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The Year 200
“There could scarcely be a more opportune moment for the appearance in English of the late Cuban science fiction master Agustín de Rojas’s epic novel The Year 200 …. De Rojas’s lucid fictional world intersects with many of our contemporary technological obsessions but charges them with remarkably distinct political valences..... A riveting narrative of espionage and geopolitical turmoil.” ―Los Angeles Review of Books
Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash “abnormal” attitudes such as romantic love. Disillusioned civilians renounce the new society and either forego technology to live as “primitives” or enhance their brains with cybernetic implants to become “cybos.” When the Empire returns and takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens in a scenario that terrifyingly recalls Invasion of the Body Snatchers , the world’s fate falls into the hands of two brave women.
Drawing as much from the realms of the adventure novel, spy thriller, and political satire as from hard science fiction, horror, and fantasy, The Year 200 has been proven prophetic in its consideration of cryogenic freezing, artificial intelligence, and state surveillance, while its advanced weapons and robot assassins exist in an all-too-imaginable future. Originally published in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of Cuba's devastating Special Period, Agustín de Rojas’s magnum opus brings contemporary trajectories to their logical extremes and boldly asks, “What does ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ really mean?”
Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash “abnormal” attitudes such as romantic love. Disillusioned civilians renounce the new society and either forego technology to live as “primitives” or enhance their brains with cybernetic implants to become “cybos.” When the Empire returns and takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens in a scenario that terrifyingly recalls Invasion of the Body Snatchers , the world’s fate falls into the hands of two brave women.
Drawing as much from the realms of the adventure novel, spy thriller, and political satire as from hard science fiction, horror, and fantasy, The Year 200 has been proven prophetic in its consideration of cryogenic freezing, artificial intelligence, and state surveillance, while its advanced weapons and robot assassins exist in an all-too-imaginable future. Originally published in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of Cuba's devastating Special Period, Agustín de Rojas’s magnum opus brings contemporary trajectories to their logical extremes and boldly asks, “What does ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ really mean?”
539 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
11 people are currently reading
549 people want to read
About the author
Agustín de Rojas
13 books13 followersAgustín de Rojas (1949-2011) is the patron saint of Cuban science fiction. A professor of the history of theater at the Escuela de Instructores de Arte in Villa Clara, he authored a canonical trilogy of novels consisting of Espiral (Spiral, 1982), for which he was awarded the David Prize; Una leyenda del future (A Legend of the Future, 1985); and El año 200 (The Year 200, 1990), all of which are scheduled for publication in English translation by Restless Books. While he was heavily influenced by Ray Bradbury and translated Isaac Asimov into Spanish, de Rojas aligned himself mostly with the Soviet line of socialist realism defined by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and Ivan Antonovich Yefremov. After the fall of the Soviet Union, de Rojas stopped writing science fiction. He spent his final years persuaded—and persuading others—that Fidel Castro did not exist.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
September 22, 2019
New all time favorite book alert!
So, I obviously don’t know what the reading experience would have been like had I read the prior books in this trilogy, but it was an understandable and exciting read on its own. 200 years after the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, capsules of sleeper agents preserved through time awaken. Their plan to wait out the destabilization they expect time to produce in the new Federation is set in motion, but they don’t know that there are double agents in their midst, and a thrilling struggle for the future of humanity unfolds.
This book is a richly detailed vision of the future, full to bursting with interesting technology and social structures. I could read many more novels exploring the ideas of the cybernetically enhanced “cybos,” and the “groups,” tightly knit groups of people selected for compatibility, which allows them to work together towards new technologies and space travel. The action never lets up, de Rojas constantly throws the reader into new situations and easily establishes the world and huge cast of characters. While I did find the ending somewhat cliche, it was also AMAZING, and I fully delighted in reading this smart, thought-provoking, tense and fast-paced novel.
So, I obviously don’t know what the reading experience would have been like had I read the prior books in this trilogy, but it was an understandable and exciting read on its own. 200 years after the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, capsules of sleeper agents preserved through time awaken. Their plan to wait out the destabilization they expect time to produce in the new Federation is set in motion, but they don’t know that there are double agents in their midst, and a thrilling struggle for the future of humanity unfolds.
