| Title | : | The Comet |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 075954316X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780759543164 |
| Format Type | : | ebook |
| Number of Pages | : | 13 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1920 |
If humanity is to have a future, the two must build a new world from the wreckage of the old.
The Comet Reviews
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I never knew that the famed civil rights activist had written a piece of post-apocalyptic fiction! This public-domain piece is also available online, here:
http://hilobrow.com/2013/05/21/the-co...
A low-level bank employee is busy with a seemingly-unenviable task in the vaults when the Earth whisks through the tail of a comet. The astronomical event was predicted; its effects were not. When the man emerges from the sealed-off depths of the bank, he is shocked to find that it seems that he may be the last man on Earth: everyone around him has succumbed to toxic vapors from the passing comet.
The language the piece is written in is rather florid and overwrought, to the present-day reader. However, the point of the story is clearly impassioned and still-valuable, even today. DuBois was primarily concerned with human rights, not fiction, and this is a story with a message:
I'm extremely glad to have read this.
Later thought:
I've been asked many times: What is the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction? I think DuBois cuts right to the heart of it, here. The question at the core of much of this genre is: What would we be, if everything we take for granted was stripped away?
Often, authors answer that question with "barbaric and terrible in oh so many ways." DuBois has a different answer, and I think his has much truth to it. -
This short standalone story is available, for free, here:
https://magicmonstersbcc.files.wordpr...
When a comet soars overheard, all those who view it succumb to an eternal sleep. Throughout all of New York City, only two individuals survive. One is a wealthy, upper-class white woman, the other is a poverty-stricken black man.
The comet's trajectory through the sky was only briefly mentioned before Du Bois begun to philosophise on the nature of humanity when the society it functions inside of has been eradicated. This focused more on the reactions of the humans that remained, and how quickly their preconceived notions and societal-based modes of thought alter when forced to do so, rather than on their new and horrifying surroundings, which I appreciated. This was a short yet sorrowful and profound piece of writing and it said more about the author's contemporary times rather than the potential, dystopian future he created. -
Disaster, “the leveler and revealer”...
--I need several life-times to traverse the mountains of to-reads, where my priority = understanding the material (social + physical) conditions of 21st century crises. Thus, most of the arduous climb is made of critical nonfiction.
--If and when I ever get around to fiction, these days I try to prioritize diverse, radical social imagination to chip away at the status quo I inherited by default (you already know the identity labels, so spare me from listing them).
--The end of
Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements mentions this short story by Du Bois, which got me excited. Du Bois is an absolute legend in critical nonfiction, as a pioneer of sociology in the US during Jim Crow segregation with (according to
Vijay Prashad) a fascinating transformation from liberal reformism (the period most are aware of) to communism/anti-imperialism (censored esp. by the Red Scare). Since I haven’t found time to go through his extensive nonfiction works spanning this transformation, I figured I would ease in with his smaller works (this short story is compiled in
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).
--This little story features “death, the leveler and revealer” momentarily deconstructing the social construct of racism. I’m not going to dissect any further (ex. critique gender norms), only to say this idea of disaster as an opportunity to break from the status quo reminds me of studies the social transformations from disasters:
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A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century (especially relevant in our age of escalating crises):
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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Arundhati Roy:Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
-“The Pandemic Is a Portal” in
Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. -
This story from WEB Du Bois uses an apocalypse to expose how the “other” is constructed by society by completely killing off society with only a white woman and Black man still living. The white woman grapples with her othering of this Black man who has become her companion in this apocalypse— first she sees him as “not that he was not human, but he dwelt in a world so far from hers... that he seldom even entered her thought.” As they work together, she realizes that her understanding of Black people is socially constructed and keeps them separate from herself. She eventually sees him as “no longer a thing apart... but her Brother Humanity Incarnate.” However, when they realize that it was only their city’s population that was killed off, this white character rejoins her white fray and seems to snap right back to the social constructs of race they inhabit. She does not allow her white family to accuse him of assault and lynch him, but neither does she applies her deconstruction of race and challenge the social order that we see them re enter.
