Ecuador es productor de ciencia ficción en América Latina. Comienzo con esta afirmación entusiasta, porque a pesar de que Ecuador es un país pequeño, su producción literaria supera los doscientos títulos por año. La ciencia ficción busca ocupar un pequeño trozo de esta acción, gracias a los escritores que cultivan el género; muchas veces, lo hacen de la mano de la fantasía. Aún así, ¿cómo entender su desarrollo sin ponerlo en perspectiva junto a las demás naciones del continente?

Un breve mapa de la ciencia ficción latinoamericana

Ecuador entró al ruedo de la ciencia ficción en el siglo XIX. Sin embargo, antes de repasar su ingreso al género, debemos señalar brevemente que México es el país de origen de la ciencia ficción latinoamericana. El curioso texto de Fray Manuel de Rivas, Sizigia y cuadraturas lunares ajustadas al meridiano de Mérida de Yucatán por una anctíona o habitador de la Luna y dirigidas al Bachiller Don Ambrosio de Echeverría, entonador que ha sido de kyries funerales en la parroquia del Jesús de dicha ciudad y al presente profesor de logarítmica en el pueblo de Mama de la península de Yucatán; para el año del Señor 1775(1773) abrió el camino para que México explorara el género hasta nuestros días, en contra de otras estéticas literarias convencionales. De esta manera, la ciencia ficción ha atraído a una gran variedad de autores. Entre ellos se encuentran Amado Nervo, Eduardo Urzaisz, Félix Palavicini, Diego Cañedo, Juan José Arreola, Carlos Fuentes, René Rebetez, Homero Aridiis, Bernardo Fernández y Alberto Chimal. Además, ha abierto un espacio para revistas y el establecimiento de concursos y premios literarios. Junto a la profusa productividad de México, la otra nación en la que la ciencia ficción ha sido bien cultivada y despertado gran interés es Argentina, cuya historia comienza con Eduardo Holmberg y Viaje maravilloso del Señor Nic Nac (1875) [ The Marvelous Journey of Mr. Nic nac]. Desde la época de dicha referencia, la ciencia ficción argentina ha seguido floreciendo con autores como Leopoldo Lugones, Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Héctor Gérman Oesterheld, Angélica Gorodischer y muchos otros. No debemos descartar el valioso trabajo de teóricos de la ciencia ficción como Pablo Cappana. Esta lista desordenada debe incluir también la producción de revistas y foros importantes que continúan hasta el día de hoy en ese país austral. Junto a estos dos gigantes, otra nación que igualmente comenzó a cultivar la ciencia ficción es Brasil, con Páginas do história do Brasil, escritas no ano 2000 (1868) de Joaquim Felício dos Santos.]. Después de esto, hubo una serie de avances literarios, incluidos los de Emilia Freitas, Rodolfo Teófilo, Adalzira Bittencourt, Albino Coutinho, Jerónimo Monteiro, etc., además de revistas y foros centrados en la animación y la ciencia ficción.

En la ciencia ficción andina, el precursor es sin duda Perú, con Lima de aquí a cien años ( 1843) , de Julián M. de Portillo, a la cabeza. Después de este libro, editado en forma de folleto, enumeramos las obras de Clemente Palma, Héctor Velarde, Eugenio Alarco, José B. Adolph, Enrique Prochazka, José Donayre, Daniel Salvo, entre otros. En el mismo país durante los últimos dos años se ha realizado un enorme trabajo en congresos y foros, junto al de estudiosos que buscan posicionar la ciencia ficción en la literatura latinoamericana y peruana. Otra nación contribuyente es Chile, con El espejo del futuro o la visión del futuro en el año 1975 (1876) [El espejo del futuro, o la visión del futuro en el año 1975 , de David Tillman. Su obra fue seguida por la de Francisco Miralles, Julio Assman, Manuel Rojas, Hugo Correa, Elena Aldunate, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Baradit y otros. La tercera nación que ha marcado hitos en el desarrollo de la ciencia ficción es Ecuador, con la obra fundacional de Francisco Campos Coello, La receta, novela fantástica ( 1893).]. Otros autores que han jugado papeles importantes desde esa temprana época son Manuel Gallegos Naranjo, Juan Viteri Durand, Carlos Béjar Portilla, Santiago Páez, Abdón Ubidia, Leonardo Wild, Fernando Naranjo Espinosa, etc. En cuanto a Bolivia, el comienzo de su tradición de ciencia ficción es más reciente, en el siglo XX, con los cuentos de Adela Zamudio. Autores posteriores incluyen a Armando Montenegro, Álvaro Pinedo Antezana, Harry Marcus e Iván Prado Sejas, entre otros. Colombia también se lanzó tarde al ruedo de la ciencia ficción, con “Bogotá en el año 2000” de Soledad Acosta de Samper. La primera novela de ciencia ficción, sin embargo, es Una triste aventura de catorce sabios (1928) de José Félix Fuenmayor [ Félix]. A esta obra le siguen los trabajos de José Antonio Osorio Lizarazo, Manuel Francisco Sliger Vergara, Antonio Mora Vélez, Luis Noriega y Héctor Abad Faciolince, entre otros.

