A Maze of Death

1ª ed.: 1970
ed. sp.: Laberinto de Muerte
auth.: Philip K Dick [ author, leidos ]

Una idea genial que se desvela en el último momento, pero que no justifica toda una novela por la que uno se arrastra sin demasiado interés.

[from wikipedia] 

The plot revolves around fourteen colonists of the world Delmak-O. They are: Betty Jo Berm, a linguist; elderly Bert Kostler, settlement custodian; Maggie Walsh, a theologian; Ignatz Thugg, who oversees thermoplastics; Milton Babble, a physician; Wade Frazer, apsychologist; Tony Dunkelwelt, a geologist; Glen Belsnor, who specialises in telecommunications; Susie Smart, a typist; Roberta Rockingham, a sociologist; Ben Tallchief, a naturalist; Seth and Mary Morley, a marine biologist couple; and Ned Russell, an economist. They inhabit a universe in which the deities of their religion can be contacted through a network of prayer amplifiers and transmitters. Tallchief is transferred to Delmak-O as a direct result of his prayer-petition for a change in his intolerable work situation.

Delmak-O is a mysterious and largely unexplored world. It seems to be inhabited by both real and artificial beings and enormous cube-shaped, gelatinous objects ("tenches") that duplicate items presented to them and give out advice, in anagrams reminiscent of the I Ching. In addition, various members of the group report sightings of a large "Building." As various calamities continue to befall each character, part of the group ventures out to find the mysterious structure. Each member of the group perceives the Building's entrance motto, and thus its purpose, differently.

One by one, the characters Tallchief, Smart, Berm, Dunkelwelt, Kostler and Walsh either kill themselves or are killed under mysterious circumstances. During a fight between the remaining colonists Seth Morley is shot through the shoulder causing an artery to be severed. While recovering from an attempt to repair the artery, Morley is abducted by armed men who kill Belsnor. They put Morley aboard a small flying craft but Morley overpowers them and takes control of the craft. With it he discovers that Delmak-O is in fact Earth, and he returns to the group to report this.

The group then comes to the conclusion that they are all criminally insane and part of a psychiatric experiment in rehabilitation. Once they admit to having killed the other members they conclude that the experiment has been a failure. It is at this point that they notice that each of them is tattooed with the phrase, "Persus 9." They decide to ask a tench what this means but doing so causes the tench to explode and the world around them to crumble to pieces.

All of them, including the colonists thought to be dead, awake to find that they are actually the crew of a spaceship that has become stranded in orbit around a dead star with no way of calling for help. Their experience had been a kind of virtual reality—a computer-generated religion that synthesized their beliefs—to help them pass the time. Seth Morley is depressed by this and wonders whether it would be better to let all the air out from the ship and thus kill them all rather than live out the rest of their lives engaging in virtual reality with no hope of rescue. Before he can act, however, an aspect of the deity known as the Intercessor, supposedly existing only in the virtual reality program and not a part of the "real" world, appears before Morley and removes him from the ship. The others, unconcerned with his disappearance, embark on another hallucination which begins in exactly the same way as the previous one, only this time without Seth Morley.

The Martian

1ª ed.: 2011
ed. sp.:
auth.: Andy Weir [ author, leidos ]

Casa de muñecas. Ibsen

1ª ed.: 1879
ed. sp.:
auth.: Henrik Ibsen [ author, leidos ]

Sra. Linde: Vengo a la ciudad en busca de colocación.
Rank: ¿Será ése un remedio eficaz contra la fatiga?
Sra. Linde: Hay que vivir, doctor.
Rank: Se trata de una opinión general ciertamente. La mayoría estima necesario vivir.



A resaltar todo el final del tercer acto.
Nora.

Una forma de vida - Amelie Nothomb

1ª ed.: 2010
ed. sp.:
auth.: Amelie Nothomb [ author, leidos ]


Correo diplomático es un pleonasmo. "Dipolomático" tiene por etimología el antiguo griego diploma, "papel doblado por la mitad", es decir pliegue. La diplomacia empezó con la correspondencia. En efecto, una carta puede ser una manera de decir las cosas con amabilidad. De ahí la contaminación histórica de ambas prácticas: un diplomático suele escribir misivas con frecuencia y el estilo epistolar suele adquirir modales diplomáticos. (pag.65)

The Maze Runner (Trilogy)

