz, who utters the word “torture” in Spanish, the poor man renews his struggle to escape what is now described as “that laboratory with its hellish appearance, and the three demons, devourers of men” (119). The ropes hold. All of the sophisticated electrical connections are made, and Donissoff uses the pliers to pull out the man’s fingernails, one by one. Although Sivel and Ortiz do not like the idea of torture and cannot bear to watch after the sixth fingernail, neither moves to stop him. All now fit Ludmer’s description of “men of science ‘in crime.’”
The transmission of experience from the real man to the artificial one appears to be a success on all levels. The three associates look at the unconscious Biógeno. “His expression was different: the expression of a man who has lived, loved, suffered. Yes, that closed mouth had shouted; those eyes had seen, that forehead, no longer smooth, had thought!” (121). But when they awaken Biógeno his first expression is that of the suffering torture victim, his first sensation is of pain in his fingertips, and his first utterance is “Oh! My fingernails!” in the poor victim’s voice (123). Sivel fears that they have accomplished merely the simple transfer of an existing life rather than the creation of a new one, “That man has no life of his own. He is a puppet [maniquí]; we have transferred the other’s soul to him” (123). Donissoff insists that it is only a matter of residual influence that will soon dissipate, “That being has life of its own, or will have” (124).
FIGURE 4.2. The three scientists and the subject to be tortured, at the moment of Ortiz’s slip. The Artificial Man, drawing by José Friedrich. Caras y Caretas 591 (29 January 1910), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
But the most immediate problem is a physical one. While the torture victim feels nothing at all and will soon die of shattered nerves, Biógeno is now hypersensitive; his five senses are so acute that a drink of water, a glimpse of light, or the touch of a hand would be unutterable agony for him. The three colleagues identify the root of the problem: “We have discharged the source too much . . . . And the battery, on the other hand, has been overloaded” [Hemos descargado demasiado la pila . . . . Y el acumulador, en cambio, se ha sobrecargado] (127). Out of pity, Sivel and Ortiz advocate killing their “monster of pain” (123), but the iron-willed Donissoff proposes to effect a discharge of Biógeno’s overloaded senses by torturing Biógeno and using himself, in a hypnotized state, as the receiver. His colleagues entreat him, “For that which you love most in this world, do not do that!” (129). Their words evoke the memory of a secret committee meeting on that bitter day from Donissoff’s past, “on which he had sacrificed more than his own life” (130). Although he has allowed his father figure to die, he cannot do the same for his offspring. Sacrificing Biógeno would break the last true emotional tie each of them has left, Donissoff argues, saying “All that still binds us to life we have placed in this miserable machine of suffering” (130).
The initial stages proceed as anticipated; Sivel hypnotizes Donissoff, and Ortiz tortures Biógeno. But Donissoff has misjudged both the level of Biógeno’s accumulated suffering and his own ability to tolerate it. The discharge occurs all at once, killing both creator and creation. The narrator laments at length the loss of “the greatest and noblest of all men . . . who had created the greatest thing it is possible to create in this world” (132). As for the fates of Sivel and Ortiz, we know from an earlier reference that, several days after the tragic end of their experiment, they are called before an examining magistrate to provide scientific (and presumably personal) testimony in an investigation of the matter (118). As the tale ends, however, we are told only that the three deaths have destroyed their last hopes and dreams, along with their last pretensions to artificial reproduction. The novella closes:
FIGURE 4.3. Biógeno suffering from sensory overload. The Artificial Man, drawing by José Friedrich. Caras y Caretas 593 (12 February 1910), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Everything was over! Never, never would they aspire to anything! Never again would they enter the laboratory! Their entire future was dead now, as the man with the bandaged hands was dead; as their abominable creation was dead; as there lay dead—sublime creature, archangel of genius, will, and beauty—, Donissoff. (132)
¡Todo estaba concluído! ¡Jamás, jamás volverían a aspirar a nada! ¡Nunca más entrarían en el laboratorio! Su porvenir entero estaba muerto ya, como había muerto el hombre de las manos vendadas; como había muerto su creación abominable; como allí–criatura sublime, arcángel de genio, voluntad y belleza–, estaba muerto Donissoff.