This book is a richly detailed vision of the future, full to bursting with interesting technology and social structures. I could read many more novels exploring the ideas of the cybernetically enhanced “cybos,” and the “groups,” tightly knit groups of people selected for compatibility, which allows them to work together towards new technologies and space travel. The action never lets up, de Rojas constantly throws the reader into new situations and easily establishes the world and huge cast of characters. While I did find the ending somewhat cliche, it was also AMAZING, and I fully delighted in reading this smart, thought-provoking, tense and fast-paced novel.
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September 29, 2016Right. So, apparently de Rojas was sort of the grand old man of Cuban science-fiction, and this is regarded as his finest work – though I confess a quick Google search found scant information in English that was not put out by the publisher, so maybe this exaggerates his position, I have no idea. If any Cubans or Spanish speakers generally want to help clear up my ignorance in the comments, that would be much appreciated. In any event, this was more interesting than it was good. It reads a lot like a 60's American sci-fi novel, which if you have been following along you will know is not a swathe of the sub-genre for which I have much affection. On its own merits, as a future thriller about a swathe of (basically) evil Americans having their consciousness re-awoken several hundred years after the total victory of the communist world, it is at best modestly effective. Rojas has a predilection for large-scale info dumps, some of which never seem to become directly relevant, and there's a lot of deus ex machina style reveals, with sudden plot shifts that fall flat because they've never been signaled earlier in the narrative. As a work of, if you will, intellectual sci-fi, it is didactic and not altogether clever, that is to say I saw little useful echo of our own world in the future society Rojas has created. The characters themselves, as inevitably in these sorts of books, are utterly one dimensional, impossible to sympathize with. There are a few interesting bits here and there, but I confess to coming away disappointed. Avoid.
June 15, 2017
My first Cuban sci-fi. I love how fresh it reads. It's a good translation, lots of interesting characters, lots of twists, lots of interesting psychological and philosophical issues raised. It reminds me of some of the better Stanislaw Lem I've read. Peace on Earth. Fiasco. That kind of thing (in style and mood, not in plot).
Bonus: when I was 2/3 of the way through this book I happened on his only other work translated into English on the $2 shelf at Half-Price Books.
Bonus: when I was 2/3 of the way through this book I happened on his only other work translated into English on the $2 shelf at Half-Price Books.
February 4, 2019
This is very solid science fiction, with some very memorable stylistic twists and one or two interesting plot twists that I won't spoil here. Overall it's perhaps a slight bit plodding; that's the only reason I wouldn't give it five stars. (It's also a touch on the moralistic side, as you'd expect of literature produced under a totalizing regime; I didn't find it terribly heavy-handed but others might.)
May 13, 2018
200 years after the rise of a communist utopia, the world has grown soft and unprotected. In this vulnerable world a sleeper cell from the evil capitalist Empire reactivates and attempts to seize control through advanced technology. This is the premise of The Year 200, and it’s a premise made more interesting by Cuban author Agustín de Rojas being a genuine proponent of communism. Here is the other side of the coin of the United States’ Cold War sci-fi pulp.
And The Year 200 is indeed pulp, a sci-fi tale driven by its premise, with many flat characters (the resurrected villains from the Empire are uniformly pure evil), exposition dumps, “futuristic” concepts dropped in without actually exploring those concepts (all marriages are temporary, usually only lasting a couple of years, but everyone is still monogamous and function as something close to nuclear families). Furthermore the abilities of certain characters seem to increase or decrease as Rojas requires, and Rojas even throws in a chief villain in the 11th hour who has secretly been manipulating everything from behind the scenes.
But there is nothing wrong with pulp, and this is more intriguing pulp than most. As mentioned above, it’s fascinating to read a book written by a true believer in communism and to see his vision of a post-scarcity, environmentally conscious world almost entirely free of conflict —it’s not an absolutely perfect society, Rojas seems to recognize the impossibility of that, but it’s close. When fully revealed, the setting struck me as similar to that of Brave New World, but viewed through the lens of a utopia instead of a dystopia. Rojas also makes The Year 200 interesting structurally, as it presents interludes in the form of test questions that take the implicit themes and questions of the book and makes them explicit. Rojas also shifts the focus of the story several times, the most intriguing switch being the first shift . None of these features significantly improve The Year 200, but they added additional novelty and flavor in a way I appreciated.