[wiki] The_Maze_Runner
[wiki] The_Scorch_Trials
[wiki] The_Death_Cure

La Mística de la feminidad - Betty Friedan

1ª ed.: 1963
ed. sp.: Diarios de las estrellas
auth.: Betty Friedan [ author, leidos ]


La mística de la feminidad» es un clásico del pensamiento feminista que se publicó originalmente en Estados Unidos en 1963. Se trata sobre todo de un libro de investigación respaldado por un abundante trabajo descriptivo, y sólo como consecuencia de esto se acaba convirtiendo en un libro militante, lo que lo aproxima al otro gran clásico del siglo XX, «El segundo sexo», de Simone de Beauvoir. Friedan llama “mística de la feminidad” a esa imagen de lo “esencialmente femenino”, eso de lo que hablan y a lo que se dirigen las revistas para mujeres, la publicidad y los libros de autoayuda. Es una horma moral, fabricada en esos años, en la que se pretende, como en un lecho de Procusto, hacer vivir a todas las mujeres. Es algo inauténtico que, si se intenta llevar a cabo, produce consecuencias cada vez más graves. Comienza por un difuso malestar y termina por producir enfermedades verdaderas. Precisamente el libro comienza con un capítulo titulado “El malestar que no tiene nombre”. Estamos ante un libro extraordinariamente influyente que ha resultado ser decisivo en el acompañamiento de uno de los cambios sociales más determinantes del siglo xx: la posición y autoconciencia de las mujeres como grupo.

Star Diaries

1ª ed.: 1957, 1971
ed. sp.: Diarios de las estrellas
auth.: Stanislaw Lem [ author, leidos ]

Dzienniki gwiazdowe is a 1957 collection of short stories by Polishwriter Stanisław Lem, expanded in 1971 around the character of space traveller Ijon Tichy.

Considerada casi unánimemente la obra maestra de Lem, y descrita a menudo como una comedia cósmica en el escenario de un universo desbocado, Diarios de las Estrellas narra las aventuras de un cosmonauta dedicado a la interminable tarea de explorar y modificar las estructuras, tanto cosmológicas como cronológicas, más sorprendentes e insólitas. 

Compuesta de una primera parte de Viajes y una segunda de Memorias, estos Diarios de las estrellas -que se publican ahora por primera vez en un solo volúmen- son probablemente la mejor muestra de la aguda e ingeniosa crítica al antropocentrismo que caracteriza las mejores obras de uno de los grandes clásicos europeos de la ciencia ficción. 

Sinopsis 

(from wikipedia)

• Introduction and Introduction to the Expanded Edition, in whichProfessor Tarantoga presents the latest information on the documentation of Ijon Tichy's exploits.
• "The Seventh Voyage", in which a spaceship defect forces Tichy through a series of time vortices, creating a multitude of temporal copies of himself.
• "The Eighth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy represents Earth to petition for its admission to the United Planets.
• "The Eleventh Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy travels in disguise to the planet Circia to attempt to bring an end to hostilities coming from its robot population.
• "The Twelfth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy employs Prof. Tarantoga's new invention of time acceleration on the planet of Microcephalics.
• "The Thirteenth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy sets out to meet Master Oh. Instead, he finds two planets (Pinta and Panta) ruled according to the Master's principles. On Pinta, people are trying to become fish using a technique called evolution by persuasion. On Panta, all inhabitants are identical clones and exchange their jobs daily.
• "The Fourteenth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy goes hunting for Squamp (Polish: kurdel) - an animal whose area is several hectares and is being puzzled by mysterious objects, called scrupts (Polish: sepulki).
• "The Eighteenth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy helps create the cause of our universe from a single electron.
• "The Twentieth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy is forced by his future self to lead a programme to ameliorate Earth's and mankind's history.
• "The Twenty-first Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy visits Dykhtonia - a civilisation which achieved total corporeal and mental plasticity after a thousand-year rule by automorphists, the local equivalent of transhumanists.
• "The Twenty-second Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy learns of the troubles of evangelising extraterrestrial civilisations.
• "The Twenty-third Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy visits a tiny planet, whose inhabitants save living space by frequently storing themselves as 'atom dust'.
• "The Twenty-fourth Voyage", in which Ijon Tichy visits a civilisation which has assigned all power to a machine to establish planetary harmony. The machine changed them all into shiny discs to be arranged in pleasant patterns across their planet.
• "The Twenty-fifth Voyage", about the evolution of potatoes.
• "The Twenty-eighth Voyage"