The Last of its species

the last of its species (original title: Der Letzte seiner Art ) is a Romance of Science-fiction of the German writer Andreas Eschbach published in 2003.

Argument

Duane Fitzgerald saw since ten years a peaceful retirement in the Irish small village of Dingle , located in the Comté of Kerry in Ireland. Its life is summarized with daily walks in the village, of stroll in seaside, of the visits to the library and the comings and goings regular at the post office to take delivery of parcels there. Behind a at the very least alleviating appearance, Duane William Fitzgerald hides a heavy secrecy: it is a Cyborg created by the American army during the confidential project called Steel man ( the steel man). After complexes surgical operations, the Fitzgerald soldier became a being semi-man semi-machine, equipped with equipment sophisticated which enables him to multiply by ten its muscular force, to actuate a pump with sedatives to eliminate the pain, to regulate his cardiac pulsations or to engage a laser mode aimed with his artificial eye. A beautiful morning, it is found by ground in its housing, with half paralyzed by a breakdown of its internal system.

Presentation of work

the last of its species is the seventh novel of Science-fiction of the German author Andreas Eschbach. Appeared in Germany in September 2003, it was available in French version as of 2006. The work is divided into twenty-two chapters which begin all, except the first, by a quotation drawn from philosophical works of the ancient stoical thinker Sénèque.

The quotations put forward give the tone of each new chapter and maintain a close connection with the psychological evolution the main character. The narration is dealt with by the hero, thus making novel a fictitious autobiographical account which takes accents of diary. Style free, writing with the first nobody, alternate between description of the romantic events, memories of passed out of the commun run of the hero and reflections on the direction of the life and waiting of death.

Complete summary

Chronology of the events

Duane Fitzgerald saw since ten years a peaceful retirement in the Irish small village of Dingle , located in the Comté of Kerry in Ireland. Its life is summarized with daily walks in the village, of stroll in seaside, of the visits to the library and the comings and goings regular at the post office to take delivery of parcels there. Behind a at the very least alleviating appearance, Duane William Fitzgerald hides a heavy secrecy: it is a Cyborg created by the American army during the confidential project called Steel man ( the steel man). After complexes surgical operations, the Fitzgerald soldier became a being semi-man semi-machine, equipped with equipment sophisticated which enables him to multiply by ten its muscular force, to actuate a pump with sedatives to eliminate the pain, to regulate his cardiac pulsations or to engage a laser mode aimed with his artificial eye.

A beautiful morning, it is found with half paralyzed by a breakdown of its internal system and must call upon the services of the doctor of the village, the doctor O' Shea , already with the current of its secrecy. The doctor then removes a small electronic module to him which seems to be at the origin of the breakdown and prevents it that a foreigner seeks it in all the village. Fitzgerald goes then to the post office to recover there the mysterious parcel which to him has been sent every four days for ten years and which intrigues much the post-office employee, Billy Trant . It is acted in fact of the only food which the modified digestive system of Duane can digest: a nutritive biological concentrate. During its usual walk, Duane Fitzgerald passes in front of the Brennan hotel where beautiful the Bridget Keane works, the woman which he likes in secrecy.

Anxious, Duane Fitzgerald enfreint the military payment and telephones Gabriel Whitewater , a former fellow-member cyborg who created his company of monitoring to Santa Barbara in California. Gabriel reassures Duane which ends up meeting the unknown with the library of the village. The foreigner is in fact an American lawyer of Japanese origin called Harold Itsumi which proposes to him to bring a lawsuit of compensation against the United States of America. The two men are given then go to the Brennan hotel, but the lawyer is assassinated before to have been able to show in Duane Fitzgerald the file classified secret signal which it held. The cyborg with the retirement manages to wound the assassin, without however succeeding in catching up with it because of a breakdown of its system of combat. Wounded, Duane Fitzgerald is trailed in Doctor O' Shea for a new series of care.