El diálogo ecuatoriano con la ciencia ficción

Mencioné que Ecuador comenzó su exploración en la ciencia ficción temprana con una obra llamada La receta, novela fantástica de Francisco Campos Coello. En 1893 se publicó por fascículos en las páginas de una revista guayaquileña, El Globo Literario .; poco después, se publicó como libro en 1899. Se trata de una utopía o, como yo la llamo, una “utopía ficticia prospectiva”. Su autor fue un notable político, el hombre que planeó y llevó a cabo la inmensa obra de llevar agua potable a Guayaquil. Rediseñó la ciudad, generando diversas obras e instituciones sociales y políticas cuando fue su alcalde. La novela se centra en los efectos “futuros” de su labor, ambientada imaginariamente a fines del siglo pasado, cuando todos los caminos conducen a Guayaquil. Es el centro del mercado y de la inversión de capitales y también es un ejemplo de buen gobierno, gracias a las políticas educativas, científicas y artísticas. Campos Coello realiza, en efecto, la tan esperada evaluación de los resultados de los logros y acertadas decisiones de “sus” políticas como miembro de laPartido Progresista . Además, lo hace mostrando un diseño utópico de una isla-ciudad donde reina la justicia, prima el bienestar absoluto y la verdadera felicidad en progreso; es un lugar donde se pueden redescubrir nociones oníricas de país, con principios que permitan la constitución de una nación completa.

Además de político, Campos Coello fue también un prolífico escritor y cronista de su época. Continuó escribiendo cuentos donde tanto la ciencia ficción como la fantasía estaban presentes. Su otra novela, Guayaquil artístico, viaje a Saturno ( 1900) -aunque inconclusa- fue publicada como serie en otra revista. Llama a la exploración del espacio.

Campos Coello (along with others who followed him, such as Manuel Gallegos Naranjo, Alberto Arias, José Antonio Campos, and others) emulates Jules Verne. His admiration for this author likely resulted from his journey to France around 1860. We can affirm, therefore, that early Ecuadorian science fiction’s first dialogue is with Verne and his extraordinary journeyings and taste for mixing scientific explanations along plot lines (owing to his desire to divulge the innovation and new scientific and technological hypotheses of his age). This is how Campos Coello writes, with simple language and entertaining arguments through which shines his erudition and scientific knowledge, demonstrating that he was well-versed in the topics he chose to write about.

We must jump as many as fifty years in order to recognize the second dialogue entertained by the representatives of Ecuadorian science fiction, with H.G. Wells. This is the case in the novel Zarkistán, by Juan Viteri Durand, as well as in Demetrio Aguilera Malta’s play, No bastan los átomos (1954) [There Aren’t Enough Atoms]. Context had shifted to the devastation of World War Two and the detonation of the atomic bomb. Wells, contrary to the positivism of the nineteenth century and sometimes to Verne’s enthusiasm, builds up a more critical sort of science fiction, a sort of alarm that underscores his skepticism. Taking his perspective into account, I have named science fiction from the Ecuadorian fifties “ciencia ficción escéptico-metafísica” [skeptic-metaphysical science fiction]. This is owing to the fact that this literature holds scientific and technological gains suspect, even more so when the rationality of such gains crashes up against the rationality of their users. From this sense emerges the notion that humans can turn every utopian project into something undesirable and therefore detestable. The consequence, for the very reason that human beings can be rendered impotent when detestability meets policy, is a sense of existential oppression. In effect, this is what one reads in Zarkistán, a novel declaration against wanting to be more than human, preferring instead to immediately embrace the utopian outlook that certain extraterrestrial communities probably offer. In Demetrio Aguilera Malta’s work, there is an imaginary island of experimentation (in its case, an island nation), held captive by a tyrant that converts human beings into war machines. In the shadow of such an image, the idea is to rid the species of that authoritarian father-figure and attempt to reestablish humanity.

