The Spirit of Science Fiction
A Novel
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From a master of contemporary fiction, a tale of bohemian youth on the make in Mexico City
Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world--or sacrifice themselves to it. Roberto Bolaño's The Spirit of Science Fiction is a story of youth hungry for revolution, notoriety, and sexual adventure, as they work to construct a reality out of the fragments of their dreams.
But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction and dreams of cosmonauts and Nazis. Meanwhile, Remo runs headfirst into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city's labyrinthine streets, rundown cafés, and murky bathhouses.
This kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty is a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño's fiction, and an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Chilean author Roberto Bolaño only became a worldwide literary sensation after his death in 2003, but as this newly discovered early novel proves, his talent was there from the beginning. Poet Remo and novelist Jan have traveled from Chile to Mexico City looking for inspiration. Jan follows his head, shutting himself away to write letters to his favorite sci-fi author. Meanwhile, Remo follows his senses, embarking on a sexual odyssey through the city’s bathhouses. Bolaño weaves a shining thread of magical realism throughout this emotional story, filling Jan and Remo’s dual narratives with soaring, dreamlike passages that left our head spinning in the best way possible. We loved the way he interweaves this amorous tale with passages about the intoxicating joys of the creative life. Though his main characters each take separate journeys, Bolaño ties them both into one adventure for the soul.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This striking, meandering novel from Bola o (2666), written toward the beginning of his career, follows the coming-of-age of two young writers in Mexico City. Aspiring writers Jan and Remo get an apartment together. Jan spends his days holed up in the apartment, reading books and penning letters to sci-fi authors he admires, such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Fritz Leiber. Jan's solitude is contrasted by Remo's social jaunts around the city: he joins a poetry workshop, falls in love with a young woman named Laura, and rides a motorcycle. Remo's involvement in the city's literary scene exposes the reader to a number of digressive stories (one particularly memorable aside features Georges Perec unwittingly defusing a duel between poets Isidore Isou and Andr Vernier in Paris). Meanwhile, the reader also sees Jan's searching letters, scattered throughout: "Oh, Ursula, it's actually a relief to send out messages and have all the time in the world," he writes. Though more a collection of scenes and impressions and thinner than his other novels, this is an intriguing and dreamy portrait of two writers taking different paths in their pursuit of their love of literature, hoping to discover their voices.
