Cover of The Ministry of Time
    Science Fiction

    The Ministry of Time

    by testsuphomeAdmin
    The Ministry of Time by Javier Cercas is a thrilling exploration of a secret Spanish government agency tasked with protecting the country's history by preventing time travelers from altering the past. The novel follows a group of diverse agents who journey through different eras to safeguard key moments in history, grappling with the ethical dilemmas and consequences of meddling with time. Blending history, suspense, and philosophical questions, it explores the limits of memory, identity, and the role of history in shaping the present.

    In May 1859, Cap­tain Leopold McClin­tock­’s search expe­di­tion, trapped for eight months by ice in Bel­lot Strait, final­ly sees an end to the harsh win­ter. With the return of the sun, McClin­tock­’s crew strug­gles with frost­bite and scurvy as they pre­pare to sled south along King William Land, led by Lieu­tenant Hob­son. Local Esquimaux recount a chill­ing tale of a group of thir­ty starved white men, believed to be the last rem­nants of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fat­ed expe­di­tion to dis­cov­er the North­west Pas­sage, which has been lost since July 1845, with no sign of its crew ever being found.

    Hint­ing at more grue­some dis­cov­er­ies, the Esquimaux detail inci­dents of can­ni­bal­ism, includ­ing dis­mem­bered bod­ies at camp­sites and ghast­ly accounts of boots filled with human flesh. In one dis­turb­ing vignette, Hob­son con­tem­plates his own fate as he real­izes the extremes to which des­per­a­tion can dri­ve a man.

    Upon reach­ing an area the Euro­peans called Cape Felix, Hob­son dis­cov­ers rem­nants of a once-occu­pied camp, includ­ing tents fur­nished with bearskins and valu­able equip­ment like­ly left behind in haste. This was not mere­ly a last refuge but appears to have once served as a sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­to­ry, sug­gest­ing the crew’s swift aban­don­ment was root­ed in dire cir­cum­stances. Con­tin­u­ing south­ward, Hob­son stum­bles upon a cairn con­tain­ing the only known com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Franklin’s expe­di­tion — a pair of notes writ­ten on Admi­ral­ty notepa­per.

    The first note show­cas­es the expedition’s ini­tial con­fi­dence, indi­cat­ing they had win­tered in 1846–1847 at Beechey Island and were led by Franklin. How­ev­er, a sec­ond, more omi­nous note reveals the trag­ic real­i­ty: by April 1848, after endur­ing two harsh win­ters, Franklin’s expe­di­tion had been aban­doned, result­ing in wide­spread death with­in the crew. It men­tions Franklin’s death in June 1847 and indi­cates that the expe­di­tion had seen the demise of nine offi­cers and fif­teen men. Lieu­tenant Gra­ham Gore is acknowl­edged to have per­ished before any over­land escape was attempt­ed, leav­ing the fate of the oth­ers uncer­tain, with his­to­ry engulf­ing them as the unfor­giv­ing sea does to those it claims.

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    Cover of The Ministry of Time
    Science Fiction

    The Ministry of Time

    by LovelyMay
    The Ministry of Time by Javier Cercas is a thrilling exploration of a secret Spanish government agency tasked with protecting the country's history by preventing time travelers from altering the past. The novel follows a group of diverse agents who journey through different eras to safeguard key moments in history, grappling with the ethical dilemmas and consequences of meddling with time. Blending history, suspense, and philosophical questions, it explores the limits of memory, identity, and the role of history in shaping the present.

    The flesh of the ani­mals when killed is nev­er eat­en. Indeed, the Ana regard with abhor­rence the idea of mak­ing the car­cass of any liv­ing thing the nutri­ment of their bod­ies; and their food, arti­fi­cial­ly pre­pared, is not anal­o­gous to any­thing we use. I should class it rather among veg­eta­bles than meats. Many of their plants are com­posed of fari­na­ceous sub­stances easy of diges­tion, in which they con­trive to min­gle those min­er­al salts which are health­ful to the sys­tem, espe­cial­ly lime, but which in our apothe­cary vade-mecums would seem to have very indi­gestible names.

    So dex­ter­ous have they become in these chem­i­cal prepa­ra­tions that they can com­mu­ni­cate to mass­es of the nutri­ment as pre­pared for the her­culean appetite of an Ana the taste and the sem­blance of what­ev­er pro­duc­tion of the upper world, ani­mal or veg­etable, he may desire. Even in the veg­etable king­dom their botanists pro­duce new vari­eties- some of them of great beau­ty- so far as beau­ty can be 41applied to plants in which colour is want­i­ng.

    Tra­di­tions so dark­ly hint that the ances­tors of the Vril-ya being wis­er in all mechan­i­cal inven­tions than suit­ed to their social state of
    prim­i­tive law­less­ness, destroyed them­selves by the effects of some ter­ri­ble explo­sive com­pound­ed by blind chance, that, with a unan­i­mous
    rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the Col­lege of Sages, they for­bade the mak­ing of any com­pound in which the qual­i­ties of explo­sion could be found. At the same time, with a won­drous fatu­ity to which human rea­son is sub­ject­ed in all states of exis­tence, they con­tin­ued to store in their mag­a­zines of research the two com­po­nent parts of the dead­ly com­pound, say­ing philo­soph­i­cal­ly, “Knowl­edge is in itself a good, though it may be occa­sion­al­ly applied to evil.”

    The same sage author­i­ties for­bid all attempts to con­struct any aer­i­al ves­sel; and, indeed, the super­sti­tious dread with which they regard the few bold spir­its that from time to time have sought to solve the mys­ter­ies of aer­i­al space suf­fices, with­out law, to pre­vent such inves­ti­ga­tions. But while these exper­i­ments are dis­con­tin­ued, lest they should result in the inven­tion of some new agent of destruc­tion that might per­chance anni­hi­late the species, the vivid imag­i­na­tion of the Vril-ya per­suades them that it is reserved for pos­ter­i­ty to become the Ariels of the air, and that, when the An has reached that phase of his des­tinies, the earth itself will become too small for his habi­ta­tion and his num­bers; he will nec­es­sar­i­ly dis­cov­er a mode, by mechan­i­cal con­trivances, for vis­it­ing wings of birds and plan­ets now only vis­i­ble to his won­der­ing igno­rance, and poor indeed will be his her­itage of Vril, if, even on his globe, mat­ter, the most oppo­site to the aër­i­al light­ness of ether, will not sup­ply him with the means to launch him­self into the ocean of space.

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