In the end, we do not learn whether the ultimate failure of the project was due to a mere miscalculation or to a faulty hypothesis. At the same time, it remains unclear if language, reason, and the final X factor of humanity were only transferred to Biógeno from another, or if the trio actually created these human traits and the appearance of transference was indeed, as Donissoff insisted, due to the persistence of “influence.” We do know that their intended ideal version of humanity never becomes more than a stunted double, and that the three inventors themselves never truly escape from their own stunted pasts. Unlike Tolimán, Quiroga’s Donissoff, Sivel, and Ortiz are strong-willed “men of character” (108). Though better able than Tolimán to move beyond the immediate domination of their father figures, to recover from the loss of love, to make a fresh start together in the New World, and to attempt to (pro)create a next generation, they too fail in their ambitions. They improve neither upon the human race nor upon the failings of their fathers. Donissoff is guilty of elitism (torturing a poor man and using languages of science and power to dominate him); Sivel of violence (he condones then participates in torture); Ortiz of allowing embarrassment about imperfect offspring to cause him to act inappropriately (he also condones then participates in torture). Like their fathers before them, they all lose a son.
The Artificial Man is a modernization of Frankenstein, the paradigmatic double tale published ninety-two years earlier. The most cursory reading of the texts indicates that Shelley’s novel must have been a direct model. In both works, initial success is followed by ultimate failure in the quest to create a human being. Both Donissoff and Frankenstein push the limits of science. They are compared to God in his capacity as Creator but, as their experiments take terrible turns for the worse, references to them as fallen archangels predominate. Each scientist’s hubris eventually leads to his own demise and that of his creation. However, these narratives are knit together by the flesh as well as by the bare bones of the texts. Many elements of The Artificial Man, from its sympathetic narration to the role of electricity, are in constant resonance with its predecessor.16
FIGURE 4.4. Deaths of Donissoff and Biógeno, creator and creation. The Artificial Man, drawing by José Friedrich. Caras y Caretas 593 (12 February 1910), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The modernity of Quiroga’s text appears to have been constructed in deliberate contrast to Shelley’s work, from the temporal proximity of the story’s events relative to the author’s reality, to the characters, their approaches to science, and their resulting creation. Frankenstein is set outside Shelley’s native England, in the more romantically exotic region of Switzerland, and she brings the story to an end in September of 17—, at least nineteen years prior to the novel’s composition. While Shelley’s tale is safely tucked away in the past, Quiroga pushes his into the unknown territory of the future. The narrative is set in his readers’ hometown of Buenos Aires, and takes place in a Vernian near future (the date given for the completion of the artificial man is four months after the publication of the text’s final installment in Caras y Caretas).
Although we can observe similarities in ability and temperament among Shelley’s Frankenstein and Quiroga’s three inventors, the differences between them are generally indicative of the changes in scientists and science that occurred in the intervening decades. These changes are revealed in the scientists’ educational background and training, in their work structure and practices, and in the level of sophistication of the scientific procedures performed. Victor Frankenstein’s interest in science is first sparked by the works of noncanonical authorities such as Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus. While he breaks with this past by beginning study of the modern sciences at university, the seeds of his preoccupation with the creation of life, with “immortality and power,” are to be found in what he terms the “boundless grandeur” of the aspirations of the ancients (Shelley 41). Without that early interest, he says, “It is even possible, that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin” (33). Quiroga’s inventors, on the other hand, are firmly grounded in the canonical sciences of their day and, in addition to their scientific knowledge, they employ both practical and technical skills in their endeavor to create an artificial man. Although Donissoff is painted as a Renaissance man of the sciences, even a genius of his stature must work on a team with others, as the increase in the body of scientific knowledge has encouraged specialization. It is also significant that the more modern scientists do not begin their investigations with humans, but first construct that epitome of modern scientific inquiry, a rat. Finally, Quiroga brings Shelley’s cut-and-paste techniques up to date. With less gothic gore, his artificial man is created at the molecular level, constructed “element by element, milligram by milligram” (114).