A few days later, the cybernetic ocular system of Duane Fitzgerald notices an abnormal number from abroad to the suspicious behavior in the small village of Dingle. All these men in black observe it, follow it, watch for its least gestures. Strange coincidence: its parcels with the nutritive concentrate do not arrive any more. Duane Fitzgerald feels tracked and telephones its former senior officer responsible for the project Steel man , the lieutenant-colonel Reilly who promises to him to come to see it in Ireland. Then the events are connected: Bridget Keane disappears mysteriously, while Doctor O' Shea is found died in his cabinet. All its medical files concerning the cyborg were stolen. Duane then tries to find the trace of Bridget Keane and comes into contact with his/her brother, Finnan MacDonogh , a musician. At the time of a secret appointment in an old hiding-place of WILL GO, Duane meets Bridget Keane which shows him the documents that the American lawyer had hidden in the safe of the hotel. Duane just like learns whereas all the members of its family were removed by the American secret services, those from the other voluntary soldiers of the project. Finnan and Bridget think that the lawyer was assassinated by the American secret services and that short Duane a great danger. Finnan then proposes a plan to him to leave it Dingle.

Duane returns at his place and reminds with emotion all his/her comrades, those who died of the continuations of the operations, those which died not to have supported the post-surgical treatment, or those which died because of a failure of the system. Its organization weakens day in day, for lack of nutritive concentrate, and soon its accounts and credit cards are blocked. Duane feels that its end is close and tries to include/understand what is arriving to him. When the Reilly lieutenant-colonel arrives finally at Dingle, Duane guesses that all his/her comrades in fact were assassinated and that it represents the last warrior-cyborg of the project Steel man . The officer then proposes to him to bring back it to the United States to edge of a ship of the US Navy . Duane Fitzgerald knows that it is condemned and that the vice is tightened around him. He discovers that the special forces posted in the village did not attack it yet because they did not succeed in decontaminating his defense system as they had envisaged. The module circuit breaker to him had been extracted a few days earlier by Doctor O' Shea. Duane does not have the choice: to die of hunger or to return to the United States to be locked up there with life. Duane Fitzgerald then decides to take the advice of the Sénèque philosopher and to prepare its death with dignity. He trails himself, weakened, with the library of the village, connects the printer of the office of the director, Mrs. Brannigan , on his internal circuits and prints the long diary recorded in his built-in memory and which tells all its history. He dies, the heart full with love for beautiful Bridget Keane.

Main characters

The main characters are classified alphabetically.

Madam Brannigan , director of the library of Dingle;
Duane William Fitzgerald , cyborg reprocessed, of Irish origin;
Harold Itsumi , American lawyer of Japanese origin which returns visit in Duane Fitzgerald;
Bridget Kean , receptionist of the Brennan hotel, sister of Finnan MacDonogh;
Finan MacDonogh , Irish singer, brother of Bridget Keane, former member of the WILL GO;
Doctor O' Shea , general doctor of Dingle, friend of Duane Fitzgerald;
Eugene Pinebrook , police inspector;
Lieutenant-colonel Reilly , officer of the American army, responsible for the project Steel man ;
Billy Trant , postal worker in Dingle;
Gabriel Whitewater , cyborg reprocessed, former fellow-member of Duane Fitzgerald;
Seamus Wright , sergeant of police force which carries out the survey into the death of American lawyer;

Comments

Science fiction and autobiography

If Andreas Eschbach includes in its novel the autobiographical style of the diary, its characteristic is to propose an account written in real-time , without the usual shift of the newspaper written a posteriori , generally after a day in charge of events. In the novel, the account in real-time of Duane Fitgerald is intersected with many digressions on the philosophy or the life of Sénèque, of flashback on its childhood, its youth or its parents and is decorated reflection on its life, death and the love. The style, fact of a spontaneous mixture from point of view, facts and reminiscences of the past, seem to evolve/move with the liking of the situations of the moment and the psychological state which they cause.

This spontaneous style finds its justification all at the end of the novel, when Duane Fitzgerald explains why it has a word processing integrated into its system which enables him to record the account in a textual file by typing its text on a sensor placed at the level of its knee. At the time of the final scene, Duane is described connecting the printer of the library to its internal system and to print the account which has just finished the reader. The science fiction is thus not only one within the major competences of the intrigue, but also a crucial factor of the style adopted in the account.

Discovered ancient philosophy

In chapter 4, the reader accompanies the main character by the novel of Andreas Eschbach in his discovery of the Western Philosophie, which gives the opportunity to the author of some ironic comments. Thinking of finding the thoughts most interesting in the works more modern, Duane Fitgerald explores the universe of philosophy by going on a journey in time. He discovers as follows:

Ludwig Wittgenstein of which it does not include/understand the numbered aphorisms (undoubtedly drawn from the Tractatus logico-philosophicus );
Bertrand Russell that it finds amusing, but of which it does not include/understand the starting postulate;
Friedrich Nietzsche which it finds strange;
Emmanuel Kant of which the concepts a priori and a posteriori leave it perplexed (talks in the Critique of the pure reason );
Aristote which he regards as too dry (allusion in the novel to the Histoire of the animals );
Plato which frightens it with its vision of an ideal State, but totalitarian (theory exposed in the Republic ).

