Andri Snær MagnasonCritiques

An origin story told with flashforwards, The Casket of Time has a complexity that will reward young readers. People who love fairytales will enjoy the references in this middle-grade book, however some tropes lend themselves to stereotyping (e.g., scheming dwarfs). Additionally, Andri Snær Magnason does not shy away from the type of gore in traditional fairytales.

My full review is on the Worlds of Words website.

This is a classic-style book on global warming - a writer travels to various places, recounts personal and local history, interweaves facts. This one is a little better than most as the writing quality and perspective of someone from Iceland elevate from the crowd. Probably the standout are his interviews with the Dalai Lama. He rightly emphasizes the importance of ocean acidification which usually gets short or no coverage compared to heat and sea level rise.½

Azt ismeritek, hogy Boris Vian és Huxley elmennek Izlandra regényt írni Istenről? Az ő Istenüket momentán LoveStarnak hívják, de volt rendes neve is, mert őt is anya szülte. Csak épp annyi ötlet szorult belé, mint egy századik hatványra emelt Steve Jobsba, és ezek az ötletek mostanra átformálták a világot. A pulyka nagyságúra génmódosított aranylilék, jegesmedvényi sarki rókák, meg az extrém temetkezési szokások még az apróbbik része ennek a változásnak: a Földet ugyanis „vezeték nélküli” emberek népesítik be, akik létezésük minden percében a fogyasztói kapitalizmus szolgálatában állnak, tetteiket és szavaikat a cég bármikor átírhatja magasztos reklámcélokra hivatkozva, szerelmeiket pedig tévedhetetlen statisztikai módszerekkel sorsolják ki nekik, ha akarják, ha nem. Olyan szép új világ ez, ahol a logikára és a növekedésre hivatkozva a gyeplő átkerült az innovátorok kezébe, akik a tudománnyal karöltve hiperaktív óvodásokként gyurmáznak a létezéssel. A nietzschei „Isten halott” helyére a „a fogyasztás az Isten*, az értékesítés pedig az ő Prófétája” került, az ember pedig szabad akaratától és méltóságától megfosztva tömi a bendőt – ha szerencséje van, megelégszik a primer szükségletek kielégítésével, mert akkor elégedett fikuszként pergetheti napjait. Kivéve, ha a fenn említett innovátorok addig baszkurálják a Teremtés Érzékeny Óraművét, amíg az le nem esik, és reccs, máris oda. Nagyapától kaptuk, az unokánknak kellett volna továbbadni, de elcsesztük.

És amúgy ez nem vicc.

* Magnason baromi markáns fogyasztói társadalom kritikája érzésem szerint se nem jobbról, se nem balról, hanem a liberalizmus felől érkezik. Mert szerintem a fogyasztói társadalomnak van liberális kritikája is. Lényege, hogy a túlhajszolt szabad piac az egyén jogait áljogokká teszi, amikor leszoktatja őket arról, hogy éljenek velük, ezzel pedig felszámolja az egyetemes emberi méltóságot (liberális kulcsszó) és az individuum autonómiáját. Persze az ezzel kapcsolatos érveket a jobb- és a baloldal is kölcsön szokta szokta venni, de amikor ők védik az egyén szabadságát a szabad piactól, végeredményben arra gondolnak, hogy ezt a szabadságot inkább nekik kéne kontrollálni – a nemzet, vagy az újraelosztó állam nevében. Hol észszerű, hol diktatúrákat idéző mértékben.

Skemmtilega fléttuð saga sem tengir saman líf einstaklingsins, Andra Snæ, við forfeður hans og börn auk breytinganna sem eru að verð í heiminum.
Andri Snær gerir ákaflega vel þegar hann sýnir hvernig hraði breytinga í náttúrunni af manna völdum hefur geigvænleg áhrif á okkur og afkomendurna.
Vekur mann sannarlega til umhugsunar.

Mikið um orðaleiki og hnyttni. Andri Snær er orðheppinn, oft háðskur en fyndinn. Mörg skemmtiljóð í þessari ljóðabók.

