Summaries | Lecturia

Isaac Asimov: The Dead Past. Summary

In a future where scientific research is controlled by the government, Professor of History Arnold Potterley seeks access to the chronoscope, a device that allows images of the past to be viewed, in order to study ancient Carthage, but his request is denied. Frustrated, he persuades the young physicist Jonas Foster to investigate Neutrinics, the scientific basis of chronoscopy. Foster discovers a more efficient method for building chronoscopes and constructs one, but reveals that it can observe only up to one hundred and twenty-five years into the past. When Potterley’s wife wishes to use the device to see her deceased daughter, Potterley destroys it. He then informs on Foster to the authorities in order to prevent the dissemination of the discovery; however, Foster’s uncle has already sent the plans to multiple publishers. The head of Chronoscopy then reveals the devastating truth: the chronoscope can observe not only the dead past but also the immediate present, so its widespread use would mean the absolute end of human privacy.

Roberto Bolaño: The Insufferable Gaucho. Summary and Analysis

“The Insufferable Gaucho” (El gaucho insufrible) is a short story by Roberto Bolaño, published in 2003. After losing his wife and seeing his children leave, the lawyer Manuel Pereda lives an orderly life in Buenos Aires until, faced with the economic crisis of the early twenty-first century, he decides to abandon the city and retire to the old family ranch on the Pampas. In a decaying rural environment overrun by rabbits, he tries to rebuild his life, surrounded by impoverished gauchos, malnourished children, and eccentric characters. Over time, he repairs the estate, establishes relationships with the local inhabitants, and keeps up a correspondence with his former housemaids. He is visited by his son, a successful writer, and other people from Buenos Aires, but remains in his retreat. Eventually, he returns briefly to the city to sign the sale of his apartment. After an altercation with a writer in a café, and feeling out of place in a city he no longer recognizes, he decides to go back to the Pampas.

Ray Bradbury: The Wind. Summary and Analysis

“The Wind” by Ray Bradbury was first published in Weird Tales in March 1943 and later included in the collection Dark Carnival (1947). The story revolves around a series of telephone calls between Herb Thompson and his friend Allin, a travel writer who lives alone in an isolated house. Allin is convinced that the wind—a conscious force that has pursued him since an expedition to the Himalayas—has finally returned to capture him. Throughout the night, he describes how this presence surrounds his home, tries to enter, and tears apart parts of the structure. Meanwhile, Herb, caught between disbelief and concern, listens to his friend’s increasingly desperate calls. At last, after losing contact and hearing what seems to be Allin’s laughter outside his own door, Herb opens it… but finds only wind and silence.

Julio Cortázar: The Other Heaven. Summary and Analysis

“The Other Heaven,” a short story by Julio Cortázar, tells the life of a man divided between his reality in 1940s Buenos Aires and a fantastic world set in late-nineteenth-century Paris. While in Buenos Aires he leads a routine life as a stockbroker, trapped in a conventional relationship with his fiancée Irma, in his imagination he travels to a bohemian and decadent Paris where he maintains an affair with Josiane, a prostitute, under the constant threat of a murderer named Laurent. Through this contrast between the real and the imaginary, the protagonist seeks to escape monotony but discovers that both worlds are filled with frustration and danger.

Philip K. Dick: Stability. Summary and Analysis

In a future where humanity has ceased to progress and lives under a rigid system called Stability, Robert Benton receives news that his invention has been rejected, even though he does not remember inventing anything. Intrigued, he retrieves a device registered in his name and, upon activating it at home, discovers it is a time machine. He is transported to a strange world, where he finds a crystal sphere containing a miniature city inside. An invisible voice warns him not to touch it, but Benton disobeys and takes it back with him to his own time. Back at home, the sphere begins to communicate with him telepathically and persuades him to release it. When the authorities try to intervene, Benton, under the influence of the globe, breaks the glass and releases the forces that had been confined within. In the final scene, he awakens with no memory, now turned into just another laborer under the new order imposed by the liberated city.

Julio Cortázar: The Son of the Vampire. Summary and Analysis

One night, the vampire Duggu Van rises from his grave and enters the castle where Lady Vanda sleeps. Attracted by her beauty, he falls in love with her instead of feeding on her, and he possesses her. Shortly after, Lady Vanda becomes ill and discovers that she is pregnant. Confined within the castle, she is cared for by the nurse Miss Wilkinson, while her body steadily weakens. The doctors find no explanation. The child she carries grows in an abnormal way, absorbing her blood and transforming her. On the night of the birth, Lady Vanda’s body changes completely: her skin darkens, her sex transforms, and from her emerges a male being—the son of Duggu Van. At midnight, Duggu Van arrives, takes the hands of his son, and together they leave through the window, leaving behind the doctors and the nurse, unable to comprehend what has just happened.