Granville, Nuevo Gales del Sur

Cristal which thinks (title original: The Dreaming Jewels ) is a Romance of Science-fiction of the American writer Theodore Sturgeon initially published in 1950 in the American magazine Fantastic Adventures .

Topic

Theodore Sturgeon approaches here the topic of the difference under the aspects of the physical deformity and the possible consequences of superhuman psychic capacities, a set of themes close to that which it will develop in his novel entitled more than human . More generally, the difference and its consequences are always in the middle of its works.

Summary

Horty Bluett, an adoptive young child, is returned school. Reason: he eats ants. This event pushes his/her adoptive father, judge Armand Bluett, to lock up it in a wall cupboard. By accident, it then divides the three fingers of the left hand to him. Mow of the ill-treatments, Horty is solved with fuguer, carrying with him only Junky, its imp out of box, a toy which it has since the orphanage and which is due to him in heart. After having said goodbye to his friend Kay Hallowell, it is collected, then lodged by a troop of travelling circus, directed by the misanthropist Pierre Ganneval, said " Cannibale" , a former doctor. In the middle of the dwarves and others " monstres" troop, it gradually will face its destiny, helped by Zena, the dwarf one which collected it in its roulotte, while cruel Ganneval continues its secret experiments on mysterious crystals which think…

Characters

Horton Bluett (Horty, Hortense, Kiddo): main character of the history. At the beginning it is a eight year old child; at the end it has a score of years. He is discovered gradually, in particular thanks to his Zena friend.

Zena : one of the supporting characters. It is thanks to it that Horty is accepted in the troop of the Cannibal. It binds very quickly with Horty and form a dance and song number with him. It is an enigmatic character who knows some more than it does not appear to with it. Its dream is to become a true woman (it is dwarf).

the Cannibal (Pierre Ganneval, name of scene Méphisto ): cruel character and without scruples which mistakes humanity. It is the director of the troop. Former considered doctor, it will sink in alcoholism following the death of the one of his patients on the operating table.

Kay Hallowell /le judges Armand Bluett : love and Hatred. They will be always thus associated in the spirit with Horty. Kay Hallowell was old a classmate of Horty, while Armand Bluett was the adoptive father of Horty.

Other supporting characters: Havana , Bunny , Solum , Gogol … and crystals!

Comments

Typology of the characters

By locating its account in the world of the circus open, populated monstrosities and anomalies of nature - as the Americans call freaks -, Theodore Sturgeon works on the violent opposition literary prototypes very marked and passably monolithic, as well on the physical level as on the psychological level. Ganneval is a dangerous Misanthrope, Bluett a perfectly sadistic manipulator, Zena mother-protective ready with the greatest sacrifice, Kay ingenuous fragile and introverted, etc Once established, this psychological characterization does not undergo any more any deterioration during the account and confers to the characters a relatively fixed profile. This absence of psychological evolution of the characters contributes to move all the literary interest of work towards the inner working of this particular microphone-company which the troop of circus represents.

Enigmatic crystals

In the inventory of extraterrestrial of the traditional Science fiction, Theodore Sturgeon shows a great originality by inventing alive crystal people. By using the technique of the internal focusing, the author preserves the secrecy of these strange beings and delivers to the reader only the research result of the one of its characters, Ganneval. Social operation, the means of communication and of reproduction of the crystals remain enigmatic, but contribute to create the literary impression of a radical otherness, of a mode to be completely foreign with humanity.

To live and survive

Horty, equipped of superhuman capacities, being able to regenerate themselves or change by the only force of its psychism (but by respecting the requirement of the Conservation of the mass), is also presented like an immature and fragile being. As Theodore Sturgeon underlines it explicitly, Horty is not subjected to the basic principle of the human existence: need for surviving. However this hard need is one of the principal stimuli of the intelligence, develops the adaptabilities to the world and conditions the desire to solve the problems. Horty is certainly equipped with an exceptional memory " eïdétique" , like Sturgeon says it, but it misses initiative cruelly and contextualize not its thought, accumulates the knowledge acquired in the books, but cannot use them. Its ultimate confrontation with Pierre Ganneval the hypnotist will force it to finally take into account this requirement of survival which leads the human beings to mobilize all their physical and mental resources. But the good manners to survive, it is of living with the different one, in the empathy, the friendship and the love, which will discover many the characters of the novel during their adventures.

