Josef Nesvadba is my favorite Czech science fiction writer. This book is a collection of his famous fantasy stories. The author's characters are the unacknowledged genius inventors (usually mad), Nazis looking for the ultimate weapon, shady skillful surgeons carrying out the horror-like surgeries, and many more. His stories are rather examining morality, ethics, and philosophy then the feats of any future technology. The reader will find a mix of horror, science fiction, and comedy. The book is named after one of the stories in which the criminal forcibly, with help of the skillful surgeon, acquires the face of the dead priest. The removed criminal's face is preserved in a special liquid. Later on the surgeon himself has to hide and to avoid prosecution he chooses to have the criminal's face implanted. Both the criminal and the surgeon start acquiring the other persons' face qualities, the criminal becomes the priest and the surgeon becomes the criminal. But at the end of the story when these two characters are to decide life-and-death conflict their true original characteristics surface. Their changes in behaviors were just transitional and it is concluded that people's natures are not changed by having a different face.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The Lost Face: Best Science Fiction from Czechoslovakia
Josef Nesvadba is my favorite Czech science fiction writer. This book is a collection of his famous fantasy stories. The author's characters are the unacknowledged genius inventors (usually mad), Nazis looking for the ultimate weapon, shady skillful surgeons carrying out the horror-like surgeries, and many more. His stories are rather examining morality, ethics, and philosophy then the feats of any future technology. The reader will find a mix of horror, science fiction, and comedy. The book is named after one of the stories in which the criminal forcibly, with help of the skillful surgeon, acquires the face of the dead priest. The removed criminal's face is preserved in a special liquid. Later on the surgeon himself has to hide and to avoid prosecution he chooses to have the criminal's face implanted. Both the criminal and the surgeon start acquiring the other persons' face qualities, the criminal becomes the priest and the surgeon becomes the criminal. But at the end of the story when these two characters are to decide life-and-death conflict their true original characteristics surface. Their changes in behaviors were just transitional and it is concluded that people's natures are not changed by having a different face.
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