The Eyes of Darkness.

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"When you see that it's all over, when you feel that everything oppresses, you have to listen carefully to Julio Cortázar, his words will make a restorative balm in your wounded heart. Cortázar defined himself as an amateur writer, a solitary by vocation, wisky, sex and tobacco smoke accompanied him to the end, but before all things, Cortázar is a symbol of intellectual honesty, freedom and political coherence"

The Omens.

When in early January, some world leaders avoided physical contact, they were from the pandemic, the first signs, the beginning, but when in February by all the newscasts on the planet were displayed the apocalyptic images of Wuhan, for a moment I felt what was to come, and I remembered that something very similar had read among the fictional stories of my childhood. I searched and found the novel in a corner of the attic, under the dust, pages smelling of mold , protected by the cardboard cover, under the author's name, the title, "The Eyes of Darkness", and in a close-up, perfectly reflected, the terrified skull drawn by Luis Barquero.

334 pages of evasion, but also of great suffering, in which Tina, a beautiful woman, a triumphant woman, but who by a series of negative signs immerses herself in a nightmare of death, of occultism and of persecution, and as a background, a lethal pandemic, designed in a laboratory and called by the author, Wuhan-400, and which threatens to destroy humanity as a whole.

In fiction and reality, after suffering, bliss is reborn, normality and calm returns, and Dean R. Koontz's novels always end with a light of hope. History also confirms to us that after a pandemic life goes on, those who survive, apart from being humble, must remember the ancestors, the suffering, the price to pay, and the thousands of victims who carry pandemics.

Dean R. Koontz, apart from a visionary, is also a great poet, and between title and title of Fiction, publishes, some poetic anthology, I have searched the Web, and what best suits his style is; "The Mask.

Evil is a faceless stranger,
living in a distant neighborhood.
Evil has a wholesome, hometown face,
with merry eyes and an open smile.
Evil walks among us, wearing a mask
which looks like all our faces.

Dean Koontz.

In the Spanish version of 1991, Wuhan - 400 was replaced by Gorki – 400. Koontz's story was perfect for a film adaptation. Contagio was directed by Steven Soderbergh and starred Matt Damon, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Gwyneth Paltrow, who claims to live lost between the real world and fiction. The action of the feature film takes place at the center of a global pandemic that leaps from animals to humans and spreads arbitrarily across all continents of the planet.

When reality
it seems like a dream,
and a banality
is waking up.

When fatality
comes out to meet,
and a frugality
is walking up.

Fictions.

Science fiction has always been the simple little sister of literature, but within the genre, authentic prophets have published, and today the coronavirus has immersed us all, in a novel by Koontz, Huxley, Orwell, Asimov or Bradbury.

“Is there some meaning to this life? What purpose lies behind the strife? Whence do we come, where are we bound? These cold questions echo and resound through each day, each lonely night. We look forward to finding a splendid light that gives us a revelatory ray of the meaning of eternal sleep. Courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy lift us above the simple beasts and define humanity.

Strangers.

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