Ficção filosófica de 1666, O Mundo Resplandencente, também entendido como um dos primeiros textos de ficção-científica, é uma jornada a um mundo fantástico, afim de discutir filosofia metafísica, natural (física etc), teologia e política. A moça, raptada, acaba sendo a única sobrevivente de uma tempestade e por um portal chega a um outro mundo, onde acaba ocupando o cargo de imperatriz absoluta. Seguem conferências dela com os humanos dos mais variados tipos, ursos, pássaros, minhocas, espíritos, sobre o privilégio da matéria, preconceitos imaterialistas e teológicos, construção de mundos etc. Leve e divertido, este livrinho também tem o diferencial de ser completamente centrado em figuras femininas (a imperatriz, depois seu amor platônico, a duquesa que se confunde com a autora). ( )

This peculiar story was written in the mid-seventeenth century by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. It features an unnamed female protagonist who is abducted and then escapes and is transported from her own "Philosophical World" to the "Blazing World" of the title, where she is hospitably received and becomes Empress.

The Blazing World is populated something like the planet Mongo, with bear-men, fox-men, fish-men, bird-men, spider-men, lice-men, and others besides. The Empress consults all of these according to their specialties, regarding natural history, physics, logic, and other "philosophical" topics, and this section of the book gets rather slow--especially with the small type of the Dover Thrift Edition I read. One highlight of this section, on the other hand, is Cavendish's detailed set of character identifications for Ben Jonson's The Alchemist as a drame à clef regarding John Dee and Edward Kelly (35). This passage is connected with the Empress' further ambition "to make a Cabbala" (46).

Turning from her various animal-men subjects to the world of incorporeal spirits, the Empress is next introduced to ... the Duchess of Newcastle--that is, her author, with whom she develops a "platonic love." The Duchess pleads for intervention with Fortune on behalf of her maligned husband the Duke, and this motive accounts for much of the remainder of the first and longer of the story's two parts.

The second part is livelier on the whole, and involves the Empress receiving news that her home country in the Philosophical World is under threat. So she confers with the Duchess, and they develop and execute an operation by which they effect the military and political supremacy of the "King of EFSI," the Empress' former sovereign.

An epilogue in Cavendish's own voice touts her accomplishment in world-creation, and boasts herself superior in that respect to the mere conquerors of great empires such as Alexander and Caesar. She also sets herself above Homer, in giving her characters grounds to resolve their conflicts without fatal violence. She generously extends to her readers the option of becoming her subjects in the Philosophical World, but allows that if they prefer to create their own worlds, they can and should do so.

While the style of The Blazing World is dated, its freedom from later literary conventions often lends it a great deal of charm. Persevering through some of the denser bits is genuinely worthwhile, as the whole text is not that long. It was originally published as a "work of fancy" bound together with her "serious" Observations upon Experimental Philosophy (ix). Her philosophical biases are decidedly modern, and while The Blazing World has been instanced as a forerunner of science fiction, it does hold up as an unusual source of instruction in the magick of cosmopoeia.

This story, whose full title is “The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World”, is a curiosity. It was published in 1666 and written by the Duchess of Newcastle and can be considered a forerunner of science fiction because it’s set on a strange new world. However, this is a tough slog. The story is told in seemingly never-ending sentences and has consisted entirely of a woman who somehow escapes our world to land on a new one populated by all sorts of strange creatures, and they bandy about the latest scientific ideas. I’m dropping this unfinished because there isn’t much narrative drive to the story. ( )

A weird bit of philosophy and proto-sci-fi. Ignores the rules of any conventional story, features parallel worlds, astral-projection, submarines made of gold and many sorts of animal men including Lice-men. Best approached as a piece of philosophy rather than sci-fi but quite interesting. ( )

The rating here is a very conflicted four, because this is a very well written book of-its-time, but it has not aged well. In particular the ‘different races do different things well’ is heavy handed, and the section on ‘Jewish Cabbala’ was just, urgh.

This is utopian fiction, but rather than being about a utopia for all, it seems to be about utopia for one. By which the person gets abducted, and then becomes the uncontested leader of a new world. Where there are jewels beyond compare, and people to do their bidding.

Overall, fascinating in a ‘reading historical texts’ way, but I don’t recommend it as pleasure reading. ( )

> Le Monde glorieux est à l'image de ce personnage contradictoire. L'appariement a de quoi nous surprendre. Roman philosophique, roman utopique décevant, comme le sont la plupart des inventions utopiques, roman féministe, il vire, lorsque son impératrice convoque l'âme de Margaret Cavendish comme scribe, à la science-fiction, les deux personnages étant entraînés dans des aventures irrésumables où se mêlent l'autobiographie, le plaidoyer et les inventions les plus loufoques.
—Danieljean (Babelio)

I was very surprised to learn that many people believe Cavendish's work can be summarized, and that you don't need to read it, because the ideas are all that matters. The ideas aren't all that interesting, despite various editors and commentators' attempts to make her a feminist icon or whatever (n.b.: if you're really into the history of philosophy and science in the 17th century, you might well find it interesting to work out where Cavendish sits in the various debates of the period; suffice to say, the ideas she has are not all that often very good).

