The Abolition of Species

The Abolition of Species is the magnum opus by Dietmar Dath: A book, somewhere between Douglas Adams, George Orwell, and Philip K. Dick.




– GQ

As a studied physicist and linguist, Dath is familiar with the worlds of structures underlying human existence. Word shards and phonetics [...] give the darkness of the future the necessary apocalyptic touch. This possibility arises from the next dimension of discomfort when reading the novel. This author makes us look relentlessly at the future and what is revealed there is anything but pleasant.




– Rezensionen.ch

In his first novel to be translated into English, Dath uses gender and evolution as underpinning motivations, with some interesting results. This is a dense historical narrative, with an arc of centuries, but it is worth the effort. The long-lived characters provide a slow-growing framework to a story that ultimately leads to a promising, open-ended conclusion.




– Regina Schroeder, Booklist

Essentially a philosophical inquiry into evolution and identity, enmeshed in a plot that partakes of (and sometimes subverts) many story types: political thriller, war novel, quest narrative, tale of speculative future science—even coming-of-age story. Dath’s elaborate plot, populated by a mélange of posthuman life forms, explores an urgent concern: what will happen to the meaning of “human” once technology can enable evolutionary powers heretofore reserved to nature? This novel demands sustained attention; immersion in its philosophical, scientific, aesthetic, and political concerns [...] In Samuel P. Willcocks’s masterful translation, The Abolition of Species is a transgressive revelation, a worthy philosophical successor to [H.G.] Wells’s generative novel [The Time Machine (1895)].




– Michael A. Morrison, World Literature Today

Dietmar Dath's novel not only makes animals mutants, but is itself an arduous but also inspiring mutation machine. If the book glowed in the dark or made funny noises, one would not really be surprised. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Creation History, Space Odyssey and Political Utopia are wired together into a genre-King-Kong, which demands from the reader a lot of perseverance. [...] It is worth having patience, because The Abolition of Species is a thought experiment about an empire that wants to make everything better. This novel wants to promote action, a fictional rocket which can be used to change the world.




– Jutta Person, Literaturen

Here, the 'abolition of species' is realized as the dissolution of boundaries between art, literary genres, languages and hierarchies. [...] A science fiction novel that is, at the same time, a symphony in four movements. [...] Dath is an immensely imaginative and versatile intellectual.




– Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung

An enlightenment [and] a grueling intellectual pleasure -- the first serious case of literary attention given to the epochal change in which technologies of the western world are ready to rewrite the codes of the living. ... Anyone who sometimes glances eagerly into the bright sun, even if the eyes ache, should read this book.




– Iris Radisch, Die Zeit

Political allegory, rich with the sort of grandeur not seen since Russian science fiction of the mid-20th century. [...] The novel of big ideas isn't dead, and German author Dath proves few things are more satisfying in sci-fi with a literary bent than mingling high-brow cultural speculation with low-brow humor. [...] Readers who favor the sensual detail and daring brilliance of Brian Aldiss, Samuel R. Delany, Carol Emshwiller, George R.R. Martin, and Frank Herbert will find much to enjoy in this dazzling translation of a writer little known in North America.




– William J. Grabowski, Library Journal

Dietmar Dath is the most productive and radical writer in Germany.




– Die Welt

Poetic and violent. ... Stop with the reality! Bring on the truth! This novel helps. ... There is so much love in it, love for culture, books, Shakespeare above all, as the only reverential relic from The Age of the Monotony.




– Volker Weidermann, literary director of the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung and author of Summer Before the Dark: Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Ostend 1936

Dath, with the help of Marx and Darwin, sketches how man must liberate ever more senseless technology in order to make it useful again. Dath himself is a socialist. Or even Communist, Marxist in any case. He is the only younger German writer who dares to position himself clearly politically. This is actually an anachronism, today, authors are usually somehow a bit left and sometimes a bit right, but most are nothing. They write about how the world is. Dath is not interested in how the world is. His lyrical prose is about how the world should be, hopefully will not be or [why it] stays the same. [...] Germany's only young author with attitude [...] and very interesting arguments for socialism.




– Der Spiegel Online

Dath's language a beautiful music.




– Frankfurter Rundschau

A staggering work of imagination.

– neelu.net