The last day of creation

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The last day of creation is a science fiction - novel about time travel in connection with the peak oil -Thematik the German writer Wolfgang Jeschke , which was published in Germany for the first time 1,981th The English translation was first published in 1982 in the USA and Great Britain.

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During the turmoil of the Cold War , NASA carried out research in the field of time travel with the Soviet Union under the guise of a “Race to Mars” . After initial successes, various specialists from all technical and military disciplines are recruited to be the first chrononauts to be sent on a journey five million years back in time. At this point, however, there is still no way to bring time travelers back to their own time. NASA and the US Navy, however, are certain - and promise this also to the protagonists - that they will be able to master this problem in the immediate future.

The goal of the USA is to build a base in the basin of the Mediterranean Sea, which was not filled with water at the time . From there, the Chrononauts are supposed to pump out the crude oil of the Middle East , especially Saudi Arabia , and transport it across Europe by pipeline in order to be able to extract it in the present using time machines disguised as North Sea oil platforms. The intention is to make the western world independent of the oil-exporting states and thus to shift the balance of power in favor of the western world .

The functionality of the so-called chronotron is proven by three artefacts , the finds of which are described in great detail at the beginning of the book: A mortar discovered in the desert of Algeria but not yet developed at the time of discovery , part of an eroded oxygen tube - which has been used in Italy for centuries by the Catholic Church holy relic of St. Veit is revered, and the remains of a rusted military jeep in a prehistoric layer of clay in Gibraltar in the 1840s. The unquestionable anachronism of these finds proves the technical success, although this also proves a failure of the actual enterprise, as no oil can be found in the timeline told.

The journey back in time succeeds. The group around the protagonist Steve Stanley experienced their first surprise shortly after landing. A war has raged between the Americans and an Arab-Soviet alliance in the past. It turns out that due to a scattering effect, the different teams of time travelers arrive very scattered in the past. Partly spread over centuries and millennia and not in the order of their departure from the present. A coordinated approach to building the pipeline is not possible under these conditions. The various groups fight for their survival and, at best, to prevent the enemy from implementing the opposite plans.

To her surprise, a great ape (representative of the Pithecanthropus erectus ) appears, who calls himself Goodluck and was recruited as a fighter by the Americans together with his companions. Goodluck saves the Chrononauts and brings them to the American fortress in Sardinia, which consists of only a few older soldiers and a nurse.

The war that raged in the past, some of which was waged with nuclear weapons , has already had a significant impact on the history of the world and on the “actual” present. So the land connection at Gibraltar was destroyed, so that the Atlantic pours into the Mediterranean basin and brings about the end of the Messinian salinity crisis . In the present, this dam breach was explained by an earthquake.

It also turns out that there are far more time travelers who have been waiting for their return for decades and even come from different timelines. So there are z. B. a group that comes from a politically rather insignificant USA, in whose timeline Mexico is the dominant nation of the North American continent. Traces of a kind of spaceport in Northern Europe and a gigantic Hercules statue near Gibraltar point to further, much older traces of time travelers. But time travelers with superior technology, from a distant, religious future also exert their influence.

In addition, a colony called Atlantis with several thousand people has formed in the Caribbean . Atlantis is at the point where the Navy planned to set up an access zone to bring the time travelers back from there. At present, this area is the Bermuda Triangle , the reputation of which is used by the Navy as a camouflage for its activities. The manipulation of contemporary history has obviously thwarted the Navy's plan to develop a procedure to bring the chrononauts back into their time so that there is no turning back for the participants in the mission.

Little by little the protagonists die and Steve Stanley sets off to travel to Africa. So the Navy's plan ultimately fails.

Structure of the book

The novel consists of three clearly distinguishable parts.

The first part begins with the rather incoherent telling of the finds of the artifacts and related stories. This is followed by the recruitment of the Chrononauts and the detailed explanation of the “Chronotron Project”.

The second part is a typical description of the chaos of war and its consequences. He depicts the struggle for survival in times of war.

The rather open end part of the novel describes fragmentarily the conflict of Steve Stanley, the alternatives that remain to him and his decision. In the end, the reader is left with some open questions.

This and that

  • Throughout the story, Plato's myth of Atlantis is incorporated.
  • Jeschke refers to Davy , a post-apocalyptic novel by Edgar Pangborn , by having his characters call their dog "Davy". Jeschke himself had published Pangborn's book in German at Heyne's a few years earlier.
  • In the GDR licensed edition, the mention of a MiG fighter aircraft is censored - by deleting the word 'MiG'.
  • In the afterword of the new edition from 2005, Jeschke writes that he is waiting for a call from Hollywood to have Roland Emmerich film the book .
  • The monumental Atlantropa project by a German engineer envisages the construction of a dam in the Strait of Gibraltar, which will separate the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, drastically lower the water level and partially dry it out. The presumably impracticable project dates back to 1928.
  • The Americans trained Pithecanthropus erectus , which they call tots, to be soldiers. But the Pithecanthropus erectus, known as the Java man, never lived in Europe. While the Pithecanthropus erectus is described as a carnivore and aggressive animal, another species of hominid that appears in the novel is the Paranthropus boisei , a peaceful herbivore. But even with Paranthropus boisei, the life and time period do not match the fossil finds.
  • In connection with the Gibraltar military jeep, an anonymous author is mentioned who wrote a spectacular book on archeology in 1968. The author is easy to recognize as Erich von Däniken and his book Memories of the Future from 1968.

Awards

Adaptations

  • The computer game (real-time strategy) Original War takes the book as a template, but relocates the plot to Siberia. Instead of oil, it is about a mineral that catalyzes cold fusion .

Further data

  • 1980 Pre-print of an excerpt under the title Anachronismen, or The Flute of Saint Veit , in: Frank Flügge (Ed.): Utopia. SFCD special edition 2/1980
  • 1981 First publication in Germany, Nymphenburger Verlag, ISBN 3-485-00403-0
  • 1981 First published in France under the title Le Dernier Jour de la Création , translated by Marie-Noëlle Ruckwied
  • 1982 First published in the USA and Great Britain under the title The Last Day of Creation , ISBN 0-312-47061-4 (US) / ISBN 0-7126-0042-6 (UK)
  • 1982 special edition for Bertelsmann Lesering (undated)
  • 1982 Special edition for the German Book Association (undated)
  • 1985 Paperback edition by Heyne Verlag, Munich (with a foreword by Brian W. Aldiss ), ISBN 3-453-31134-5
  • 1989 Changed GDR edition as hardcover by the publishing house Das Neue Berlin , ISBN 3-360-00249-0
  • 1989 First edition in Czech under the title Poslední den stvoření , translated by Jan Hlavička. ISBN 80-205-0137-1
  • 1990 First edition in Hungarian under the title A Teremtés utolsó napj . ISBN 963-11-6618-X
  • 2005 New edition in the series Masterpieces of Science Fiction (with a foreword by Frank Schätzing ), ISBN 3-453-52121-8 , also as an e-book, eISBN 978-3-641-01396-7
  • 2008 First edition in Spanish under the title El último día de la creación (Prólogo de Frank Schätzing), translated by Ilana Marx.
  • 2013: The Cusanus Game - Midas - The Last Day of Creation . Three novels in one volume (with a foreword by Sascha Manczak). ISBN 978-3-453-31476-4 , also as an e-book, ISBN 978-3-641-10428-3

literature

  • Gudrun Thiel: Wolfgang Jeschke's novel "The Last Day of Creation". About the possibilities of science fiction to process modern natural science theologically. In: Acta Germanica [Frankfurt / Main] 18 (1985), pp. 217-231.

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