What is interesting is her style: it's a bit like reading Gulliver-era Swift. Everything is perfectly clear, without being monotonous or boring; Cavendish was, I would say, a great anti-Ciceronian. 21st century readers will find her far, far more readable than most prose writers of her era (compare Milton and Cavendish, for instance). Perhaps people have mentioned this before; I'm at the start of my reading/reading about Cavendish, and all I have to go on so far is the introduction to the Penguin edition, which is full of 'information' about how the author delighted in "the subversive potential of generic and intellectual hybridization," and uses the phrase "hermaphrodites of nature" as if it were an example of this... when, in the text, it's used as a criticism of dualism. God the early 90s were bad for literary criticism. ( )

Ahem: "Written By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent PRINCESSE, THE Duchess of Newcastle."

It is about a lady who becomes the all-powerful Empress of a parallel world connected to earth via the North Pole. It is a strange and great thing to exist in the world. I could go on about how it is a really excellent way to understand European conceptions of gender, power, colonialism, and otherness in the mid-17th century, but instead:

"The rest of the Inhabitants of that World, were men of several different sorts, shapes, figures, dispositions, and humors, as I have already made mention, heretofore; some were Bear-men, some Worm-men, some Fish- or Mear-men, otherwise called Syrens; some Bird-men, some Fly-men, some Ant-men, some Geese-men, some Spider-men, some Lice-men, some Fox-men, some Ape-men, some Jack daw-men, some Magpie-men, some Parrot-men, some Satyrs, some Gyants, and many more, which I cannot all remember; and of these several sorts of men, each followed such a profession as was most proper for the nature of their Species, which the Empress encouraged them in, especially those that had applied themselves to the study of several Arts and Sciences; for they were as ingenious and witty in the invention of profitable and useful Arts, as we are in our world, nay, more; and to that end she erected Schools, and founded several Societies. The Bear-men were to be her Experimental Philosophers, the Bird-men her Astronomers, the Fly- Worm- and Fish-men her Natural Philosophers, the Ape-men her Chymists, the Satyrs her Galenick Physicians, the Fox-men her Politicians, the Spider- and Lice-men her Mathematicians, the Jackdaw- Magpie- and Parrot-men her Orators and Logicians, the Gyants her Architects, &c." ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2308871.html

For all the primacy of Frankenstein, I reckon this must be one of the earliest known sf books by a woman, at least in English. The Duchess of Newcastle was a well-known eccentric of Restoration England - Samuel Pepys has several awestruck entries in his diary about simply wanting to look at her in astonishment, including her visit to the Royal Society - and wrote various pieces including this exploration of politics, science, religion and learning from 1668.

Her unnamed heroine, kidnapped by sea from her home, is blown by storms to the North Pole and thence to another world which adjoins ours there. The inhabitants immediately make her their Empress, and we then settle down for a hundred pages or so of exposition and world-building, some of it a little satirical, some simply speculative and imaginative (some of it perhaps inspired by her visit to the Royal Society the previous year). The Empress then causes further point-of-view confusion by inviting the Duchess of Newcastle to come visit her on her own planet, and, using otherworldly technology, exterminates all of England's military enemies to ensure that Britain can be Top Nation.

It's a undisciplined, rollicking, diverting ramble through the mind of one of the era's most interesting personalities, and I'm really surprised that it is not better known - I think I came across it only browsing Wikipedia, though I then found an essay about it in Speculative Fiction 2012 when I was already half way through. I also detect one or two elements which surely Swift must have put directly into Gullver's Travels; he would surely have known and read this. ( )

First I'll get out of the way the fact that, like later utopias such as Erewhon, Looking Backward, etc, this can at times turn into an unbearably tedious cross between fictional ethnography and political manifesto.

But that's not important because we all know how to skim. What is important is that this is a 17th century novel in which Our Heroine gets abducted but then her abductors die when their boat accidentally sails to another world that's attached to theirs at the North Pole. She survives and gets rescued and ends up marrying this new world's emperor, who apparently doesn't care much about ruling because he puts her in charge of this world full of fox-men and bird-men and fish-men and insect-men. And she changes things and then realises this breaks everything so changes things back, and then she starts chatting with spirits and ends up communicating soul-to-soul with the author in our world, so it's like two Mary Sues in one, plus playing with the fourth wall, it's fantastic.

(There are bits where the author's talking about how she's super ambitious and this way she gets to transcend all possible earthly glory by being the creator of an entire world, and I can't tell whether I want to hug her or nod and be all "So true.")

And then, and then! The Empress discovers that her country back in her own world is under threat from foreign kingdoms, so she and the author lead a fleet back there in her golden submarine (seriously I'm not making this up) and tell her king there "Yo, Majesty, I got this," and put the fear of hell into those foreign kingdoms, and then they do it again when some of said kingdoms are hesitant about paying tribute.

Seriously, 17th century girlpower for the win. ( )