Science fiction in the last third of the twentieth century is distinct in its dialogues and references. Earlier dialogue considered technologies that aided in good government, (as is the case with the works of Campos Coello and others), or of science and technology that, contrarily, operate as bio-political mechanisms. Now, with a gaze turned toward a new millennium, the worries that confront new authors concern robots, the exploration of space, computers, genetic modifications, cloning, etc. I shall focus upon three contemporary authors of science fiction, including some who have crossed the border into the twenty-first century.

An unusual case is that of Carlos Béjar Portilla; he is an author that has – perhaps – opened the way for a new Ecuadorian science fiction, drinking from the open veins of Ray Bradbury and Jorge Luis Borges. He looks to transcendent and even metaphysical questions that have tension with new technologies. This quality is what distinguishes his work, particularly his anthologies of short stories: Simón el mago (1970) [Simon the Magician], Osa Mayor (1970) [She-Bear], and Samballah (1971). These are not books that openly criticize technology or how it is viewed in the social environment, as Wells would have done. Rather, they advance questions about the overlap between the physical body and technology, the human soul and the capacity to make machines “come to life”, and the camouflaged omnipresence of machines in social and family life, a matter that has become “natural” in the daily experience. In this manner, Béjar Portilla goes beyond his time by focusing upon the questions about hyperreality that would become more common at the end of the twentieth century.

Considering Bradbury and the impression left by Aldous Huxley, it is important to cite the example of Leonardo Wild. He focuses his literary work upon the mixing of adventure and scientific explanation, a mix that has served as a pretext to present novels of a reflexive character, aimed at adolescent audiences. It is for this reason that, for example, Orquídea negra o el factor vida (1999) [Black Orchid or the Life Factor] is a work that considers a planetary catastrophe caused by its own inhabitants who, ambitious for power, have deteriorated it. There is also Cotopaxi, alerta roja (2006) [Cotopaxi, Red Alert], which focuses upon the possible eruption of the Cotopaxi volcano and the resulting problems that involve political decisions weighed down by special interests. In 2013, Wild brought about the Spanish edition of a book that was originally published in German, Unemotion (1996), with the title Yo artificial o el futuro de las emociones (2013) [Artificial Me and The Future of Emotions]. In it, he also considers the environmental deterioration of Earth and the sociopolitical problems that the process brings with it. It can be said that Wild places his books upon the axes of anxiety over human decisions, feelings, human character regarding environmental determinations and nature. That is to say, his worries are are oriented to show how many of humanity’s decisions impact life itself on Earth.

Another example is found in Santiago Páez, an author that establishes a dialogue of principles with the work of Úrsula K. Le Guin. His anthology is seminal. Profundo en la galaxia (1994) [Deep in the Galaxy] relates life in space and space exploration with the indigenous world; per the author, sociocultural interrelations and knowledge that can be established between two distinct worlds. Corollary to said work is Shamanes y Reyes (1999) [Shamen and Kings]. In one sense, his reflection becomes political in Crónicas del breve reino (2006, reprinted in 2017 in a definitive edition) [Chronicles of the Brief Kingdom], a work in four parts about the history of an imaginary Ecuador whose end is seen in a post-apocalyptic future. This novel about the failure of society as a result of intertwined political and capitalist interests stands in contrast to his graphic novel Angelus Hostis (2012, coauthored with Rafael Carrasco) [Enemy Angel] about a futuristic city stalked from within by malign beings. Nevertheless, his critical speech about social and political failure reaches its maximum in Ecuatox® (2013), a dystopia, and Antiguas ceremonias (2015) [Ancient Ceremonies], an atopia. In both, even though they further distinct arguments, the readers will note disbelief in imposed projects that do not consider reality by people with their own dreams and projections. This long-term vision and imaginary historical tension that determines the course of societies is, it may be said, how Isaac Asimov influenced Páez. His dialogue with science fiction is about the political determinism of science and technology in people’s lives, a matter that his work clearly defines and that is of great importance to Ecuadorian literature.