Although Biógeno never attains either the capacity to narrate or the status of narrator achieved by Shelley’s monster, Quiroga and his scientists seem to be addressing that creature’s shortcomings, seeking to modernize and improve upon him. While Frankenstein designs his creature to be physically stronger and more aesthetically perfect than naturally conceived humans, he is successful only in the former. “I had selected his features as beautiful,” he laments, but describes the resulting figure as a “wretch” with “yellowed skin,” “watery eyes,” “shrivelled complexion,” and “un-human features” (52). Throughout Shelley’s novel, the creature is repeatedly referred to as a “monster” by one and all, while in Quiroga’s narrative the term is used only in the phrase “monster of suffering,” to indicate the pain that Biógeno experiences through the torture connection and due to his heightened senses. The social stigma which Frankenstein’s creature suffers due to his monstrous exterior, and for which he blames his monstrous nature, would not have been an issue for Donissoff and company’s idealized being. And whereas the Frankenstein creature is brought to life with a blank mental slate, Quiroga’s scientists attempt to create a being who begins life possessing the abilities and intellect of an adult. Biógeno is never rejected by his creators, perhaps because of his physical perfection (or perhaps because of Sivel’s and Ortiz’s [sub]conscious determination not to repeat the actions of their fathers). Quiroga endows his inventors with enough forethought to consider the immediate consequences of creating a life (perhaps because they anticipate success due to the triumph of the rat experiment). While Frankenstein does not appear to have thought beyond the moment of vivification, fleeing his “workshop” until his newly animated creation departs (50), Donissoff, Sivel, and Ortiz meticulously plan how their creation will acquire knowledge and envision—if only on a superficial, embarrassment-avoidance level—Biógeno’s public debut and the reactions he will inspire.
The Artificial Man is a Latin Americanization as well as a modernization of Frankenstein; it is a Frankenstein-inspired text representative of 1910 Argentina. We have said that the national origins of the protagonists reflect the changing composition of Argentina at the time, but Latin American characters, settings, and idiomatic expressions are only superficial indicators of a science fiction that is truly Latin American (Capanna in “Coloquio a distancia” 20). In our discussion of Quiroga’s text, we have further identified the contexts in which different countries are mentioned as illustrative of Latin American perceptions of their roles in the world: the United States is associated with technology, European countries with science, and Northern languages and cultures with science, technology, dominance, and control. In The Artificial Man, an elite international team possesses the potential to conduct cutting-edge research and produce a more perfect man (Argentine?). Although they fail, there is no suggestion that a group from another socioeconomic class, of different national origins, or with varying educational backgrounds will supplant them. The Artificial Man, like much Latin American science fiction, is also an intensely political work, in which political ideologies, socioeconomic class structure, and historical paradigms such as “civilization and barbarism” reveal a Latin American perspective on the power dynamics at work at both local and international levels.
Ludmer takes up Sarlo’s discussion of ethics and science in The Artificial Man (as part of her analysis of “men of science ‘in crime’”) but goes beyond Sarlo to characterize political aspects of the text. Ludmer writes: “In El hombre artificial, in 1910, the relationship between ethics and science is posed at the same time as the relation between ethics and revolutionary politics” (69). Ludmer locates the nexus of the relationship between ethics and politics in the person of Donissoff, “who as an anarchist in Russia hands over a fellow noble (‘for the sake of the revolution’) and as a scientist in Argentina tortures a poor man (‘for the sake of life’)” (69). So Donissoff, defender of the people against the oppression of nobles, himself becomes an oppressor of the poor, although he shows no sign of recognizing that he has transplanted the hated power structure of his past. His self-deception is aided, perhaps, by the different labels in his new setting. He does not seem to equate the injustices perpetrated by the despised Russian nobility with the inequalities perpetuated by the wealthy, “civilized,” scientifically literate Argentine elite. Somehow the peasant classes that he was willing to make sacrifices for in his homeland become expendable in the New World; he flashes back to his revolutionary days when it comes to inflicting pain on Biógeno, but not when torturing the poor man.
