[SKRIVA] Sf-novell av HC Andersen

En sf-novell av HC Andersen!

http://www.wondersmith.com/scifi/index.htm

Sitens inledande kommentar:

      This 1853 story is packed with brilliant extrapolation:
      First, Andersen recognized the continuing advance of progress, accurately 
predicting the construction of a tunnel beneath the English Channel, routine 
airline flights across the Atlantic, and instantaneous communication between 
the continents. (His biggest mistake was believing that all this would take a 
thousand years.)
      Second, he grasped the impact that technology would have on society. The 
pace of our lives has accelerated dramatically since 1853; people really do 
take whirlwind one-week tours of Europe! And, as the brevity of "In a Thousand 
Years" itself suggests, we enjoy reading short-short science fiction stories.
      The illustration by A. W. Bayes is from Stories for the Household (1889), 
an extensive collection of Andersen's tales. 

Och novellen heter tydligen "In a thoudand years":

Yes, in a thousand years people will fly on the wings of steam through the air, 
over the ocean! The young inhabitants of America will become visitors of old 
Europe. They will come over to see the monuments and the great cities, which 
will then be in ruins, just as we in our time make pilgrimages to the tottering 
splendors of Southern Asia. In a thousand years they will come! 

The Thames, the Danube, and the Rhine still roll their course, Mont Blanc 
stands firm with its snowcapped summit, and the Northern Lights gleam over the 
lands of the North; but generation after generation has become dust, whole rows 
of the mighty of the moment are forgotten, like those who already slumber under 
the hill on which the rich trader whose ground it is has built a bench, on 
which he can sit and look out across his waving cornfields. 

"To Europe!" cry the young sons of America; "to the land of our ancestors, the 
glorious land of monuments and fancy--to Europe!" 

 The ship of the air comes. It is crowded with passengers, for the transit is 
quicker than by sea. The electro-magnetic wire under the ocean has already 
telegraphed the number of the aerial caravan. Europe is in sight: it is the 
coast of Ireland that they see, but the passengers are still asleep; they will 
not be called till they are exactly over England. There they will first step on 
European shore, in the land of Shakespeare as the educated call it; in the land 
of politics, the land of machines, as it is called by others. 

Here they stay a whole day. That is all the time the busy race can devote to 
the whole of England and Scotland. Then the journey is continued through the 
tunnel under the English Channel, to France, the land of Charlemagne and 
Napoleon. Moliere is named; the learned men talk of the classic school of 
remote antiquity; there is rejoicing and shouting for the names of heroes, 
poets, and men of science, whom our time does not know, but who will be born 
after our time in Paris, the center of Europe, and elsewhere. 

The air steamboat flies over the country whence Columbus went forth, where 
Cortez was born, and where Calderon sang dramas in sounding verse. Beautiful 
dark-eyed women live still in the blooming valleys, and the oldest songs speak 
of the Cid and the Alhambra. 

Then through the air, over the sea, to Italy, where once lay old, everlasting 
Rome. It has vanished! The Campagna lies desert: a single ruined wall is shown 
as the remains of St. Peter's, but there is a doubt if this ruin be genuine. 

Next to Greece, to sleep a night in the grand hotel at the top of Mount 
Olympus, to say that they have been there; and the journey is continued to the 
Bosphorus, to rest there a few hours, and see the place where Byzantium lay; 
and where the legend tells that the harem stood in the time of the Turks, poor 
fishermen are now spreading their nets. 

Over the remains of mighty cities on the broad Danube, cities which we in our 
time know not, the travelers pass; but here and there, on the rich sites of 
those that time shall bring forth, the caravan sometimes descends, and departs 
thence again. 

Down below lies Germany, that was once covered with a close net of railways and 
canals, the region where Luther spoke, where Goethe sang, and Mozart once held 
the sceptre of harmony. Great names shine there, in science and in art, names 
that are unknown to us. One day devoted to seeing Germany, and one for the 
North, the country of Oersted and Linnaeus, and for Norway, the land of the old 
heroes and the young Normans. Iceland is visited on the journey home: the 
geysers burn no more, Hecla is an extinct volcano, but the rocky island is 
still fixed in the midst of the foaming sea, a continual monument of legend and 
poetry. 

"There is really a great deal to be seen in Europe," says the young American, 
"and we have seen it in a week, according to the directions of the great 
taveler" (and here he mentions the name of one of his contemporaries) "in his 
celebrated work, How to See all Europe in a Week."

(Samma site har en del annan gammal, klassisk sf. --AE)



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