ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: MOUNTAINS, SEAS AND GIANTS (1924)

MOUNTAINS, SEAS AND GIANTS aka BERGE MEERE UND GIGANTEN (1924) – Written by Alfred Döblin, later famous for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. A 2021 translation of the book uses the title Mountains Oceans Giants: A Novel of the 27th Century.

I wanted to make sure I made my blog post about this work during its Centennial year and I’m squeezing it in with a little time to spare. Berge Meere und Giganten is quite a piece of work, ranging as it does from standard Future History themes to dystopian settings and ultimately an Earth ravaged by wild and grotesque abominations of nature unleashed by reckless experimentation and terraforming.

The novel is almost Dune-like in its environmental concerns and its epic scope, in this case from shortly after World War One to the 2600s AD. Given Döblin’s experimental use of language I would have loved to read a review by James Joyce if he had ever read this novel.   

Berge Meere und Giganten is broken down into nine main sections:

I. THE WESTERN CONTINENTS – Following World War One, technology advances exponentially, leading to humanity growing complacent regarding their freedoms. Various authoritarian technocracies/ corporatist states come to govern the world in the wake of a crisis of overpopulation.

A Big Tech Cold War of sorts exists between some of the most dominant nations of the future – what we know as Great Britain and the United States against a Japan-China-India alliance. Governments in the Western World are run by parliamentary bodies which push the appearance of popular rule but are really just vehicles for the elite.     

Scientific progress has made the people comfortable enough that the mere facade of representative democracy barely troubles them. The population in the west sinks dramatically and waves of immigration from Africa result.

The “parliaments” of the western world act to retain power by limiting the general public’s access to technology while they themselves live in the comfort it provides.   

II. THE URAL WAR – After a few centuries the people begin to push back against the ruling class and a nearly luddite reaction against technology breaks out. In the early 2400s the overclasses calm the growing rebelliousness by once again letting all levels of society share in the fruits of scientific advancement. 

Growing dependence on technology helps the parliamentarian governments keep an increasingly pampered populace in check. Synthetic food development eliminates the need for agriculture, the last remaining labor-intensive pursuit.

This virtual “post-want” society eventually results in so much resentment to work that even the synthetic food manufacturers lack enough personnel to staff their facilities. The powerful nations provoke tensions with each other and ultimately a calamitous conflict called the Ural War breaks out between Europe and Asia.

By this point in the future, humanity possesses advanced weaponry beyond anything we can imagine today. Russia is destroyed by fire and floods unleashed by the high-tech weapons. The post-war world sees once-large nations splinter into viciously competitive city-states.

Far Eastern nations invade what we know as the United States and occupy the western half of the continent.

III. MARDUK – Amid a period of renewed hostility toward the advanced technology which so scarred the world, part of what we know as Germany comes to dominate Europe. A figure called the Consul of Berlin rules the resulting dictatorship.

Food synthesizing technology and advanced weapons are destroyed, and the Consul of Berlin reinstates agriculture and other practices of the past. Bizarre “roaring” monuments are erected to remind the subservient populace about the horrors of the Ural War.

Eventually a man named Marduk, the second figure to hold the title Consul of Berlin, cements the power of the oppressive regime. 

IV. THE DECEIVERS – Marduk overplays his hand and the city-state of London becomes the first significant check on his power, aided by a guerilla uprising in Marduk’s own territory. The dictator starts a war of conquest against his neighbors in order to acquire more and more land for agriculture.

More wars break out, with the powerful resorting to the formerly disfavored high-tech weaponry powered by geo-thermal and other natural energy sources. Brutal battles result and inhumane tortures are inflicted upon prisoners of war and suffering conquered nations.

An all-out race war breaks out with a man named Zimbo from the Congo emerging as Marduk’s greatest rival. In the end Zimbo leads his people to victory and names himself the new Consul of Berlin when Marduk is killed. 

V. THE DRAINING OF THE CITIES – Meanwhile, in the occupied western portion of the United States, the oppressed White and Native Americans have made common cause in a culture of resistance to the occupying Asian powers.

