From the realm of the imagination
From the realm of fantasy is a booklet series published in 1901, which is referred to as the first science fiction series . The volumes written by Robert Kraft were published by HG Münchmeyer in Dresden . The plot tells the dreams of a paralyzed fourteen year old in which he experiences all kinds of things. In the advertising of the publisher it was said: “Robert Kraft has masterfully understood in his latest work:“ From the Realm of Imagination ”not only to captivate the reader, but also to teach him”, but the series was not a sales success. It was discontinued after ten issues, the eleventh issue was announced, but never delivered. The cover pictures of the magazine series, which was a successor to the series From all parts of the world , were designed in Art Nouveau . A booklet cost ten pfennigs.
content
Framework story
Richard L., an orphan and physically disabled since a railway accident, lives alone in his inherited house with his last relative, Aunt Elise, an elderly widow. Taught by private tutors, he is largely isolated from his surroundings and mainly relies on books for his entertainment. On his fourteenth birthday, too, he turned to the fantastic literature, which he preferred, but found no consolation in it: “Sighing, he put the book down again, leaned back and closed his eyes, and two great tears slowly ran down his pale cheeks .
Suddenly - what was that? He looked up startled. The lamp had gone out of its own accord, a different, strange glow and a sweet scent of incense filled the room, and before him stood the slim figure of a young woman in transfigured light.
Her robe shone in a wonderful splendor of colors, it seemed to be composed of nothing but small, colorful pictures that changed constantly, as if the whole dress were alive. Richard saw mountains and valleys, forests and meadows, deserts and ice fields, palaces and huts, he saw all human races moving on them, he saw baptisms and weddings and funerals - all of human life took place in all variations in the pictures, and then he saw a multitude of strange shapes, of dragons and monsters, and everything alive and brightly colored.
In her beautiful countenance a couple of eyes glowed with overwhelming fire, and in her hand she held a branch of laurel.
'Poor Richard!' began the wonderful apparition in a soft voice. 'Don't be afraid, I'm a fairy godmother. I was the godfather of all those who have created great and beautiful and immortal things, and now I am bringing you my birthday present. They call me the imagination. Your future, to which you are entitled, has been destroyed by a cruel fate, I cannot reverse what happened, nor can I restore your health, but I can give you a replacement for what was lost. '"The visitor advises him, everyone To think about where his dreams should take him before going to sleep in the evening. He will then be able to enter these strange worlds through a small chamber door in his room.
Jungle in Leipzig
Richard makes good use of this offer. In the second issue, for example, one learns: “Day and night are created by the rotation of the earth around itself, but the change of the seasons is caused by the rotation of the earth around the sun. The earth's axis always remains parallel on the elliptical orbit around the sun. This axis of the earth goes through the North Pole and the South Pole .
Richard had now wished that the axis of the rotation should be shifted by ninety degrees, so that the new poles would be on the previous equator.
The island of Singapore is cut through by the equator . If you imagine a line drawn from it through the center of the earth, you just come across the city of Quito in the South American state of Ecuador . Richard had identified these two points as the new poles of the earth's axis. "
This also changes the position of the equator, which suddenly leads right through Leipzig , Richard's hometown. Richard has to realize, however, that his wish has freed him from the bitter January cold that Leipzig has to suffer from in reality, but that the living conditions have not become more pleasant as a result: he finds the city full of corpses; only one shoemaker family seems to have survived. Surrounded by rampant creepers and wild animals, he led the life of a Robinson for a long time before he met the shoemaker family again. This now lives in the remains of the Schweizerhaus, an entertainment establishment. When Richard pays her a visit and brings a bottle of brandy and a home-baked bread, the former shoemaker's greed for alcohol awakens and he follows Richard through the forest towards the powder tower, where the boy has made quarters. In agony, Richard begins to sob and wishes that everything could just be a dream - whereupon he wakes up relieved in his bed.
space
The third volume contains an Indian story, while the fourth begins with the following scenario: “In the large hall, which was occasionally darkened to make the light drawings projected on a white wall visible, crowded a crowd of men, mostly wearing glasses wore and were bald. Richard was standing at a raised lectern, next to him you could see an experiment table on which strange apparatus had been set up, and behind him hung a large blackboard.
Richard explained to the most famous scholars of the whole world that he had already made ready-made airship, the theoretical construction of which his ingenious father had worked for a whole generation in a lonely study.
But if, in contrast to himself, he called his father ingenious, and claimed he was only the simple henchman for his ingenious ideas, then it was certainly nothing more than modesty. What he told the scholars and calculated was so marvelous that they couldn't understand a single word; it was like an old mathematician trying to prove the correctness of the Pythagorean theorem to a baby sucking the big toe.
Richard wrote endless rows of numbers on the blackboard, threw around with trigonometric formulas and roots and used a completely unknown type of calculation from the fourth dimension, where the simplest thing was that he had the fourteen-digit logarithms of all numbers in his head. All previous achievements in the natural sciences, in physics, chemistry and electrical engineering seemed to him to be child's gimmicks long since overcome, in the starry world he was at home like a cab driver in his hometown, and the scholars expressed their admiration all the more by applauding, when they didn't understand anything at all.