The Argentine class structure is further represented in the lives of Ortiz and Sivel. Quiroga’s portrayal of Ortiz’s upper class porteño family reveals a society that still privileges wealth, social standing, and old money, though an education from the United States, when put to appropriate use, is also valued. Sivel is an example of the social mobility possible in the Argentina of the day. The son of a “barbaric” and poor rogue of a father, he becomes “civilized” (educated, wealthy, cultured, sensitive) through education and through science. Sivel is never considered the inferior of the three because of his humble origins; rather he is second in command to Donissoff, and nearer to being their leader’s equal than Ortiz, who is a distant third. Ortiz’s inferior position is explained in part by the fact that his past has been less traumatic (“Ortiz has not yet suffered,” as Donissoff puts it [130]), and in part because his work is with technology rather than with the more authoritative—even for the technology-mad Quiroga—science.17 It also cannot be coincidence that Ortiz is of Argentine rather than European origin like the others.
The text does not contain a clear program of advocacy for either Argentine nationalism or social justice. Nor does Quiroga demonstrate a strong inclination to sit in judgment of the role of science in modern society (the motivation of individual hubris clearly trumps any technophobic interpretations). In the reality portrayed in The Artificial Man, the team members view the torture of an unscientific and uncivilized character as acceptable in the service of science and in the creation of a being who is designed to be his creators’ equal or better. Quiroga portrays the inventors’ willingness to sacrifice Argentina’s “barbaric” past for the purpose of constructing a more “civilized” future as a repetition of the sins of their fathers. There is no indication as to how the case will be judged in court.
The Artificial Man is not as marginal a part of Quiroga’s corpus as its pseudonymous and virtually orphaned state might infer. Quiroga also deals with the technology of the double in two short stories that he signed with his own name: “The Portrait” appeared in Caras y Caretas in 1910 and “The Vampire” in the newspaper La Nación in 1927.18 “The Vampire” is a modernization and refocusing of the earlier “Portrait” and also, to a lesser degree, of The Artificial Man.19 A closer look at the choices that Quiroga makes in his rewritings further clarifies both the old constants and the new trends at the end of Latin American science fiction’s first wave.
“The Portrait” is the story of a young British scientist, Rudyard Kelvin, who has lost his fiancée, Edith, to injuries sustained in a car accident. Kelvin has been living in Buenos Aires for the past ten months and tells his story to our narrator, a South American, on a ferry crossing between Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The two men find that they share an interest in a work by Gustave Le Bon, The Evolution of Matter [L’évolution de la matière] (1905). Kelvin, a photography buff, is particularly fascinated by an experiment in which Le Bon demonstrates that “an object exposed to the sun for a moment, and placed in complete darkness on a sensitive plate, makes an impression upon it” (361). The Englishman tells the narrator that he carried this experiment one step further in his own laboratory, using his eye instead of some other physical object to produce an impression on the plate, but read soon afterward that this had already been done in the United States.
Beginning with this extra step, Kelvin’s story grows increasingly fantastic. The narrator uses a less-than-objective description to refer to Kelvin’s area of expertise as “what we would call the black magic of light: cathodic rays, X rays, ultraviolet rays and more” (361–62). The time that Kelvin spends recounting the last days of his fiancée’s life, the emphasis he places on the way in which her eyes gazed fixedly upon him as she lay “dying and watching me ceaselessly” [muriéndose y mirándome sin cesar], and the fact that she sends her family away, preferring to die alone with him, prepare the reader for a bond-beyond-death scenario (362). And in the first months after Edith’s death, Kelvin believes that this is happening. He uses his scientific knowledge to reproduce the image of the one he sees most in his mind’s eye by staring at his photographic plate, “thinking of Edith with the desperate love that overflowed my soul. I saw her there, she looked at me with the look of love that one remembers above all things” (363). When the plate is developed, it reveals Edith as she once was, looking out at her lover with the special smile she reserved for him. Initially Kelvin repeats the process on a daily basis, then every few days. When he leaves a two-week interval between portraits, Edith’s face appears clouded over, especially around her eyes. When he waits a month before reproducing her portrait, the image that appears is of Edith dead, and Kelvin then understands he has stopped loving her.