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The world has ended in a rather bizarre manner. You see death in it's bleakest most disturbing forms. Humans, lifeless, lay everywhere. Piles of them.
The comet set up was quick, it's execution more so. The stories tension lies not in the comet or the death it brings, but the race relations between our main character and the other living soul he comes across.
W.E. B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor, so this angle isn't a surprise.
In an end of the world story, I want more. I expected more with this. We can get this race relations set up in any old story. It didn't work for me. It seemed forced. Like everything around it (the comet and all) was lightly applied window dressing. That isn't what I want in an end of the world story. -
Li a tradução desse conto na Caixa Preta de setembro e gostei muito.
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Don’t read this short story for its sci-fi aspect, because that’s not the focus here. It’s all background, some disaster scenario which creates the situation in which a person of color rescues a white woman in the 1920s, and the shock it causes. Obvious themes of racial and social justice, this story is a kind of proto-afrofuturist work, lacking in depth maybe, but probably a great story at the time.
Read as part of the "Voices from the Radium Age" anthology. -
Um breve e perturbador conto que se torna ainda mais sombrio com os esclarecimentos do ensaio anexado nessa edição. Saidiya Hartman contextualiza e esclarece alguns pontos que ficam um tanto confusos na tradução do conto. Ela fará também a relação com outras obras ampliando o escopo da reflexão em torno do conto que por si só já é bastante abrangente.
O conto é simples, um enredo sem sofisticações, e com um núcleo até certo ponto previsível, o plot ainda que não perca sua força não é de todo inesperado. O que impressiona aqui, entretanto é o que não é dito diretamente, o autor constrói certas imagens, insinua outras, surpreende o quão rápido somos imerso na atmosfera proposta e é difícil não sentir certo desamparo.
Talvez o maior incômodo seja perceber como as dinâmicas propostas continuam atuais, fato inclusive apontado por Saidiya ao nos lembrar os paralelos da pandemia existente à época da escrita do conto e a pandemia de Covid 19.
Temos pelo menos duas cenas extremamente perturbadoras, sendo a segunda talvez a mais incômoda, o autor nos mostra uma idealização, que choca o leitor por seu disparate. É difícil não sentir um certo asco, não pela relação proposta em si, mas pelo absurdo que ela representa no mundo proposto (mundo não nos esqueçamos extremamente preciso e real). É quando o autor desfere o golpe ou aliás os golpes e o conto que já era cruel torna-se ainda mais devastador.
A conclusão talvez pareça enganadoramente otimista, ok de fato existe um débil consolo, mas os elementos propostos estão muito longe de um final feliz. Pode-se inclusive pensar numa subversão de símbolos. O corte abrupto deixa para o leitor especular os efeitos deixados pelo cometa, mas o clima de desamparo e pessimismo é evidente. -
3.5 stars, although I'm not entirely sure how I should rate this one.
Beautiful writing, and that is reason enough to read this story. It's a strange one, because it feels like something is off the whole time (and I don't mean the obvious dead-bodies-abound bit). It seems absurd, almost dream(or nightmare)-like, the way the two main characters interact.
The writing is very on-the-nose at times, it'll raise eyebrows, and the "moral of the story" is basically waving in your face, so those are either negatives or positives depending on the type of reader you are. The story takes an odd turn. Two odd turns, really. The last two pages are not fun or easy to read.
I think the fact that this was written in 1920 makes it work. Somehow. This would make a good Twilight Zone episode. It's weird, and I like weird. -
Powerful and haunting tale of death, tied up in knots with racial relations
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Can't satiate your fetish for white bodies? You'll love this noxious garbage.
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Good themes, but was kinda confusing and ridiculous at some points
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Encontrei esse ebook perdido aí pela Internet. Antes de ler, pesquisei um pouco sobre o autor,
W.E.B. Du Bois, e fiquei maluco.
Du Bois é um dos principais autores negros da história dos EUA. No final do séc. XIX e primeira metade do séc. XX, lançou inúmeros trabalhos acerca das raízes afro-americanas, ajudando a criar a identidade do negro na América.