Though it is the third book in a trilogy, The Year 200 works as a standalone work, as jumping in without any background puts you in the same shoes as many of the story’s characters, and the contours of this world are all set forth eventually through exposition. Plus, the first book in the trilogy doesn’t appear to be available in English even if you wanted to read it. In terms of edition, the version put out by Restless Books unfortunately has some noticeable errors (typos and grammar errors, as well as incorrect words being used, the most confusing error probably being the character Sidney Darrow’s name being misspelled as Barrow the very first time he’s mentioned) but it’s the only game in town.
The Year 200 is a tale from the other side of the looking glass, where communism is viable and was victorious over capitalism. This makes the sci-fi thriller story it tells more interesting than it would have been otherwise, though not enough to truly elevate it in my eyes. Purely for the sake of variety, I’d recommend The Year 200 over any random American sci-fi thriller written in the 80s, and even putting variety aside it’s a fun read that goes by quickly, but at the end of the day it’s a pretty good piece of sci-fi pulp and nothing more.
And The Year 200 is indeed pulp, a sci-fi tale driven by its premise, with many flat characters (the resurrected villains from the Empire are uniformly pure evil), exposition dumps, “futuristic” concepts dropped in without actually exploring those concepts (all marriages are temporary, usually only lasting a couple of years, but everyone is still monogamous and function as something close to nuclear families). Furthermore the abilities of certain characters seem to increase or decrease as Rojas requires, and Rojas even throws in a chief villain in the 11th hour who has secretly been manipulating everything from behind the scenes.
But there is nothing wrong with pulp, and this is more intriguing pulp than most. As mentioned above, it’s fascinating to read a book written by a true believer in communism and to see his vision of a post-scarcity, environmentally conscious world almost entirely free of conflict —it’s not an absolutely perfect society, Rojas seems to recognize the impossibility of that, but it’s close. When fully revealed, the setting struck me as similar to that of Brave New World, but viewed through the lens of a utopia instead of a dystopia. Rojas also makes The Year 200 interesting structurally, as it presents interludes in the form of test questions that take the implicit themes and questions of the book and makes them explicit. Rojas also shifts the focus of the story several times, the most intriguing switch being the first shift . None of these features significantly improve The Year 200, but they added additional novelty and flavor in a way I appreciated.
Though it is the third book in a trilogy, The Year 200 works as a standalone work, as jumping in without any background puts you in the same shoes as many of the story’s characters, and the contours of this world are all set forth eventually through exposition. Plus, the first book in the trilogy doesn’t appear to be available in English even if you wanted to read it. In terms of edition, the version put out by Restless Books unfortunately has some noticeable errors (typos and grammar errors, as well as incorrect words being used, the most confusing error probably being the character Sidney Darrow’s name being misspelled as Barrow the very first time he’s mentioned) but it’s the only game in town.
The Year 200 is a tale from the other side of the looking glass, where communism is viable and was victorious over capitalism. This makes the sci-fi thriller story it tells more interesting than it would have been otherwise, though not enough to truly elevate it in my eyes. Purely for the sake of variety, I’d recommend The Year 200 over any random American sci-fi thriller written in the 80s, and even putting variety aside it’s a fun read that goes by quickly, but at the end of the day it’s a pretty good piece of sci-fi pulp and nothing more.
April 17, 2019
From a Cuban sci-fi author, this is one of those novels (first published in 1990) where things kind of happen and those things kind of connect but for some reason I'm just left wondering how we got from point A to point B by way of point Q. Call it the literary equivalent of dubstep where the beat just completely drops and goes in a different direction from the previous part of the work. Towards the end a character is confused about something that absolutely doesn't make sense, and in order to possibly get answers to other questions, she tells herself to move on and not worry about it. This seems to be what Rojas wants: for there to be so many things that don't make sense that the reader just decides to role with it and not ask questions (somewhat akin to Marxist theories on how a Marxist utopia would actually arise out of central planning and no individual property rights).