At this point the narrator realizes the extent to which he has been wrapped up in the story and how much credence he has given to the relationship between the couple’s love and the ability to reproduce an image of one who can no longer be physically seen, admitting, “For my part, I confess that I had forgotten the scientific aspect of the phenomenon” (364). Kelvin then recounts his final repetition of the process. He performs the experiment in the presence of a reliable witness, a lab assistant who had seen Edith only a few times. Her image appears on the plate, smiling as radiantly as ever. But she is looking in the direction of the assistant, imprinted by his gaze and not Kelvin’s. “The miniscule amount of affection that he might have had for her was enough to evoke her” [El ínfimo cariño que pudiera haberle tenido a ella la revivía], Kelvin laments, “What do you want me to do after that?” [¿Qué quiere usted que yo haga después de eso?] (364). It had not been the greatness of his love that reproduced Edith’s image, but science.20
Guillermo Grant, the Spanish American narrator (country undefined) of “The Vampire,” has written an article in which he extrapolates from work done by scientists such as Le Bon (and also from the scientific extrapolations Quiroga had already carried out in “The Portrait”). Considering the way in which a radio circuit can turn invisible signals into the sound of a human voice, Grant suggests that it may be possible to “corporealize” images, or “visual emanations” (170).
If the retina, after being exposed in ardent contemplation to a portrait, can impress a sensitive plate to the point of obtaining a “double” of that portrait, in the same way the living forces of the soul are able, when excited by these emotional rays, not to produce, but rather to “create” an image in a visual and tangible circuit. (171)
Si la retina impresionada por la ardiente contemplación de un retrato puede influir sobre una placa sensible al punto de obtener un “doble” de ese retrato, del mismo modo las fuerzas vivas del alma pueden, bajo la excitación de tales rayos emocionales, no producir, sino “crear” una imagen en un circuito visual y tangible.
Grant’s ideas interest one don Guillén de Orzúa y Rosales—“or so he said he was called”—a fellow scientific dabbler with old money and a mysteriously non-Hispanic accent (170). Rosales sets out to apply these principles to his own hypotheses on cinematography. He posits that the projected rays of films must carry with them to the screen more than a mere “frozen electrical enlargement” of an image, that they must contain something beyond “a galvanic copy of life” in order to be capable of moving entire rooms full of people to intense emotion (173).
In this story, Quiroga deliberately modernizes “The Portrait” and The Artificial Man, as well as Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” (1845). A two-dimensional reproduction such as Rudyard Kelvin’s is no longer of interest to Rosales. He has already carried out an identical process and, he tells Grant, it is a “poor experiment that I will not repeat again” (173). Rosales compares his goal to that of the painter in Poe’s tale; he wants to reproduce “‘life itself’” (173). The being he has chosen to corporealize is a famous Hollywood actress he has “met” only in the cinema.
Quiroga upgrades the technology from photography to cinematography, from two dimensions to three. He also moves beyond the X rays and ultraviolet rays with which Kelvin experimented to so-called N1 rays.21 In Rosales’s experiments, film projectors and other laboratory equipment are combined with a number of more fantastic elements, including some extremely subjective, undocumentable forces. The first of these is a vivid imagination, which Grant calls the only “stimulant of the strange forces capable of causing a soul to explode” (171). There is also the great force of Rosales’s will, described in very similar terms to that of Donissoff and to that of a magnétiseur (see chapter 3), and which likewise will lead him to make extreme decisions. Grant, the harbinger of doom, warns the reader early on: “For those who live on the frontier of what is beyond the rational, the will is the only sesame that can open the doors of the eternally prohibited” (172).