Life like work of art

If art plays a secondary part throughout the account, its importance set of themes is essential. The account itself is presented at the end of the novel as being worthy to be a work of art: “ It is an astonishing history and really a work of art… ”. Theodore Sturgeon raises the question of the possibility of individual happiness in a world of deformity and ugliness, a world which does not answer any the esthetic criteria of a company in search of appearances. While making discover with his main character, Horty, some work-of contemporary art, the author presents the esthetic values which made obsolete any traditional notion of beautiful. Horty discovers the pictorial new approaches of Mondrian, which gives up the figurative mode, works of Markell to the “ silhouettes irregular and carefully disproportionate ”. In the field of the music, it is the central esthetic value of the Dissonnance which is proposed, with musical works of Béla Bartók, Arthur Honegger or Dmitri Chostakovitch. Theodore Sturgeon imagines a new world, where the difference, disproportion and the dissonance would find finally their place, a company from now on built on new values borrowed from the contemporary art.

Adaptations

From September 2003 in March 2005, the American chain of television HBO diffused a serial inspired of the two most known novels of Sturgeon, under the title of " Carnivale" , " foraine" celebrates; in English. The action is at beginning of the year 30 and includes/understands twenty-four episodes. This series high-of-range with prestigious casting was stopped after the second season due to insufficient audience compared to its cost. The reference to Sturgeon had been carefully concealed by the production not to frighten the part of the public such as a bond with the literature of the Fifties could have rejected. The subject be had passed besides to the moulinette of the requirements holliwoodiens. If the hero is well collected by a circus and is endowed with supernatural capacities, as in the work of Sturgeon, the dwarf one is here a woman of normal size to allow a history of love between them, and the character of the judge is replaced by an enlightened preacher. The series made an appearance on the French screens of the cable under the name of the Caravan of strange the .

Traditional of the science fiction

This novel is regarded as a great classic of the Science-fiction in the following reference books:

Investigation of Fanzine Carnage society man near his readers, 1989;
Lorris Murail, the Masters of the science fiction , Bordered, coll “Compact”, 1993;
Stan Barets, science-fictionnaire , Denoël, coll “Presence of the future”, 1994;
ideal Library of the webzine cosmic Cockroach.

Criticisms specialized

In its History of the modern science fiction , Jacques Sadoul declares in connection with this novel: Sturgeon succeeded, with this psychological science-fiction novel, a work of literary and intellectual high-quality. .

French editions

Cristal which thinks of Theodore Sturgeon, translated from American by Alain Glatigny, knew various French editions:

Hatchet and Gallimard, coll “the fantastic Ray”, 1952;
CHOSE, coll “Club of the book of anticipation”, n°17, 1969;
I have Lu, coll “Science fiction”, n°369, 1970 (republications in 1972,1975,1978,1986,1989,1993);
Librio, n°296, 1999.

Quotations

The numbers of page of the quotations which follow pay to the edition I have Lu (1993) referred to;

Their dreams are not thoughts, shades, images, sounds, like ours. They are made of flesh, sap, wood, bone and blood. , p. 79;
you See Bunny, there is a French philosopher who said “I think, therefore I am.” Horty is the quintessence of this proverb. , p. 189;
humanity is a familiar concept with the abnormal ones: with their great despair, they feel indeed them any close relations '', p. 192;

It had there nothing in this strange world which could dissipate darkness of unconsciousness. , p. 214;

It released an impression from it from permanence, of life if prolonged that death was not any more one factor psychological, but a pure esthetic conclusion. , p. 215;

All the actions of the human creatures proceed of a single requirement: “Survive! ” , p. 241.

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