It started off with promise and then really just muddled through until the final showdown in which and then went off the rails with the final reveal that . The high tech invasion of the body snatchers aspect was interesting as was the mind conditioning (though this had aspects of Ted Chiang's short story "Understand", which I didn't like). A brief mention of family life (where a woman is only supposed to be in a relationship with a man for a couple of years (max), with one relationship being considered pathological because the man and woman had been together for 10 years) went unexplored. And while the old Empire is an obvious stand in for capitalist US and the utopia occurs due to Marxism, there really isn't that much ideological introspection critiquing or praising either side (though it is noted that people had to be changed/conditioned to make the new utopia work). The world is just some post scarcity world that has technology that does whatever the characters/the author want.
It started off with promise and then really just muddled through until the final showdown in which and then went off the rails with the final reveal that . The high tech invasion of the body snatchers aspect was interesting as was the mind conditioning (though this had aspects of Ted Chiang's short story "Understand", which I didn't like). A brief mention of family life (where a woman is only supposed to be in a relationship with a man for a couple of years (max), with one relationship being considered pathological because the man and woman had been together for 10 years) went unexplored. And while the old Empire is an obvious stand in for capitalist US and the utopia occurs due to Marxism, there really isn't that much ideological introspection critiquing or praising either side (though it is noted that people had to be changed/conditioned to make the new utopia work). The world is just some post scarcity world that has technology that does whatever the characters/the author want.
June 15, 2017
I started this book feeling disappointed and alienated from the subject matter; I enjoy a certain level of authorial restraint when introducing a Sci Fi world, but I felt totally disconnected and annoyed by the fast turnover of characters in the introductory chapters.
This was explained when, about 200 pages in, I realised this was the final book in a trilogy.
Oops.
I kept reading, and my tenacity was rewarded. De Rojas has an expansive imagination and a keen eye on the essential impulses of humanity. The way he builds the two opposing sides (almost too clearly marked as 'goodies' and 'baddies') into a suspense-filled finale is skillful, but not perfect. The interruptions of different narrative styles for flashbacks and the unique voices of characters is one of my favourite elements of the Year 200, and these passages increase in frequency as much as their length decreases when the denouement approaches which builds tension and pace.
My absolute favourite part of this novel though has to be the test. It is divided into seven parts, each strategically located at specific plot points. They are essentially a way for the author to further encourage the reader to contemplate specific themes, and include questions that would not be out of place in an university examination; 'Consider quote X and how it relates to character Y'. But De Rojas is not content to leave us to contemplate concepts in abstract and pushes even further, specifically asking us to consider our own choices in our lives. He makes it real, and reinforces what Sci Fi typically aims to achieve: that this imaginary world might be closer and more tangible than we think.
TL;DR - It's awesome, and now I need to go read the first two.
This was explained when, about 200 pages in, I realised this was the final book in a trilogy.
Oops.
I kept reading, and my tenacity was rewarded. De Rojas has an expansive imagination and a keen eye on the essential impulses of humanity. The way he builds the two opposing sides (almost too clearly marked as 'goodies' and 'baddies') into a suspense-filled finale is skillful, but not perfect. The interruptions of different narrative styles for flashbacks and the unique voices of characters is one of my favourite elements of the Year 200, and these passages increase in frequency as much as their length decreases when the denouement approaches which builds tension and pace.
My absolute favourite part of this novel though has to be the test. It is divided into seven parts, each strategically located at specific plot points. They are essentially a way for the author to further encourage the reader to contemplate specific themes, and include questions that would not be out of place in an university examination; 'Consider quote X and how it relates to character Y'. But De Rojas is not content to leave us to contemplate concepts in abstract and pushes even further, specifically asking us to consider our own choices in our lives. He makes it real, and reinforces what Sci Fi typically aims to achieve: that this imaginary world might be closer and more tangible than we think.
TL;DR - It's awesome, and now I need to go read the first two.
February 9, 2019
The Year 200 was recommended and given me to me by a friend. While the premise sounded interesting and I saw a lot of potential, the execution was not.
It started off well enough. I liked the Invasion of the Body Snatchers feel. However, I did not like the constant point of view shifting in the chapters with no section breaks. I had a hard time telling who was talking. That eventually stopped, but only because we also stopped spending time with the bad guys. And that's when the middle sagged.