Rosales invites Grant to dinner at his home, where he demonstrates the partial success of his initial experiments. Grant is amazed to find that Rosales has managed to evoke a semitransparent, three-dimensional version of his favorite Hollywood star. Rosales’s hypotheses about reproducing “life itself” appear to be confirmed by the ghost-actress’s ability to walk and talk: she even professes to recognize Grant, having seen him in the audience from the screen. Rosales explains the process by which he has expanded the recreation of the single instant captured in a photograph to the flow of time captured in the multiple frames of a film clip: “From the moment when the film begins to run past the excitation of the light, the voltage, and the N1 rays, it is completely transformed into a vibrant sketch of life” (177). But Rosales is not satisfied with producing a “ghost” of the actress, saying that he must find a way to endue her with “the life to which every creation has the right, if it is not a monster” (175, 179). He insists, however, that even this ghostly version of life is superior to any life engendered “by the mere routine force of subsistence,” because she is the “work of a conscience” (179).
The rest of the tale describes the lengths to which Rosales is willing to go to fully realize his goal. In the process, he reveals himself to be a forerunner of the overly enthusiastic fan—the stalker of the stars—as well as another “man of science ‘in crime.’” In order to complete his life-giving process, Rosales paradoxically decides to kill the actress herself. More extreme than Donissoff, he incorporates the death into his calculations, hoping to concentrate all of her life into his copy. He makes the long trip to Hollywood and succeeds in murdering the woman, but his own recreation disappears as well. When he tries to evoke his creation again, only her skeleton appears. He then decides that the lesson to be drawn from this experiment is the opposite of that learned by Rudyard Kelvin. Whereas Kelvin realizes that love had never been part of the process that produced the image, Rosales believes that it is precisely the element of love that had been missing when he eliminated the original actress, that the equation should read: science + imagination or strange forces + will + love = life. As Rosales tells Grant: “I created sterilely, and therein lies my error . . . . Love is not necessary in life; but it is indispensable for knocking at the doors of death. If I had killed for love, my creature would palpitate with life today on the divan” (182–83).
Rosales re-evokes the actress, this time including love in the process. She returns, but her corporealization is not complete and her appearance is still spectral. Although her disposition is apparently unchanged, Grant notices that she is now consumed with passion for Rosales, while he no longer feels anything for her. He urges Rosales to destroy this “monster of feeling,” not for her own good—as in the case of Biógeno, the “monster of pain”—but for her creator’s (184). “She is a vampire, and you have nothing to give to her!” Grant warns (184).22 Rosales does not follow his friend’s advice. He is found dead, his camera and film in flames, the evocation of the actress gone. Although “his dead face retained its habitual warm tone,” Grant concludes, “I am certain that in the furthest reaches of his veins there remained not a single drop of blood” (185). Whereas Donissoff is destroyed when input from his artificial man overloads his senses, Rosales meets his end when his creation drains him of emotion. Rosales’s downfall is brought about by the same tragic flaws displayed in The Artificial Man: the inhumanity of those who seek to create humanity, and their fatal presumptions regarding both their own abilities and the superiority of their creations.
Despite the pivotal role of The Artificial Man in the trajectory of Latin American science fiction, its publication neither signaled a definitive separation between science fiction and the fantastic nor triggered a new and larger wave of science fiction in Latin America. It remains, however, an important marker in science fiction’s transition from a more elite narrative form in Latin America to a more popular genre that appealed to a broader readership. Together, Quiroga’s The Artificial Man (1910), “The Portrait” (also 1910), and “The Vampire” (1927, the year after Gernsback’s landmark editorial), indicate the trajectory of the nascent genre. The three texts illustrate the wide range of genre hybridity present in Latin America, even within the corpus of a single author. They also reflect the changes taking place in the dynamics of influence in Latin America. Finally, these texts mark the status of science-fictional writing in Latin America during the years when more formal genre codification was getting underway in the North, and provide important precedents for the golden age of Latin American science fiction in the 1950s and ’60s.