But it only got really interesting when Richard went over to the demonstrating experiments [...] "
A little later, a research society is shot into space in a giant spaceship, experiences the phenomenon of weightlessness and finally lands on the moon , where one discovers the sugar-loaf-like houses of an unknown population. The company then travels on towards Mars , but is diverted from its orbit with dramatic consequences: “The rotation lasted over three hours: gradually, as it began, it then stopped again; just as slowly the fog was gone again. In that time the spacecraft had covered 33,748 miles, now it was steering the old course, but with 13 bodies on board, including the second officer, 42 cripples or seriously wounded and 104 people who had at least been bruised. In short, no one was spared, and the survivors owed their minor injuries only to the fact that they had, voluntarily or involuntarily, clung to something, or - this could no longer be ascertained - that they were at the colossal speed of rotation according to the laws of centrifugal force stuck to the outer walls. ”For the future, one wants to arm oneself against such incidents that are triggered by“ aether vortices ”with rolling capsules into which one has to squeeze before the spaceship rotates begins. A new, Earth-like planet has just been discovered, which is christened “Germania”, when the spaceship seems to get out of hand and crash. This time Richard finds himself in front of his bed, from which he fell headfirst in his sleep.
Africa and the English
In the fifth volume, a shipwrecked story is played out in the style of Robinson Crusoe, in the sixth you get into a ghost town on the Polynesian archipelago, in the seventh Richard is on a steel horse that moves through a new type of drive in Africa and draws the attention of English industrial spies, especially a Mr. Litton, on themselves. After saving the German farmer Georg Schneider from a cruel act of revenge by the same Englishman, he comes across Litton in Kolobeny. The latter greets him with military honors - "The drum roll rang out, then the white and black soldiers held their rifles, as unevenly as possible, at a slight angle in front of them, and some of them even forgot to close their mouths, which were still open in amazement" -, but of course pursues him later. At the last second Richard managed to escape to a border river and this time woke up with a wet head because he knocked over the water bottle on his bedside table in his sleep.
Underwater and at the North Pole
In the settlement on the seabed Richard experiences adventures in a self-constructed diving suit, the helmet of which he has to take off at the end, so that this time he falls into the agony of a drowning man before he wakes up. He embarks on a North Pole voyage in a transformed form: “The director of Bremer Norddeutscher Lloyd informed Richard, who had suddenly turned into a sailor of sedate age with a red face and an even redder nose, that he was destined to be the captain of a northern steamer owned by an artists' society had been rented. He knew, said the director, who he had on board, that they were very preferred passengers, including the first stars of the court theater, and that as an experienced Nordland driver he had been entrusted with the management of this steamer only because he was given because of her I think personal preferences are particularly suitable for this captaincy. "
Prima donna, hero tenor etc. give him a hard time. Finally the ship is frozen and the assembled artists create new works: “Now the painter only painted icebergs and the frozen ship in them, the poet began an epic of two dozen songs, but the virtuoso composed - crammed on the piano and asked everyone , yes, even the sailors whom he brought down because of it, whether this didn't sound exactly as if the ice floes were breaking and the icebergs were collapsing ...
"Watch out - now it comes - now the ship is bursting - clap, clap, schnedderedengdeng - these are the waves - breaking on the hull - break, break, bang, kladderadatsch - now it's broken - bumberumbumbum - now it's sinking. Isn't that nice? "
"Well, that’s not shy," said the sailor, shaking his head, "and what the waves atone for, they don't sedge anyway."
“Now the men in distress are screaming: huhu, hoho, hohoooh, helloh - now the mothers are screaming: lulululululu - now the children are whimpering: kui, kui, kui, kui, kui. - Doesn't that sound quite natural? "
"Well, that just sounds like a young Swien."
“Man,” the pianist jumped up furiously and reached for a bundle of notes, “out, out! Away from my eyes! You are as unmusical as a hoopoe! "
Up on deck, however, the prima donna lay on the bow-legged groom's chest and wept tears of emotion. "After an encounter with polar bears and the discovery of the North Pole, one finally comes across Eskimos , and attempts to communicate with them lead to such tremendous laughter, that Richard wakes up from it. In the last published volume, Richard again has to deal with the hated Englishmen, whom he meets this time in Phunga, India, and again the action turns into an adventure in polar temperatures. Richard wakes up during a scene in which oil and seal bacon are being eaten.
title
The following volumes have been published:
- The last caveman
- The city of the dead
- The red messiah
- The space sailors
- The enchanted island
- The King of Sorcerers or In the Land of Living Death
- The steel horse
- The settlement on the seabed
- A North Pole trip
- The Indian Eskimos
The eleventh volume, Before Troy , was no longer delivered. The settlement on the sea floor goes back to Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . The Last Caveman and The Indian Eskimos contain motifs that Kraft picked up again in 1910 in his novel The New Earth .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robert Kraft, The Last Caveman , Dresden 1901, back cover
- ↑ a b presentation on fictionfantasy.de
- ↑ Robert Kraft, The Last Caveman , Dresden 1901, o. P.
- ^ Robert Kraft, Die Totenstadt , Dresden 1901, o. P.
- ↑ a b Robert Kraft, Die Weltallschiffer , Dresden 1901, o. P.
- ↑ Robert Kraft, The Stahlroß , Dresden in 1901, above, p.
- ↑ a b Robert Kraft, Eine Nordpolfahrt , Dresden 1901, o. P.