Daína Chaviano (Author)

We need a name for the kind of science fiction Chaviano is writing here, a vision of worlds within worlds in which the Mirror of the Future is discovered by spirit flight to the past. This shamanic science fiction combines the most sophisticated philosophical or religious speculation with a temporary return in the act of writing to prerational, preliterate modes of consciousness and myth. In Chaviano's novel this composition takes a form analogous to practice of a shaman, a religious practitioner, who brings healing and knowledge to a disharmonious tribal society by temporarily withdrawing from waking consciousness through trance, 'flying' to the land of the spirits and ancestors, and returning with knowledge and healing. (Complete text in PDF)