(este artículo salió en la edición del Buenos Aires Herald del 27/4/12)
This
is not a book review. A book review would tell you that there is a new
book out, that it’s called Química hasta en la sopa, that it’s been
published by Iamiqué (a singular Argentine publisher, specializing in
science books for children with readers all over the Spanish-speaking
world and beyond). In a book review you would hear about how the book
follows on the footsteps of a long tradition of books that show you how a
given science is all around us: in this case, how a chemistry-loving
girl spends a day with her non-scientific sister Marina and shows her
the million ways in which the things they do (from drinking mate to
printing a receipt) can be explained in a way that is both scientific
and cool.
But this is where the book review ends, and, remember, I told you
from the beginning: this is not a book review. Because the writer of the
book is Silvana Fucito. The name may not mean much to you, but it does
mean the world to me and a small group of people who cannot help but
look at this book with a warm glow of pride that fills our chest just as
a mighty kick to the stomach takes our breath away.
At the end of the third volume of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo
Baggins tells his friend Samwise Gamgee “It’s been four years to the day
since Weathertop, Sam. It’s never really healed” (Weathertop, for those
who don’t remember their Middle Earth history, was the place where
Frodo got his first battle wound when he was stabbed by a Ringwraith).
Well, it’s never really healed: it’s been four years to the day since
Silvana died in a car accident.
Or did she? “Accident” implies that there were unforeseeable
consequences, that Fate got in the way, that it was nobody’s fault. She
was driving her car back from Luján on a Sunday evening. A truck loaded
with soy had driven by the same spot. Someone had been sloppy about
securing the cargo, and some grain spilled off when the truck took a
turn. Have you ever seen soy? Its pellets look just like ball bearings.
Imagine driving over them out of the blue. She lost control of the car.
You can picture the rest – I’ve been trying not to every day for the
past four years.
So, even if there was no intent, in my mind it’s never been an
accident. Somewhere, someone knows they did a lousy job that day,
someone who was in a rush or too tired or too stupid to care. A driver
who had a hunch something was wrong, who maybe even got warned that
night that he was short a few kilos. The officer who was first on the
scene told the family there was so much soy on the road he had
difficulty walking without taking a spill. It was dusk.
I was at the paper at that very moment, and only found out the next
morning. I was listening to a song by the Asturian band Felpeyu: I
played it five times on my iPod and googled the lyrics, and all the time
I was thinking “I’ll call Silvana tomorrow, we have to get together and
sing this: she’s gonna love it.” She loved singing. She loved Celtic
music, Lord of the Rings, elves and fairies, Disney movies, playing the
piano. She loved tea, books, films. She could sit for hours listening to
music, chatting, sharing life tea after mate after tea. She loved her
friends, and she had many.
She loved chemistry, she loved explaining it to people as hopeless
at it as me and her sister Marina (and she was good at it – without her I
would still be flunking my high school courses). When she spoke of it,
it was nothing like a hard science or a dull subject. If I were writing a
review, I would say that the book transmits that joy – because I am
not, I will just say that it is good to meet some of her again on the
page, even if it does stir so many feelings.
More than anything in this universe, she loved her son Theo. He was three then.
She was so, so very much loved.
So,
get your kids the book, because she’s in there and you’ll be touched by
someone I’d love to be able to introduce you to. I would never write
any of this in a book review, but this is not it, and if you’ve put up
with me this far you already know that.
As for me, I’ll be listening to D’equí a Somió, the song I never got to hear her sing. God, she would have loved it.
The future has imploded into the present.
With no nuclear war, a new battlefield is
on people's minds and souls.
Mega-corporations are the new governments;
Computer-generated info domains are the new frontiers.
And though there is better living through science and chemistry,
We are all becoming cyborgs.
The computer is the new cool tool.
And though they say all information should be free,
It is not.
Information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit,
So mistrust authority.
Cyberpunks are the true rebels;
Cyberculture is coming in under the radar of ordinary society...
An unholy alliance of the tech world and the world of organized dissent.
Welcome to the Cyber Corporation...
...Cyberpunks.
Una de las cosas que nunca me olvido de ese 2 de abril, que me enseñó mi viejo cuando subí a la cocina con el Clarín del día: Una guerra no se festeja.