But if The Artificial Man can be said to represent the trend toward genre independence for science fiction in Latin America, then “The Vampire” provides an interesting contrast. In that story, Quiroga takes earlier science fictional material and moves it toward the fantastic. Whereas Donissoff’s strong will is represented as an individual’s drive to succeed, Rosales summons a less intangible, more manipulable power in performing his laboratory experiment. Similarly, Kelvin uses techniques of visualization in “The Portrait” to evoke an image, but Quiroga prefers the fuzzier term “imagination” in “The Vampire” and links it with the evocation of Lugonian “strange forces.” And whereas love is deliberately removed from the reproduction of the double in “The Portrait,” emphasizing the scientific nature of the process, Ro-sales adds love to his formula in order to cross “the frontier of what is beyond the rational.”23 Even the poetic justice of “Vampire” is fantastic in nature, as Rosales is killed by a being who seeks the very love that had been missing in the creation process. Quiroga’s 1927 rewriting of his own earlier works serves as a useful reminder of the strong tradition of hybridity among the genres, and of the particular proximity of the fantastic and science fiction which would continue to exist in Latin America.
Quiroga’s three texts exemplify the continuities as well as the shifts in the tensions between influence and originality in Latin America. Establishing national identity and a national/regional role in the world preoccupies Latin American writers long after independence is achieved, and their science fiction continues to reflect international political, cultural, and scientific power dynamics, though these elements are not always as clearly denoted as they were in nineteenth-century Latin American utopian fiction. As we can see in Quiroga’s works, Europe remains the central source for theoretical science. The two leading scientists in The Artificial Man are European by nationality and by training; Rudyard Kelvin in “The Portrait” is British; and the work of Gustave Le Bon forms the theoretical basis for both “Portrait” and “Vampire.” As in earlier texts, such as Doctor Benignus, the United States is associated with applied science, though there is some expansion into more theoretical territory. Ortiz has been trained as an engineer in New York, and the instruments in the team’s ultramodern laboratory are imported from the United States. Kelvin discovers that his experiment based on Le Bon’s theory has already been carried out in the United States while, in “Vampire,” the U.S. film industry is the main source of new technology. Northern literary influence continues in Quiroga’s science fictional works, with Mary Shelley and Poe predominating, though regional literary antecedents, such as Lugones, also persist. Quiroga’s “Vampire” registers the advent of the influence of U.S. mass culture in Latin America, with its incorporation of a Hollywood icon. Latin American contributions are still portrayed as secondary, but Latin American participation is on the rise. Quiroga sets the construction of the first artificial animal and human in Argentina, with an Argentine on the team, even if he is the least of its members. The characters in “Portrait” follow the pattern of the European, traveling in Latin America, who finds a Latin American confidant knowledgeable of the latest European scientific advances. In “Vampire,” a foreigner of unknown national origin also finds himself in a Latin American country, but an essential addition to a Frenchman’s scientific ideas is provided by the theoretical work of the Argentine narrator.
The golden age of Latin American science fiction does not arrive until the 1950s, with early genre magazines such as Beyond [Más Allá] (Argentina, 1953–57), Fantastic (Brazil, 1955–60), and Fantastic Stories [Los Cuentos Fantásticos] (Mexico, 1948–53), and seminal works such as The Superior Ones [Los altísimos] (Chile, 1959) and the comic The Eternaut [El Eternauta] (Argentina, 1957–59+). Until relatively recently, the emergence of Latin American science fiction was typically identified as occurring within this golden age. This was possible as long as works by Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and other canonical authors from the first half of the twentieth century were categorized as above the genre’s reach, and as long as the earliest works of Latin American science fiction remained unclaimed. Retrolabeling, bibliographical projects, and scholarly studies in the field have reached a quantitative and qualitative critical mass. The contributions of Latin American writers to this global genre have become evident, as has the place of science fiction in the Latin American literary landscape.
