A new paradise
A new paradise of Hans Dominik is a technical and scientific future history. It appeared in 1910 in the annual book series " Das Neue Universum " (Volume 31) and in 1977 by Heyne Verlag in the pocket book no. 3562 collection of short stories by Hans Dominik.
content
In this instructive short story, Hans Dominik describes the use of energy sources by humans, starting with the fire among the first human hunter groups, through the use of fossil fuels since the time of industrialization to the use of nuclear energy, which was still imminent at the time. He denounces the overexploitation of nature.
To the short story
Hans Dominik begins with a small group of collectors and hunters who can kill large animals as prey, but whose meat still has to be eaten raw. Only a wise old man remembers how good the roast meat tasted after a forest fire and wonders how he could get his own people on fire.
The author continues his thread: "From the Tertiary and Diluvium , mankind came into historical time. From pyramids and Indian temples it went to Greek pillars and Gothic domes. Through the Middle Ages it came into the new era, and the century of applied The natural sciences and technology lit up. The steam engine did the rough work for mankind. " But he does not fail to point out the consequences of the use of fossil fuels: "But you are overexploiting . You are pulling out of the ground the treasures that an earlier sun created over millennia to use up in decades. Again and again and more often the anxious question arises: What will the end of such an economy be? "
As a way out, Hans Dominik offers the use of nuclear energy . In the same volume of the New Universe, radium and its decay is discussed in detail and it is explicitly mentioned that this releases much larger amounts of energy than the combustion of coal. Hans Dominik now tells of the discovery of radioactivity and gives the reader all the important information about radioactivity that was known at the time.
Only now does the short story become a fiction when, in a physics college in the middle of the twentieth century, the professor announces that he had succeeded in using huge voltages to induce copper to radioactive decay and thus to turn the energy supply inside out. In the year 2050, the radiating matter will finally manage to lift an unmanned missile into space and land it softly on earth again.
Hans Dominik closes with a lecture in the year 2810, in which there are again reflective tones: "What that old researcher foresaw has literally come true. Today we are sitting in the Garden of Eden again. [...] But beware that not a new fall into sin in ignorance and ignorance deprives us of dominion over the world, [...] "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Dominik: A new paradise . 4th edition. Heyne Verlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-30456-X .
- ↑ Tommy Laeng: Future dreams from yesterday, today, the day after tomorrow . 2nd Edition. LIT Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-10675-9 , pp. 35 .