The new stone age
The short novel The New Stone Age is a science fiction story written in 1939 under the title Lords of Creation by the brothers Earl Andrew and Otto Oscar Binder under the pseudonym Eando Binder . It has been known under the German title since it was published in 1971 in the Terra Nova magazine series (No. 169) by Moewig Verlag .
It is noteworthy that in this novel global warming has made Antarctica an ice-free, inhabited continent. The inhabitants of other continents, however, suffer from the lack of raw materials, which have long been fully exploited there. You now live in Stone Age conditions.
Publication history
The novel was first published as a sequel story by Pulp magazine Argosy . The first of six parts appeared on September 23, 1939.
It was not until 1949 that the story was published in book form by Prime Press , Philadelphia , with an edition of 2,112. The 112 copies that exceeded the 2000 edition were numbered and signed individual copies. In 1969 a paperback was published by Belmont Books , New York .
In 1958, Lords of Creation was first published in German translation under the title Antarkta by Erich Pabel Verlag in Rastatt as Utopia large volume no.87 . After Heinrich Bauer Verlag had acquired both Erich Pabel Verlag in Rastatt and Arthur Moewig Verlag in Munich in 1970, a new edition of the novel was published in the Moewig Terra Nova series in 1971 . The new edition was titled The New Stone Age .
action
The young science assistant Homer Ellory went into stasis in a time capsule in 1950 with the aim of being awakened by the people of the year 5000. Disappointed and horrified, he finds out after his awakening that humanity has fallen back into a kind of second stone age . After a devastating war and the total depletion of natural resources of coal, oil and iron ore, mankind experienced a dramatic decline. The former nations of the world have disintegrated into many small states, which fight frequent border wars among themselves. The climate has also changed significantly, the average temperature is much higher than in 1950 and only in the far north still falls some snow in winter.
In the now almost ice-free Antarctica , people have maintained an almost modern civilization, based on the one hand on the exploitation of the resources that are only available there and on the other hand on the enslavement of the more primitive population of the rest of the world, who also pay constant tribute in the form of natural produce got to. Every nine months they fly to the people with their advanced machines to pick up work slaves.
Homer Ellory quickly succeeds in convincing the people of Norak, the former New York City, that their real enemies are not their immediate neighbors, but the "Lords of Antarka". He extracts iron ore from the iron oxide, which is abundant in the major cities of the former USA, and forges weapons from it. With the help of these weapons, the Norak are vastly superior to their neighbors, since until now only clubs and stones have served as weapons. They are defeated within a very short time and integrated into the ranks of the Norak army. The masters of Antarka are unsettled by this sudden surge in development and forbid people to use iron weapons. When these do not adhere to this, they are attacked and defeated by the Antarkers with their aircraft and much more sophisticated weapons.
Homer Ellory is captured and taken to Antarka. From there he manages to escape and he returns to Norak. Angry residents who blame him for the Antarker punishment chase him down in the ruins of old New York. With the help of an old scholar, he finally finds an abandoned bunker that is full of handguns, rifles and ammunition. With their help, he starts a second campaign of conquest. The Antarker aircraft's advantage is now balanced and dozens of them are shot down. Finally, the conquest of Antarctica and victory over the Antarkers succeed.
rating
The novel reflects the view of scientific progress, especially the American conception of culture, which is typical for its time of writing. The plot is extremely stereotypical, the protagonist represents the ideal of the " lonesome hero ", who for his ideals of freedom even turns out a personal connection with the queen of the ruling great power. The former science assistant succeeds in smelting iron from theory, forging iron weapons, distinguishing himself as an excellent warrior and even demonstrating political talent by not only uniting warring tribes, but also knowing how to inspire them for his cause.
In addition, the Binder brothers are accused of having only used the material from HG Wells The Time Machine . However, the hero from The New Stone Age neither uses a time machine for his visit to the future, nor are the social conditions there the same as with the British Wells, who imagines two different races of people, the Eloi and the Morlocks , that emerge from an earlier class society seem to have developed. In The New Stone Age , the differences between the peoples are based, in contrast to some of the ideologies that actually prevailed in 1939, when they were created, only on the different access to resources and technology. The battle for raw materials in an increasingly ice-free Antarctic can be better understood today through the events of the past decades. The science fiction -author and critic John Clute therefore keeps the narrative Lords of Creation for "remarkable" under the continuing stories of the Pulp Magazines.
literature
- Joseph H. Crawford, James J. Donahue, and Donald M. Grant: "333". A Bibliography of the Science-Fantasy Novel . The Grandon Company, Providence 1953 p. 12
- Donald H. Tuck : The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy . Advent, Chicago 1974 ISBN 0-911682-20-1 p. 46
- Jack L. Chalker and Mark Owings: The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Bibliographic History, 1923-1998 . 3rd edition, Mirage Press, Ltd., Westminster (Maryland) and Baltimore 1991 ISBN 0-88358-204-X p. 531
Individual evidence
- ↑ Terra Nova , overview of the volumes in the series
- ↑ Lords of Creation (1949) in the WorldCat of the OCLC
- ↑ Utopia Großband ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Cover picture of volume 87
- ↑ The New Stone Age , table of contents and review on fictionfantasy.de
- ↑ John Clute , Peter Nicholls : The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction . St. Martin's Press, New York 1993, ISBN 1-85723-124-4 , p. 121
