Ashes, Ashes (French: Ravage) is a science fiction novel written by René Barjavel, set in 2052 France. It was first published in 1943 by Denoël. Its English-language translation by Damon Knight as Ashes, Ashes was published in 1967 by Doubleday. Ravage has been included on many "all-time" best lists, including Annick Beguin's Les 100 principaux titres de la science-fiction.
YouTube Encyclopedic
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Mount St. Helens: Rising From the Ashes - Science Nation
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Black Fire Snake - Amazing Science Experiment
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Dr Hal & Sideshow Dave Perform 'From Gases to Ashes to Flashes' at Science World 2012
Transcription
MILES O'BRIEN: When Mount Saint Helens blew it's top in 1980, it wasn't a surprise that it happened. But even today the extent of the damage is hard to fathom. JOHN BISHOP: It began with the largest landslide in recorded history that uncorked an explosion that was directed horizontally and leveled the forest to 13 miles out from the volcano. MILES O'BRIEN: It knocked down 100-foot trees like matchsticks and killed just about everything in its path. JOHN BISHOP: It was just a barren landscape, gray and pumice colored, covered with rocks. MILES O'BRIEN: Ever since, the mountain has hardly been quiet, with several smaller eruptions, but of course nothing like what happened here in 1980. Dead tree trunks still litter the landscape but look closely, something else is erupting here--life. JOHN BISHOP: It's a rare opportunity for scientists to get to study a devastated area and how it comes back from scratch in such detail. MILES O'BRIEN: With help from the National Science Foundation, Evolutionary Biologist John Bishop is documenting the return of living things to the once lifeless mountain. JOHN BISHOP: Up until the last 10 years the landscape has been completely dominated by lupin. MILES O'BRIEN: Bishop says these flowering lupin plants are able to create new soil from volcanic ash. That new soil has created a habitat for the Sitka Willow. But there's a problem. JOHN BISHOP: One of the things we've realized about these willows is that they're not getting big and that's important because they create habitat for birds and mammals. So you can see you get a whole bunch of these inside and they're going to kill the stem. MILES O'BRIEN: These weevils are an invasive species and they're on the attack. Taking up residence inside the willows stems, stunting their growth or killing them. JOHN BISHOP: Seemingly, insignificant organisms like insects that consume plants play an extraordinarily important role in the sorting out process of deciding essentially which plants are going to stay in the landscape, and which ones are going to disappear. MILES O'BRIEN: Bishop says plants and insects will battle back and forth here for centuries. It's how nature balances out the ecosystem. Until the day Mount Saint Helens changes the equation once again. For Science Nation, I'm Miles O'Brien.
Plot summary
In the storyline, a civilization much more advanced than ours falls to its knees when electricity suddenly disappears. Chaos, disease, and famine ensue, which readers witness through the adventures of a small group of survivors led by François Deschamps. The group leaves Paris and starts a journey toward Provence where the survivors will create a new patriarchal society with Deschamps as their leader.[1]
Critics
This novel has been cited as influential in science-fiction literature in the following books:[2]
- Annick Beguin, Les 100 principaux titres de la science-fiction, Cosmos 2000, 1981;
- Jacques Sadoul, Anthologie de la littérature de science-fiction, Ramsay, 1981;
- Science-fiction. La bibliothèque idéale, Albin Michel, 1988;
- Lorris Murail, Les Maîtres de la science-fiction, Bordas, coll. « Compacts », 1993;
- Stan Barets, Le science-fictionnaire, Denoël, coll. « Présence du futur », 1994;
References
- ^ Summary in video (with English Subtitles)
- ^ A more detailed list can be consulted on the website Top des Tops.
External links
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This page was last edited on 12 April 2024, at 15:04