Fairy tale like story, originally written in Icelandic. Reminds me strongly of The Phantom Tollbooth -- not so much in the math, but in the voice -- fantastical without being fantasy, moralistic, kid-centered adventure. Something deeply imaginative to read as a bed-time story, where the kids are the agents of all that is bad or good, and where they solve their own problems with compassion and kindness. I would have enjoyed this story as a child, but I'm not sure what modern kids would think about it.

Liked this much better than Magnason's award winning, The Story of The Blue Planet, probably for the depth of the inventive fairy tale and the moral of nothing good is easy. A young girl (Sigrun) awakens from a TimeBox®, that her parents and she used to await better times. She finds other kids and makes her way to Grace's house, where Grace asks for their help to awaken everyone. Most of the book is Grace telling the children the story of King Dimon's overprotection of Princess Obsidiana, following Queen Sunbeam's death when the Princess is born. He wants to give her the world, and save her from the ravages of time, leading to many poor decisions, including leaving her in untrustworthy hands. Her only friend is Anori, a young thief hoping to find something to steal in the Castle, who releases her from the casket of time, where she is kept. Note: the description of the book is misleading.

The NY Times made this sound better than it was. Brimir and Hulda are close friends living on a small world where there are only children and no adults. Everything seems fine until an adult arrives via a spaceship and changes the dynamics of the place, causing wants and deprivations that never previously existed. When things get really bad, Brimir outwits the adult, playing to his own vanity.

Sehr gutes Buch. Allerdings habe ich jetzt für mich beschlossen, dass ich vorerst genug gelesen habe, dass der Klimawandel kommt und wie es werden wird. Ich möchte mich zukünftig mehr auf Lösungen konzentrieren.

On Time and Water is a very personal environmental book, which makes it different than the rest. Andri Magnason of Iceland is a documenter. He is all about tracing his relatives as back far as he can, preserving their stories and their photos in print. And this being Iceland, everyone seemed to have a really intimate connection to glaciers. As most readers will not have such a personal history with glaciers, the book can be captivating. It will not even occur to most that people can have personal relationships with glaciers. And soon, no one will have that opportunity at all.

Magnason’s grandparents had their honeymoon on a glacier, holed up in a small tent during a wicked snowstorm. As they pointed out (probably all the rest of their lives), they did not get cold. People with relationships to glaciers notice every little thing about them, like the color of the water that melts from them (white), the mineral content from the ground it grinds down, the presence or absence of various birds and animals, the quality of the snow (Icelandic has 70 words for snow, Magnason says).

And today it is all going away. Glaciers that had been predicted to last thousands more years will be gone in less than a hundred. For people who live and die by them, that changes everything.

And that’s how the book proceeds. It is a long, detailed and involved survey of Magnason’s family, including anecdotes about skiing and discovering a snow-buried plane, living without electricity or water a few miles from the Arctic Circle. How while they were living their simple lives, major events were happening in the rest of the world. Then how Icelanders just this short century have become the most materialistic westerners there are, with more cars per capita, more trash, lots of waste, and specifically not living within nature any longer. They have taken themselves out of the ecological matrix and balance. Icelanders have probably joined Americans as not really noticing or caring that glaciers are vanishing, visibly, and will soon disappear. It is far more important that Iceland’s aluminum can industry thrives instead.

Then halfway through the book, he switches to oceans. It goes way beyond the ugliness of ocean acidification (as much ph change in our lifetimes as in the past 50 million years) but also fish, coral and coral reefs, and wild weather associated with the upset of ocean currents and overhead weather. So it really is about time and water once readers get beyond the family.

He has some slightly different perspectives that might nudge readers into a better appreciation of the world: “We might wonder whether the full meaning of ‘ocean acidification’ in 2019 is similarly weak as the word ‘holocaust’ was in 1930 compared to its meaning 1960.” He counts the number of times acidification is mentioned in the Icelandic news media in 2019 (five - compared to Kardashian – 180) and how truly serious it is and the ramifications as it grows out of control.

He points out that half of all the plastic in the world has been produced just since 2000. He says that the energy from one barrel of oil is the equivalent of ten years’ labor by one worker. And that far from controlling the problem, we now produce 110 million cars a year. In his grandfather’s time, a car in Iceland was a trophy, and his grandfather brought one back with him to sell and finance his education, much to the disappointment of his wife after his being away six years.

