Gorodischer, Angélica
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1928-2022) Argentinian author of nonfiction and fiction works in both the realist and the fantastic modes, who was nevertheless very much identified as a science fiction writer. Gorodischer was also closely associated with the city of Rosario, home of her well-known character Trafalgar Medrano, introduced in her novel Trafalgar (1979; trans Amalia Gladhart 2013); this is constructed as a Club Story sequence in which Medrano, a comical millionaire businessman, serves as both observer and social critic as he makes his rounds of several planets and then returns home to tell his fellow citizens about them. Gorodischer's science fiction output – at least twenty untranslated novels and collections – far more closely resembles the highly literary work of Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino than it does the more rural (or, from an urbane, intensely urban Argentinian standpoint, rusticated) Magic Realism of authors like Gabriel García Márquez or Mario Vargas Llosa.
Gorodischer published fiction at book length from the mid-1960s and the following works have been translated: the two-book Kalpa sequence comprising La casa del poder ["The House of Power"] (coll of linked stories 1983), El imperio más vasto ["The Greatest Empire"] (coll of linked stories 1983) translated together by Ursula K Le Guin as Kalpa Imperial (omni 2003), and "Los embriones del violeta" (in Bajo las jubeas en flor ["Under the Flowering Jubeas"] coll 1973), translated as "The Violet's Embryos" in Cosmos Latinos (anth 2003) and reprinted in Year's Best SF 9 (anth 2004) edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G Hartwell. Meant as a parable of dictatorship in Argentina, Kalpa is set in a vast land, the rules of whose nature and governance are almost sufficiently estranged from "normal" reality for it to be described as an Alternate Cosmos; the stories embedded into this land, told by storytellers who sometimes become implicated in the action, emphasize the vast flux of Time, for the empire is aeons old and its citizens and rulers are Twice-Tolds [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. "The Violet's Embryos", another good example of this author's highly literate style, speculates in general about the nature of desire and search for happiness while confronting traditional military notions of masculinity.
Gorodischer received a World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2011. [JC/YMG]
Angélica Beatriz del Rosario Arcal de Gorodischer
born Buenos Aires, Argentina: 18 July 1928
died Rosario, Argentina: 5 February 2022
works (selected)
series
Kalpa Imperial
- La casa del poder ["The House of Power"] (Buenos Aires: Editiones Minotauro, 1983) [coll of linked stories: Kalpa Imperial: pb/]
- El imperio más vasto ["The Greatest Empire"] (Buenos Aires: Editiones Minotauro, 1983) [coll of linked stories: Kalpa Imperial: pb/]
- Kalpa Imperial (Northampton, Massachusetts: Small Beer Press, 2003) [omni: trans by Ursula Le Guin of the above two: Kalpa Imperial: pb/Rafal Olbinksi]
individual titles
- Opus dos ["Opus Two"] (Barcelona, Spain: Ultramar, 1967) [pb/]
- Bajo las jubeas en flor ["Under the Flowering Jubeas"] (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones de la Flor, 1973) [coll: pb/]
- "The Violet's Embryos" in Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2003) edited by Andrea L Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilán [anth: with trans by Sara Irausquin of "Los embriones del violeta" from the above collection: pb/Raúl Cruz]
- Casta luna electrónica ["Chaste Electric Moon"] (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Andrómeda, 1977) [coll: pb/]
- Trafalgar (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Orbis, Biblioteca de Ciencia Ficción, 1979) [coll of linked stories: Trafalgar Medrano: pb/]
- Trafalgar (Easthampton, Massachusetts: Small Beer Press, 2013) [trans of the above by Amalia Gladhart: Trafalgar Medrano: pb/Ron Guyatt]
- Prodigios (Barcelona, Spain: Lumen, 1994) [pb/]
links
- Alternative Realities from Argentina: Angélica Gorodischer's "Los embriones del violeta" (November 1999 Science Fiction Studies) [mag/]
- Stories Among the Ruins: Angélica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial (19 January 2004 Strange Horizons) [mag/]
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Twice-Told
- Picture Gallery
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