Iridio Ennui vs The Boltzmann Brains.: A novel with equations

Abstract

This is the first English translation of the second edition of "La inevitable resurrección de los Cerebros de Boltzmann", first published in Buenos Aires in 2018. The novel has been translated by Kevin Windle and Amalia Milman, in collaboration with the author. The translation was made possible by an Arts ACT Art Activities Grant, awarded by the Canberra City Government. The narrative uses a strategy similar to Galileo's “Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems”, presenting cosmological discussions as a confrontation between the underlying conflicting assumptions of allegorical characters.The novel is set in a future Australia where all the catastrophes caused by climate change have far exceeded the worst predictions: a perennial economic crisis around the world, recurring heat waves, millions of refugees caused by rising sea levels, and the extinction of the most common animals. Yet, the country’s authorities continue to deny the reality of global warming. In his naive struggle to defend pure science and blue-sky research, Iridio Ennui will face the most virulent enemies of human progress: fluctuating Boltzmann brains, entities that have spontaneously appeared in the quantum foam of sidereal space, taken control of the minds of the authorities of the chaotic planet Earth and contaminated their pineal glands. The narrative makes extensive use of equations and other scientific conventions as literary devices. The equations are derived from various disciplines, including those used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to predict the devastation of the mid-22nd century depicted in the book. The main aim of the translation was to render in English the particular mix of narrators or narration styles found in the novel. As sections of the text resemble the ultra-objective narration style of popular science, or the wordy style of Lacanian psychology, and as narrator styles can transition from one to the other in the long sentences of the Spanish original, special attention had to be paid to the parsing of sentences in English. English does not have long-distance anaphora, and consequently, long chunks of text had to be rearranged and reorganised to maintain the author’s intentions. The novel uses equations and other scientific conventions along with the text. This also presented several translation challenges, as the accurate names of the devices had to be balanced with intelligibility. Given that the two translators (other than the author) had extensive experience in both literary and non-literary translation, the balance of skills was crucial for solving the most challenging difficulties. Show more