Spanish Proto-Science Fiction

EL ANACRONÓPETE [The Time Ship]

By Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau

1887

First edition of the first modern Western novel featuring a time machine, published eight years before THE TIME MACHINE by H.G. Wells.

Near fine.

Price: $8,000.00

EL ANACRONÓPETE [The Time Ship]

"Gaspar's work is more than a simple divertissement à la Jules Verne. It has a specific Spanish tone and its underlying themes, steeped in wit and irony, imply social, political, literary, and even religious and philosophical criticism." – Bell and Molina-Gavilán

Gaspar coined "anacronópete" from the Greek for "ana" (along), "chronos" (time), and "petomai" (to fly). In this book, a corrupt gentleman of science tries to use a time machine to take his niece back to an era in which he can force her to marry him. But that's only part of the wild adventure, where the main characters, "along with a dozen French prostitutes and a squadron of Spanish hussars," use the machine "in search of more permissive times, [and] the key to eternal life" (Bell and Molina-Gavilán). Along the way, the travelers witness a number of key events in history, including an eruption of Vesuvius and the parting of the Red Sea. While the work as a whole shows the influence of Verne, the fabulous wood engravings by Soler especially point to the book's debt to the French science fiction and adventure novelist. Quite scarce: we are aware of only one US institutional holding (Texas A&M). A major early work of science fiction in Spanish that was not printed again in full until the year 2000.

Read more: Santiáñez-Tió, "Nuevos mapas del universo: Modernidad y ciencia ficción en la literatura española del siglo XIX (1804-1905)," in Revista Hispánica Moderna 47 (2); Bell and Molina-Gavilán, introduction to their 2012 translation, The Time Ship.

The Object

Barcelona: Biblioteca Arte y Letras, 1887. 7.5'' x 4.75''. Original lavish pictorial cloth with depiction of a time machine within a circular field of gold. Blue geometric-patterned edges, grey pictorial endpapers. Title page lettered in red and black. Illustrated by F. Gómez Soler with wood-engraved vignettes, headpieces, and tailpieces, and a full-page wood engraving of the time machine. Bound as issued with two other novellas by Gaspar: VIAJE Á CHINA and METEMPSÍCOSIS. Table of contents at rear. 393, [1], [2] pages. Some scattered foxing internally. Extremities with minor shelfwear. Small chip to rear endpaper. Else clean, bright, and sound.

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