These resistance groups lead the newest wave of luddite hostility to the technology which always seems to lead to dictatorships. The Americans begin to live in communion with nature while continuing their guerilla war against the Far East oppressors. 

The resistance groups launch raids to destroy high-tech facilities of the occupiers and eventually drive the invaders off the continent and back to Asia. The back-to-nature, anti-city, science minimalism approach in America incorporates equal rights for women and sexual openness.

The new American culture is ironically similar to how some Native American tribes of the past lived, but centered around pacifism and coexistence with nature.

The new American philosophy spreads to other parts of the world, endangering the power of those running Europe’s city-states. London, back under faux-parliamentary rule, plans to launch a war of colonization against Greenland, using the latest in technology that harnesses geo-thermal forces.

VI. ICELAND – The novel becomes far more focused on the “science” part of its fiction from this section onward. London’s forces seize Iceland in order to recklessly exploit its volcanos by ripping them open and storing the unleashed geo-thermal energy in tourmaline structures/ pods for use in terraforming Greenland.

The people of Iceland fight back against this but are mercilessly slaughtered in turn. The ecological devastation left by London’s ruthless harnessing of volcanic energy transforms Iceland into an uninhabitable wasteland.   

VII. MELTING GREENLAND’S ICE SHEET – London’s ships head for Greenland with their tourmaline power pods. The author Döblin treated the toxic effects of these pods like later science fiction authors would treat atomic radiation. The pods begin mutating sea and plant life that comes into contact with them.

By the time the fleet of ships reaches Greenland the vessels are overrun by virtual forests of transformed plant and animal life. Even the crew members are behaving erratically due to their exposure to what we would today call radiation. 

Personnel from London cut through the plant-animal hybrids to reach the tourmaline pods, then, despite the bizarre results unleashed by those pods during the brief trip from Iceland to Greenland, use the energy from those pods to melt Greenland’s ice sheet. 

Greenland ruptures into two separate land masses from the forced thawing. The “radiation” from the pods mutates all the plants, animals and now minerals of Greenland. The remains of prehistoric creatures that were frozen for millions of years also mutate, joining with the other altered life forms to become enormous colony creatures which drive off London’s forces.

VIII. THE GIANTS – The gigantic new life-forms spread to Europe. Any contact with the monsters results in the painful, hideous mutation of the contactees. Think of a combination of The Color out of Space and the story from Annihilation (2018).     

The human race is being driven underground. Some of the ruling class have their scientists unleash biological weapons on the spreading colony creatures. In some cases it works, forming tremendous masses of mixed organic matter which serve as walls to slow down the mutated creatures.

Some of the scientists, exposed to their own biological warfare agents, mutate into bizarre kaiju-type creatures and, losing their minds, rampage throughout Europe.

IX. VENASKA – In southern France, which is partly untouched by the spread of the mutations thanks to the rough “walls” of organic matter, a woman named Venaska becomes worshipped like a nature/ beauty goddess by the human survivors.

With the city-states and their despots falling to the creatures spawned by science run amok, Venaska’s people live in harmony with nature. To me this final section of the novel is a bit like the final part of H.G. Wells’ Food of the Gods and its highly altered “children.”

Here it’s far more metaphysical, with Venaska somehow communicating with the mutated biomasses to the north, providing what comfort she can to one of those colony creatures as its human and animal minds all meld into one.

Over time, the remains of the colony creatures are reincorporated into the environment in the ultimate “one with nature” scenario. Human refugees from the areas ravaged by the monstrous beings have become cannibals and invade Venaska’s territory.  

The cannibals are subdued and civilized, becoming absorbed into the society of southern France. Eventually, the surviving human beings spread their culture across the world, living with much greater respect for nature than humanity did in the past. One area is named Venaska in honor of the late female figure.

Berge Meere und Giganten is understandably polarizing. Many readers strongly dislike the quasi-mysticism of the closing section. Others praise it, but Venaska’s exact nature is challenging even for fans of the novel.

I’m still mixed on it, myself, but I would certainly recommend it to science fiction fans as a neglected, ahead of its time work. There’s nothing else that is quite like it.   

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