Then the facts start to get more dramatic. China has used more cement each year between 2004 and 2007 than the USA did in all of the 20th century. Or that Man is the first species to produce waste that is toxic, useless, and that in fact, harms nature. The oceans provide 60% of the planet’s oxygen when the phytoplankton in the upper layers photosynthesize. As acidification reduces the phytoplankton, oceans will reach a tipping point where it will simply and totally die off. “This is a risk no one who lives on Earth can take,” he says. The end of the oceans is the end of oxygen and the end of life.

And finally, for all the astonishing speed of new developments, from the steam engine to electricity to flight to the internet to mobile phones etc., we still have no idea how to remove and sequester or reprocess all the excess carbon dioxide we continue to put into the air every second of every day. Billions of tons a year. Every year. That will do us in. He thinks every available resource should be refocused to tackle that problem, right now and until it is solved. Nothing else matters.

While many scientists have recently fabricated the date of 2050 as the cutoff for reducing CO2 emissions to zero, the truth is we have long passed the point of no return. The Earth does not turn on a dime, and it will take hundreds of thousands of years to undo the damage already caused by burning so very much carbon in such an intensely short time. At the rate we are reducing the carbon load – which is zero – it doesn’t matter anyway. But it’s nice to have a goal, a purpose, I suppose. Magnason is along for that ride; I am not.

In a small bit of irony, Magnason seems to spend all his time in airplanes. He tells stories about land and sea flora and fauna all over the world, coral reefs, sea birds, alligators … his life is the having the time of his life. He interviews the Dalai Lama in Iceland and is invited to continue the talk in Daramsala, which he does. He is out there promoting his previous book, giving lectures, collaborating on films, and networking, on a global scale. All the while complaining about carbon footprints.

In the last chapter, it all comes to a screeching halt due to COVID-19, with a lockdown the very night of his film premiere he has been promoting so assiduously. But there is no hint he will change his own ways. He seems eager to say he has made his own contribution by doing small things at home less.

This is precisely the conundrum facing humankind. Reducing carbon emissions to zero means a complete change of lifestyle, not selective, incremental and totally minor changes as convenient. Not using plastic straws won’t do it. Same for plastic bags. Or short-haul flights. Or even electric cars. It doesn’t make him less passionate, but it does point directly to the central weakness of climate-change worriers. They aren’t exactly setting a great example.

We can make thirty pounds of pasta for the same energy it takes to make one pound of beef. But beef is winning by a seemingly insurmountable margin. Chickens are by far the most populous of the remaining bird species. There are only 3000 tigers left in the world, but one billion pet cats, draining the oceans of fish and killing birds by the billions every year. We have issues we won’t even consider to save ourselves.

Nonetheless, On Time and Water is nothing if not passionate, and is the reason why it is being translated from the Icelandic for all to appreciate. Magnason works hard at telling a good story really well. The message that comes along with them is worth treating.

David Wineberg

Published in 2002 but has only become more relevant in 2019, amazing.

Two intertwining stories are told in this fascinating Icelandic children's novel, one within the other. Opening on a bright summer's day in our own contemporary world, the first story concerns a "situation" so dire that the entire human population stores itself away in time caskets, to wait for better days. When one of these caskets opens early, young Sigrun finds herself in a world slowly going to ruin, as its people remain in suspended animation. Together with a group of other awakened children, she is taken in by an elderly woman named Grace, who spins the incredible story of the ancient kingdom of Pangea, the Princess Obsidiana, and the extraordinary lengths to which Obsidiana's father, King Dimon, goes to conquer time and keep her forever young...