It is finally in stoical philosophy ancient of Sénèque that the hero finds the thoughts which will accompany it throughout its slow romantic anguish: thoughts on the life which prepare it with ultimate and inevitable confrontation with death.

Of this course of reading tinted of humor which proposes Andreas Eschbach appear two principal ideas:

a certain tendency of modern philosophy to move away from the exitentielles and fundamental concerns such as the life or death to be interested more that in problems whose complexity escapes the general public more and more;
and the idea that there is not “progress” in the philosophical thought and that an old author can preserve all his interest for a modern reader, contrary to the guides of voyages, like says it the hero, who is always very quickly out-of-date!

American myth of the superman

Duane Fitzgerald, throughout the novel, compares to the supermen cartoons, films or televised series of its youth. It does not fail to evoke Superman , Steve Austin , the hero of the Man who was worth three billion , Spiderman , or more simply James Bond , Conan the barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger or the hero interpreted by Bruce Willis in Piège of crystal . Andreas Eschbach utilizes the American mythology of the superman, not to say of sur-homme, in the motivations first of a character who subjected himself voluntarily to a whole series of delicate and irreversible surgical operations. Duane Fitzgerald wanted quite simply to be strong to face the life and to become unbeatable, just like the heroes of its youth.

But with the increasingly frequent failures of its biomechanical system, Duane Fitzgerald more resembles an anti-hero, perhaps even with a “anti-super-hero”, whose faculties - multiplied by ten with great reinforcements of surgical operations - were never put at the service of its country and who must finally be eliminated. It is a whole vision of the absurdity which the author with this anti-hero proposes whose life was sacrificed for a finally abandoned military project. As for the operations making of the man a cyborg, Andreas Eschbach does not forget to mention that they can as well produce a cyber-soldier with the point of technology as a monster with the Frankenstein .

Change of paradigm of the science fiction

From the point of view of the literary history of the Science fiction, the death of the Cyborg Duane Fitzgerald is symbolically the symptom of a technological change of paradigm. Indeed, the science fiction of the years 2000, at the time when the novel appears, was clearly reorientated towards sets of themes rather inspired of contemporary research in genetics and nanotechnologies, thus making biomechanical science fiction an exceeded register from now on. the last of its species resembles thus the song of the swan of a whole heroic period of the history of the S.F., a field hitherto a41dernier $c-b1, e,10 $c-b26 ce $c-b16 $c-b43, bn,84 populated the man-machine ones until in the years 1980.

Televisual and cinematographic references

the last of its species of Andreas Eschbach refers to a whole series of films and televised series which put in scene Cyborg S at military vocation of which some are explicitly evoked by the author:

televised series entitled: the man who was worth three billion (1974-1978);
the film Terminator (1984);
the film Robocop (1987);
the film Universal soldier (1992).

The originality of the cyborg of Andreas Eschbach compared to its great cinematographic models is its adhesion voluntary and thought of a project of soldier-cyborg, whereas the heroes of films or televised series were generally unconscious at the time of their transformation. The hero of the the man who was worth three billion or Robocop is transformed following a serious accident which leaves it in the coma, while they are soldiers deceased who belong to the military project secret signal of Universal Soldier . Adhesion conscious and voluntary of Duane Fitzgerald to the project of cyborg enables him to carry a different glance on the various motivations which led it to take part in the project, energy of the simple will to better be used its country to the psychoanalytical springs of a decision taken for the moment when his/her parents divorce.

Literary prizes

the last of its species obtained it:

German Price of science fiction of the best science-fiction novel in 2004;
Price Kurd-Laßwitz of the best German-speaking novel of science fiction in 2004.

French edition

Andreas Eschbach, the last of its species , translated from German by Joséphine Bernhardt and Claire Duval, Editions Atalante, ISBN 2-84172-325-9, 2006.

Criticisms specialized

Ugo Bellagamba, coll Bifrost (re-examined), n°42, Belial', 2006.

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