ernst jünger in cyberspace

mailing list archive - Re: Glass Bees (EJ & PKD)

-- [ From: Richard Brem * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] --

>But I notice more and more how close Juenger came to the themes >and issues
of the best Sf writers...

Agree totally. I would even go further and place "The Glass Bees" 
and its leitmotifs (the manipulative power of the entertainment industry and
the problem of artificial reality) in a context with the cyberpunk genre.
Someone should send William Gibson a copy of Juenger's book. On the other
hand, he might already be aware of
it ...  

>In that decade (the Fifties) there were several US Sf writers which >dealt
with the idea of an entertaining/consummerist totalitarianism >(all this is
not so far from Adorno's insights, btw):  people like >Robert Sheckley, Pohl
& Kornbluth, the young Philip Dick.  >Unfortunately they didn't know
Juenger's achivement--and he >ignored them. 

As I have indicated in another mail, there is a connection between
EJ and Philip K. Dick, who has dedicated his classic "taoism vs. fascism"
novel "The Man in the High Castle" (1962) to Juenger. I could well imagine
that there is more material around, perhaps even an exchange of letters
between PKD and EJ. "The Glass Bees"  were published in an English
translation in 1960 (by The Noonday Press in NY) - Phil Dick might well have
read it. 

I had a meeting with one of Klett's [EJ's German publishers] representatives
at the Frankfurt Book Fair and mentioned Dick's dedication. He promised me
to do some research on it, but as you can imagine that's not that easy and
will probably take a while. I'll
let you know, if he finds out something.

Regards,
RB
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"Empathy" - Hedy Lamarr, asked about her favourite word 



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