Se não bastasse, ainda era um excelente autor de ficção-científica. Esses dois contos mostram uma qualidade incrível e uma criatividade pulsante.
O primeiro conto é bastante previsível — o nome já entrega o tema sobre o que se trata. Mas a tensão e imagens causadas pelo conto O Cometa são impressionantes. Ficção científica de primeira, com belíssimos toques de horror.
Du Bois é um autor que quero ter sempre comigo; ler mais acerca dele próprio e conhecer mais sobre seu trabalho. -
”Silently, immovably, they saw each other face to face-eye to eye. Their souls lay naked to the night. It was not lust; it was not love--it was some vaster, mightier thing that needed neither touch of body nor thrill of soul. It was a thought divine, splendid. Slowly, noiselessly, they moved toward each other-the heavens above, the seas around, the city grim and dead below. He loomed from out the velvet shadows vast and dark. Pearl-white and slender, she shone beneath the stars. She stretched her jeweled hands abroad. He lifted up his mighty arms, and they cried each to the other, almost with one voice, ‘The world is dead.’”
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One of the short stories in a book I am reading,
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. This is a post-apocalyptic story about the last two survivors of a horrible disaster; it plays on some tropes that were probably newer at the time but are so common today that I know at least one of them gets you rejected from most SF publications, but there is a last-minute twist that puts those cliches to good use, I think. -
This was sooo good! I was shocked to find out the DuBois wrote a sci-fi short story, so I had to hunt it down. It is really well-done, blending the horror of an apocalyptic sci-fi story with pointed reminders of the racism that defines our society. For one moment, that racism is transcended with the seeming end of humanity... only to reassert itself in ugly ways.
(Note that I reading this in "The Big Book of Science Fiction," ed. by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer (2016). -
This short sci-fi story is unite for Du Bois, he didn’t write too much like this. However it does show his skill at writing a smaller story that still shows the prevalence of racism and how two people who are vastly different can overcome what society expects of them and survive.
Some of the writing is of its time, the style is not modern. The message of the story shines through but I can’t help but think this would have been better suited in a longer format. -
It's been a while since I've read any W.E.B. Du Bois and I'd almost forgotten how beautiful his language is. This is a short story about a comet passing earth and about two people in New York City who survive the poisonous tail of the comet. It's about a moment in time when irrational social standards fall away and people are revealed as they truly are. There's a dynamite ending, sad but powerful.
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I definitely need to re-read this - there are underlying themes in this incredibly short book I know I missed. What I did not miss are the racial and social justice themes which hit you like a ton of bricks at the end. Written in 1920, it is amazing how not much has changed. Except for the fact that you just don't say "the n word" out loud (as is done several times in this book), this could have been written in any year subsequent to 1920 which is what makes it so sad.
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Du Bois takes a very simple, bare bones story, and makes it difficult to follow. There were several places where I went back and reread a passage two or three times, trying in vain to figure out some plot point or the meaning of a line of dialog that ultimately didn't seem to matter much anyway. What really matters is the final scene, and that, at least, is worth reading.
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I have mixed feelings: I feel that the writing could definitely be improved upon, many of the scenes come across as quite drab and lifeless (haha) when they really shouldn't be; but at the same time there's so much at work here and the ending was so interesting.
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A short, but full story.
Sad. And shows that even in such a catastrophic event, racism still prevails.
How lonely it must have been for him for even a moment to feel as if he were alone in the world like that.
Amazing early afrofuturist work. -
A great short story about racism with a sprinkle of religious themes.
It explores how prejudice lies within ignorance, and if prejudice people spent time with those they prejudge, they'd change their opinions. Though, systemic attitudes still make it difficult. -
Really liked this short story. Regarding racism in the early 20th century, it makes its message known in a relatively easy tone and diction. Read for my English class and thoroughly enjoyed WEB DuBois and her writing
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This was a fascinating look at what it might take to have a post racial world.
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Listened here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-689299918... -
Short and true and beautiful and bitter. Not enough has changed.
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A brief read, but one I feel people should definitely make a point to read if they haven't done so already.
