Oxygénia
In the year 3069, space farer Peter MacGulliver who is used to a happy life on a healthy and clean planet Earth strands on a planet which environment is completely ruined by heavy pollution, where there isn't even any oxygen left in the atmosphere and where billions of humanoid beings have to live with gas masks and rationed oxygen for their whole life – Oxygénia. On his long way to escape this living nightmare, Peter has to get to know all three major layers of the society of Oxygénia: Trunk Bearers, Rememberers and the "upper ten thousand" (one hundred lineages with one hundred members), the last ones living in a literal paradise and sheer luxury on the expense of all others. There are also some refugees and renegades amongst the Rememberers... can Peter escape Oxygénia, get back to his spaceship and his wife who is waiting there for him? This novel is a grim dark vision of what can very well become of Earth if mankind goes on the way it has done for the last few centuries. Today, there are already structures on Earth similiar to the dreadful "Oxygénia Trust" with its one hundred lineages, "elites" who don't bother about the fate of billions of other humans; there is pollution and climate change which is both very well capable of turning Earth into Oxygénia if our species doesn't change the set course very soon. See what the future might be like, and let's hope and take actions that it's not too late already, that we still can get off the path we're on to now – the path to Oxygénia.
In the year 3069, space farer Peter MacGulliver who is used to a happy life on a healthy and clean planet Earth strands on a planet which environment is completely ruined by heavy pollution, where there isn't even any oxygen left in the atmosphere and where billions of humanoid beings have to live with gas masks and rationed oxygen for their whole life – Oxygénia.
On his long way to escape this living nightmare, Peter has to get to know all three major layers of the society of Oxygénia: Trunk Bearers, Rememberers and the "upper ten thousand" (one hundred lineages with one hundred members), the last ones living in a literal paradise and sheer luxury on the expense of all others. There are also some refugees and renegades amongst the Rememberers... can Peter escape Oxygénia, get back to his spaceship and his wife who is waiting there for him?
This novel is a grim dark vision of what can very well become of Earth if mankind goes on the way it has done for the last few centuries. Today, there are already structures on Earth similiar to the dreadful "Oxygénia Trust" with its one hundred lineages, "elites" who don't bother about the fate of billions of other humans; there is pollution and climate change which is both very well capable of turning Earth into Oxygénia if our species doesn't change the set course very soon. See what the future might be like, and let's hope and take actions that it's not too late already, that we still can get off the path we're on to now – the path to Oxygénia.
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Translator's final thoughts<br />
So, here we are... now you've read "<strong>Oxygénia</strong>", at least I hope you<br />
did and didn't just skip forward to the last page.<br />
In my opinion, this novel should be one of the most important<br />
novels of the 20 th century as it very graphically describes what may<br />
very well become of Earth if we, yes, we – our very own species, the<br />
humans! – continue to go on as we did for the last, say, 200 years.<br />
It has been quite an effort for me to translate it; as I mentioned<br />
before, my native language is German, and translating into a foreign<br />
language is never easy – but if it could bring only one single reader<br />
on this planet to think about it, it's been fully worth the effort.<br />
I read "<strong>Oxygénia</strong>" first when I was around 10 years old (I don't<br />
remember exactly), and I re-read it several times since. And every<br />
time, it makes me wonder: what would have become my fate if I<br />
would have had the misfortune to be born on <strong>Oxygénia</strong>? Yes, I<br />
know, it's a fictional, a metaphorical planet, but you see: no one has<br />
the freedom of determining where, when or to whom he is born, so:<br />
what about our successors? What about our children? Do you want<br />
them to be born in a world like <strong>Oxygénia</strong>? So, I always wondered: if<br />
I was born there, how would my life have been? Would I have been<br />
born in Oxygenville, as a member of the "Upper Ten Thousand" as<br />
we call them on Earth (you read it: Hundred Lineages with precisely<br />
hundred members each, that makes for exactly ten thousand<br />
beings. The term "the Upper Ten Thousand" is just way more<br />
common in our language)? Very unlikely. Would the selecting<br />
machines have found some useful talents in my brain, and would I<br />
have become one of the Rememberers? Maybe. But much bigger<br />
chances are that I would have become a Trunk Bearer, just like<br />
eight billions of other beings, leading a life... no, not leading a life<br />
but instead just vegetating for some years. What a horrifying<br />
thought... isn't it?<br />
Sadly, during the last decades, structures that could very well<br />
lead to something scaringly familiar to the "<strong>Oxygénia</strong> Trust" have<br />
developed, have become more clearly than back in the days when<br />
Klára Fehér wrote her novel. Think of corrupt politicans, think of<br />
namely Donald Trump – a billionaire who became the president of<br />
the United States of America, only to immediately cancel the<br />
membership of his country in climate protection protocols and<br />
agreements, a man who could easily afford a safe place for himself<br />
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