Ecuadorian Science Fiction in Dialogue with the Thesis of Latin American Literature

It must be affirmed that Ecuadorian literature, in consonance with Latin American literature, is probably different from what is produced in the Anglo-Saxon world, from whence modern science fiction originally emerged.

What marks this literature as unique from the Anglo-Saxon or Russian varieties is that within its plots, voices of “others” bubble up, the mythical voices of ancestral peoples and of the fantastical airs that they carry. Ángel Rama, in his Transculturación narrativa en América Latina (1982) [Narrative Trans-culturalization in Latin America] states that every society develops its thought and its self-awareness through stories or interpretive systems, founded in the reality in which they live; it is with them that a society seeks to explain the unknown and the uncontrollable. Such narratives explain a given society in the moment that it considered its relationship with reality. Societies are constituted in myths, and these myths do not do not only refer to the past, but also to social and cultural anxieties as they relate to the “ultra-terrestrial space.” This is the foundation of modern science fiction, by its own judgement – anxieties that reflect a new society in the moment that it goes beyond the known path of the last. In the explanation given by Rama there is a tension in the actual nature of contemporary Latin American science fiction: this is a product of the dialogue with the marks of post-modernity or of advanced technologies, or of the new anxieties that are born of scientific experimentation, the erasure of identity (even physical identity ) upon the digital place, etc., with many signs of a new, rising society. Nevertheless, the voice of the past also remains. This results in a mixing of myths, foundational and post-foundational. We must reaffirm that societies are ever-changing and their respective literatures – especially science fiction – are the myths that speak of their metamorphoses, knowing full well that they cannot rid themselves of the voices of the past.

The perspective of the origin myth – the tension that rules in the hearts of Latin American nations between their still-vibrant past and the much-sought-after future – supplies another difference to science fiction: it concerns the embrace of the modern and the ultra-modern with the ever-desired horizon of hope. As was seen in the earliest Ecuadorian science fiction, this idea of embracing the future quickly crashes up against the idea of the evils such an embrace could cause (think of the existential image produced by human crisis) that transcends the very core of humanity and leaves a feeling of instability and anxiety for the future. It can be said that, in the beginning, it appeared that this tension is what would identify science fiction with fantasy, just as Carlos Fuentes suggests in a chapter of his book En esto creo (2002) [This I believe]. Later, however, that situation has come to mark in literature the idea of a demarkation, an emplaced “other” where the future is out of time. From this we can indicate that the future, without a political project, opens up a possibility for science fiction. This is what is present in much Ecuadorian science fiction, in the same sense that many works dialogue about unresolved conflict, the arrival of an “otherness” distinct from power, the end of the idea of nationhood, etc. This is just how certain pieces of Andean science fiction would seem to demonstrate (I think of the Colombian, Angosta [Narrow] by Héctor Abad Faciolince, the Bolivian De cuando en cuando Saturnina [Every Once in a While Saturnine], by Allison Spedding, the Peruvian, Mañana, las ratas [Tomorrow, the Rats], by José B. Adolph, along with the Ecuadorian Crónicas del breve Reino [Chronicles of the Brief Kingdom], by Santiago Páez).

In 1957, the Ecuadorian Benjamin Carrión tried to move the conversation forward by thinking of science fiction in times of change in an article by the same name published in Caracas, now contained in the book La suave patria y otros textos (1998) [The Smooth Country and Other Texts]. He said that it was a type of literature based on “hipótesis audaces, con libre vuelo de la fantasía. [Es] la obligada respuesta a la avidez del mundo actual por seguir, caballero en el potro con bridas de la imaginación, el desproporcionado avance de la técnica, sin correspondencia posible, cuantitiva o cualitiva, con el avance ético” [audacious hypotheses, with free flight from fantasy. It is the obliged answer to the continuous greed of the current world, a rider upon a wild horse with the bridles of imagination, the disproportionate advance of technique without the possibility of correspondence, be it quantitative or qualitative, with ethical advance]. From this perspective, a realist image of society is stuck in debate with the effects of technique and science in a hypothetical form that can even scratch at fantasy. The great problem, however, is ethics (as Carrión states). As I see it, a latent question in modern Latin American and Ecuadorian science fiction is how much can be recovered or, if the reader should so wish, if an ethical community can be reestablished – a community that respects its founding principles and, at the same time, invents from them, even if it is imaginarily, imaginatively, their possibility at a future.

Traducido por Michael Redzich