Originally published in Icelandic as Tímakistan, this novel was one I started, enjoyed, and then put away for a time, before picking it back up again. As other reviewers have noted, the disconnect between the two story-lines is one that can feel off-putting to the reader, even though the inset story of Obsidiana (which takes up around 90% of the book) is central to understanding what is happening in Sigrun's world. For me, the two story-lines felt so different that it took me a while to adjust, when switching from one to another, especially when the inset tale ended up being so much longer than the framing one. The contemporary scenes had a quirky sense of humor, and some pointed social commentary that was quite interesting, while those set in Pangea had a classic fairy-tale feeling. One felt like science fiction, while the other felt like fantasy. I thought the idea of using Pangaea - a super-continent that began to break apart approximately 175 million years ago, leading to Earth's current seven continents - to retell the Snow White story was brilliant (if scientifically unsound), and overall I enjoyed the inset story more than the contemporary one. Perhaps this is partly owing to the feeling that the contemporary story-line wasn't developed fully enough? There are some interesting ideas here, as Magnuson plays around with the notion of time, and the human relationship to it, making this a children's book with some philosophical depth.

Although not perfect - the two parts here just don't quite fit together, despite being related, perhaps because of the different feelings they evoke - The Casket of Time was certainly entertaining, and quite thought-provoking. I would definitely pick up more of Andri Snær Magnason's work - perhaps his other children's book - The Story of the Blue Planet?½

The Blue Planet is a planet full of children that never grew up. Only children - and plants and animals- live on the planet. The children are wild and do what they want. Once a year a cave full of sleeping butterflies would awaken and circle the entire planet in a day. It was the happiest day in the year.
One day a grown-up, in a spaceship, lands on a small island on the blue planet. He convinces the children on the island that they are bored. He shows them how to have fun all the time if they pay him a bit of their youth. The children discover that their fun is hurting children on the other side of the planet. They refuse to go back to being bored until one of the children volunteers to sacrifice his heart to fix the situation.
This is a story about how all our actions have consequences; for ourselves, for others, and for the planet.

"Thus they made love in the wolf's stomach while the world crumbled outside" is probably the greatest thing I've read in recent history.

I loved so many aspects of this book...the almost-reality satire of the "cordless modern man," pre-programmed humans unwittingly screaming advertisements as a means of paying off debt, scientifically calculated love, the biologically engineered, murderous corporate icons designed to replace cats and dogs, all taking place in a dystopian future where the planet seems to revolve around the Icelandic Oxnadalur valley and the eponymous scientist LoveStar. The only drawback I noted was the relative lack of development of Indridi and Sigrid, the star-crossed lovers who challenge LoveStar's preordainment of soul mates. On many occasions I felt like that were simply vehicles driving the plot, as if they were templates or archetypes. Perhaps something was lost in translation, or perhaps an archetypal approach was intended. Either way, I felt less sympathetic for Indridi and Sigrid and more concerned with how their quest for love and happiness would end. In a science fiction story pregnant with thought-provoking futuristic views on love, death, marketing and consumerism, maybe this is a necessarily expedient treatment of these characters. But carefully applying a more emotionally complex layer of who they are as individuals would have made this great story even better. Still, I found LoveStar to be a poignant yet entertaining, at times hilarious read. I can understand its recent notoriety as a nominee for the 2012 Phillip K. Dick Award. It must have faced strong competition to "only" receive a special recognition.

I loved the idea of this book. I loved what it was saying, the author's observations, the satire... But as a novel, as a STORY it wasn't all that compelling. I loved it while I was reading, but once I put it down I wasn't always motivated to pick it up again.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys philosophy or sociology, but not as a light read.

Jeezus what a load of crap. I'd hoped it might err on the side of silliness and irreverence, but it was just stupid. Flat, affectless writing, too, beyond the point where that might've been ironically amusing and into the territory of boredom. I read 20% and gave up.

The novel is an apocalyptic piece of futurology eerily prescient with splashes of that which is already upon us. This translation was published in 2012 and has many ideas of Magnason’s futuristic fiction coming very near current realism. He discusses a cordless, wireless world where humans no longer ‘plug in’ to communicate. Well, we don’t. We have wifi communications and smart phones receiving signals from everywhere. We walk down the street or through the mall and the stranger beside us appears to be talking to thin air, until we notice the little ear bugs and realize he or she is probably conducting business with someone several time zones away. It isn’t so long ago we were scared of strangers who walked along muttering to themselves. We are probably only a few years away from having these wireless devices implanted into our brains – just as LoveStar describes our next world.