The dialogue throughout was very cliched whether it was with the bad guys or the good guys. Yet for some reason, the good guys felt worse. They were far more annoying. It was like reading bad melodrama. And they didn't feel active whereas the bad guys did because they were trying to take over the world. I wish more time was spent with them.
Speaking of the world, I never got a grasp of it. It felt as if everyone was talking an empty void. It had nothing to do with the fact that this was the future with technology I couldn't understand. It was because little to no effort dealt with the settings.
Even though it was a slog to read, I always felt that the ideas were sound and that everything from the characters, dialogue, plot, setting, etc. could have been better. And that's really the most disappointing thing of all.
It started off well enough. I liked the Invasion of the Body Snatchers feel. However, I did not like the constant point of view shifting in the chapters with no section breaks. I had a hard time telling who was talking. That eventually stopped, but only because we also stopped spending time with the bad guys. And that's when the middle sagged.
The dialogue throughout was very cliched whether it was with the bad guys or the good guys. Yet for some reason, the good guys felt worse. They were far more annoying. It was like reading bad melodrama. And they didn't feel active whereas the bad guys did because they were trying to take over the world. I wish more time was spent with them.
Speaking of the world, I never got a grasp of it. It felt as if everyone was talking an empty void. It had nothing to do with the fact that this was the future with technology I couldn't understand. It was because little to no effort dealt with the settings.
Even though it was a slog to read, I always felt that the ideas were sound and that everything from the characters, dialogue, plot, setting, etc. could have been better. And that's really the most disappointing thing of all.
April 5, 2020
Kind of an exhausting mess of a book. The basic storyline of the consciousnesses of a cabal of departed evil capitalists awakening in a communist future, resurrecting themselves through body-snatching, and trying to retake the world makes sense as a metaphor for early 90s fears of the U.S. retaking Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union and is admittedly a cool premise. But that could have been unpacked in half the length of this overstuffed novel, with so many long expository worldbuilding digressions and multi-named characters that despite familiar names are somehow more difficult to keep track of than in a big fat Russian novel. I've become a fan of Cuban sci-fi, but to think that this is the genre's most revered text makes me wonder if the other work I've read is less representative. All that said, there are tropes here that I usually like, and which in the hands of a creative auteur could be distilled into an awesome film or prestige TV series a la Battlestar Galactica's 21st century reboot.
October 18, 2019
Interesting, and a rather exotic book. I have never read Cuban sci-fi before.
In many ways feels a bit like hard-core sci-fi. Many technical details, and lot of ingenuity from the author. It feels some how like the Cuban version of Altered Carbon.
Now, the bad part. Feels a bit rather esoteric and too much focused on techno-babble instead of having a great story. Interesting nevertheless.
In many ways feels a bit like hard-core sci-fi. Many technical details, and lot of ingenuity from the author. It feels some how like the Cuban version of Altered Carbon.
Now, the bad part. Feels a bit rather esoteric and too much focused on techno-babble instead of having a great story. Interesting nevertheless.
July 26, 2024
Incredible pacing. There was a good chunk of the beginning just introducing you to two minor villains. For a while, I almost thought there were no protagonists… and honestly, there sort of wasn’t.
Sci-fi and political thriller. The lore and the technology was a lot to follow from time to time, but I believe this was technically the third book of a trilogy so maybe that’s why. I also enjoyed the breaking of the fourth wall.
I did very much enjoy it.
Sci-fi and political thriller. The lore and the technology was a lot to follow from time to time, but I believe this was technically the third book of a trilogy so maybe that’s why. I also enjoyed the breaking of the fourth wall.
I did very much enjoy it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 9, 2018
I really enjoyed this science fiction tale of mind control and body snatchers. There was the engaging plot that kept you guessing. Plus, it was an intriguing view on the future. It raised interesting ideas about love and the future of humanity. Plus, I loved the quizzes that appeared every so often.
June 26, 2024
I really wanted to like this. I kept getting sucked in and enjoying it for 20 pages or so, followed by 30 pages of being completely lost as to what was going on, who the new characters were, etc. I kept forcing myself to keep going for those savory bites but eventually, the schlog became too much and I had to step away from this about 3/4 of the way through.