What I found particularly noteworthy was that this book was actually written and copyrighted 2002; eons ago in techno-years. In 2002, not everyone was carrying a cell phone, much less a smart phone. We didn’t have friends and acquaintances instant-video messaging available day and night and personally targeted commercial ads popping up whenever we ‘Google’ some little detail. Magnason understood were we were going.

LoveStar enterprise sets up a monster theme park in northern Iceland. They have already taken over our thought waves. The subsidiary LoveDeath has devised a way to send us into orbit when we die so we return to earth as shooting stars. The iStar section and the Mood Division both have untold researchers scientifically measuring every detail of our thought waves so we can be targeted in the most effective way to acquire the latest fads, listen to the right music, get directed to the clubs and cafés most suitable to our personalities and moods, or to those paying the largest advertising fees. The inLove division is doing mathematical calculations on the world’s population to steer people into scientifically proven happiness. After all, as an inLove ad says: ‘…when it comes to a phenomenon as important as love, people should act rationally and let the professionals take care of things, rather than dabble themselves, otherwise they’re asking for trouble.’

The novel focuses on a couple, Indridi and Sigrid. In spite of the fact that the couple truly believe they are soulmates, Sigrid receives a notice from inLove that she has been scientifically pared to another. They scoff and Sigrid ignores the demand to appear at LoveStar theme park to meet her one true love but LoveStar is not to be denied. LoveStar disrupts their lives in every way; credit is cut off, work schedules are re-arranged, external thought waves disrupt their conversations. Everything is manipulated.

Throughout the Sigrid and Indirdi love drama there are descriptions of the other bits and pieces of the new reality. Science is compromised for commercial gain: genetic experimentation, environmental degradation, consumer manipulation. Love, death, theme parks. Nothing is sacred. The story is an interesting read. Futuristic fantasy which is just too close to many little details we see coming in our future is not entirely fantasy. This is a novel that will make you smile… and then think.

Personal Summary:
An adventurous journey into the ills of consumerism. The protagonists, Hulda and Brimir, who lived happy, full lives before the mysterious man in the spacecraft arrives, find themselves falling for his marketing tricks. After seeing and understanding the harm that they are doing to the planet and others inhabiting the planet, they begin to work in a counter-hegemonic fashion.

Curricular or Programming Connections:
An superbly written story to encourage young readers, and adults, to consider their consumption habits and the implications those habits have on the environment and other people in the world. An excellent example - though fictional - for showing how everything is connected.

If Dreamland: a self help manual to a frightened nation was an equivalent best seller in America, 20 million people would own a copy. Now translated into English, respected Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason offers a unique perspective on the environmental problems that two musical superstars have dedicated a whole concert to addressing - that of the dramatic increase in aluminium smelting destroying pristine Icelandic nature.

The book was a runaway hit in Iceland and has inspired a renaissance of environmental conciousness, specifically against the industrial metal processing plants that are ruining vast chunks of Europe's largest unspoilt wilderness.

Andri Snær er líklegast minn uppáhalds íslenski rithöfundur. Hann hefur einfaldan stíl sem ber þess merki að hann hefur góð tök á tungumálinu án þess að hann sé eitthvað að monta sig. Það sem sker hann frá öllum öðrum höfundum landsins er hugmyndaflugið. Hann er frumlegur og nýþenkjandi. Það er skömm að því hvað hann hefur skrifað lítið, því hann á enn eftir að gefa frá sér pottþétta skáldsögu, eitthvað sem mun koma honum á kortið á heimsvísu. Lovestar var ágæt en hún var ekki pottþétt.

Mig hafði lengi langað að lesa Draumalandið og ég varð alls ekki fyrir vonbrigðum. Þetta er brautryðjendaverk í íslenskum menningarheimi. Þetta er bók sem mun eflaust hafa mikil áhrif á næstu kynslóðir, alla vega þann litla hluta sem les bækur, en það þykir ekki vera svalt lengur. Ég hef aldrei lesið neinn höfund sem hefur lýst tíðarandanum jafn vel og krufið ástandið í landinu á jafn hugmyndaríkan og frumlegan máta. Ég gæti trúað því að Bréf til Láru sé álíka upplifun, þótt hún sé fjær mér í tíma og menningu.

Flott bók fyrir alla, sérstaklega þá sem eru hlynntir stóriðju.½