December 19, 2025
Got real slow in the middle and had to put it down. I just don’t know enough about Cuban politics to follow along with the sociopolitical aspects, but the sci-fi visuals were captivating and the tests really held me in until I finished.
February 28, 2018
Phenomenal character development. I read this before the others in the series, and I was able to follow the story.
October 18, 2019
This book, in a word, is wavy. I wish I had read it in Spanish first, but I didn’t even notice that it was a translation until too late.
did-not-finish
April 17, 2022DNF at 35%
January 11, 2025
Great story, really kept me guessing, but the quizzes were weird and there was definitely a political slant to the author's writing.
November 27, 2016
This test will continue later. You may change your answers at any moment.
—p.90 et al.
Cuba is the island, to be sure, but we in the United States are without a doubt the more insular ones. Before I read The Year 200, I had no idea that Cuba even had a premier science fiction author, much less what his name was, or how very good he had been. Born in 1949, Agustín de Rojas grew up, as I did, during the 20th Century—when "the Year 2000" was a futuristic cliché, a menacing mental barrier beyond which it was difficult to think with any clarity. As far as we knew, on the other side of that wall lay nothing but apocalypse. Which is one reason why The Year 200 is such a brilliant title: it resets the calendar for us, evoking that feeling of an onrushing future only to subvert it instantly, while at the same time being simply descriptive, within the context of the novel itself.
Apparently The Year 200 is the third book in a trilogy (again, who knew?), but it can easily be read as a standalone work. The setup is simple, though matters quickly get complicated. Two centuries after the fall of a rapacious, capitalistic Empire, the Earth is at peace—a planetwide collectivist utopia where the environment is under control, artists can express themselves freely, and everyone has a role in a society that respects their individuality without allowing self-interest to dominate. But the old Empire is not yet truly dead—it left behind the Hydra Project, buried repositories where its leaders' minds were preserved in a matrix that needs only an unsuspecting innocent to unleash again upon a world that has become unaccustomed to distrust...
"{...}the surest sign of an empty soul is its desperate need to fill itself{...}"
—p.343
What follows from the Hydra Project's outbreak is an extremely fast-moving tale, full of stunning reversals and mental gymnastics. Although de Rojas was known for his translations of Isaac Asimov, and admired both Ray Bradbury and the Soviet-era writing team of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, his own work seems to me more akin to that of A.E. van Vogt—at least in The Year 200, where what we have is a sprawling tale of super-science, with advanced mental powers that crop up frequently on both sides of an epic struggle for nothing less than the future of humanity.
The novel also seems... a little antiquated—and not just because it's some 30 years old at this point (de Rojas completed it in 1987). The women in the book, even when they are major characters, seem a little too pliable to be realistic. And, to some extent, The Year 200 seems to be fighting battles that have already been decided. The notion that collectivism and individualism might be two sides of the same coin—that the collective good deserves some consideration, that untrammeled individualism might lead to monstrous behavior—seems almost quaint, from a 21st-century perspective.
The capsule biography of Agustín de Rojas at the website of his English-language publishers, Restless Books, is a good place to start, if you want to find out more about this writer. According to that bio, de Rojas "spent his final years persuaded—and persuading others—that Fidel Castro did not exist."
Which, I suppose, makes it unintentionally ironic that I finished reading this book just one day before Fidel Castro officially passed away.
This test will continue later. You may change your answers at any point.
—p.406 et al.
July 18, 2020
Loved it throughout apart from the ending - I thought the reveal of Browne as the true villain was jarring and didn't really add anything.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2017
“There could scarcely be a more opportune moment for the appearance in English of the late Cuban science fiction master Agustín de Rojas’s epic novel The Year 200…. De Rojas’s lucid fictional world intersects with many of our contemporary technological obsessions but charges them with remarkably distinct political valences. The Year 200 is a riveting narrative of espionage and geopolitical turmoil set 200 years after the communist Confederation has defeated the capitalist Empire…. De Rojas was known as a practitioner of hard SF, and the opening chapters weave meticulous technical description with briskly paced action; co-translators Nick Caistor and Hebe Powell nicely preserve the efficiency and precision of the author’s prose…. Just as refreshing is the way that The Year 200 allows us to imagine and think along with different contradictions than the ones that we currently face…. In this moment of openness between the United States and Cuba, a place often misleadingly imagined as a time warp, there is great potential for fruitful encounters of the imagination and The Year 200 provides just such an encounter. Restless Books, and Caistor and Powell, should be commended for carrying over de Rojas’s epic into English. Translating a novel of this length and complexity, littered with a technical language that is partly invented and partly drawn from the antiquated jargon of cybernetics, is no mean feat, and they pull it off with aplomb. Thanks to these efforts, English-language readers are gaining access to the riches of Cuban science fiction, a body of literature that surely has more revelations in store for us.”
—Geoff Shullenberger, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Agustín de Rojas’ science fiction masterpiece…. Agustín de Rojas (1949-2011) is one of the most important figures in Cuban science fiction, which is the only science fiction branch in Latin America influenced by Soviet authors such as Ivan Efremov, and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. De Rojas was also heavily inspired by other canonical science fiction writers such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. The Year 200 invites its readers to take a leap of faith and believe that a better world is possible…. For the first time, Nick Caistor & Hebe Powell, translators of The Year 200, have brought this masterpiece closer to the English-speaking public (alongside Spiral and A Legend of the Future). They have created an opportunity to read and analyse the acclaimed author’s literary achievement…. The Year 200 is one of the most interesting readings of this year because, ultimately, it challenges the readers’ understanding of the world and inspires optimism in a world that may seem full of darkness.
—Selina Aragon, Asymptote
“Remarkable... indispensable when it comes to understanding the connections between Miami and Cuba. Although The Year 200 is not about Cuba, its author, De Rojas, was Cuban. Moreover, he is known as the ‘patron saint of Cuban science fiction’…. Think A Wrinkle in Time….It’s rare for science fiction to merge scientific and emotional accuracy. De Rojas was influenced by Bradbury and Asimov, but I find some of the first-person voicing to be sort of like Dostoevsky in Notes From the Underground…. Finally, there is a lightness to the prose in The Year 200. It’s in the tone and syntax. There are so many parentheticals and ellipses that the paragraphs seem like they might fall apart. But they don’t. They remain small, fluid, and steady throughout the novel’s deceptively fast 640 pages.”
—Leo Neufeld, Miami New Times
—Geoff Shullenberger, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Agustín de Rojas’ science fiction masterpiece…. Agustín de Rojas (1949-2011) is one of the most important figures in Cuban science fiction, which is the only science fiction branch in Latin America influenced by Soviet authors such as Ivan Efremov, and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. De Rojas was also heavily inspired by other canonical science fiction writers such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. The Year 200 invites its readers to take a leap of faith and believe that a better world is possible…. For the first time, Nick Caistor & Hebe Powell, translators of The Year 200, have brought this masterpiece closer to the English-speaking public (alongside Spiral and A Legend of the Future). They have created an opportunity to read and analyse the acclaimed author’s literary achievement…. The Year 200 is one of the most interesting readings of this year because, ultimately, it challenges the readers’ understanding of the world and inspires optimism in a world that may seem full of darkness.
—Selina Aragon, Asymptote
“Remarkable... indispensable when it comes to understanding the connections between Miami and Cuba. Although The Year 200 is not about Cuba, its author, De Rojas, was Cuban. Moreover, he is known as the ‘patron saint of Cuban science fiction’…. Think A Wrinkle in Time….It’s rare for science fiction to merge scientific and emotional accuracy. De Rojas was influenced by Bradbury and Asimov, but I find some of the first-person voicing to be sort of like Dostoevsky in Notes From the Underground…. Finally, there is a lightness to the prose in The Year 200. It’s in the tone and syntax. There are so many parentheticals and ellipses that the paragraphs seem like they might fall apart. But they don’t. They remain small, fluid, and steady throughout the novel’s deceptively fast 640 pages.”
—Leo Neufeld, Miami New Times
April 25, 2017
Original, disturbing in places but very fragmented. Enjoyed it but don't know if I would read it again.
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