In the short story “La máquina de la felicidad” ("The Happiness Machine") (1938: 231-243), the Venezuelan writer Jesús Enrique Lossada (1892-1948) explores the topic of the inventor fascinated with the creations of technological devices, a motif already present in 19th-century science fiction and further developed in Latin American narrative avant-garde. The first pages focus on three key aspects: 1) the sources of knowledge of the main character, Smerstrom, rooted in the tradition of “mystery sciences”; 2) his connections to figures of this tradition: Apollonius of Triana, Franz Mesmer, Alessandro di Cagliostro, Paracelsus, Emanuel Swedenborg, etc.; and 3) his residence in a ruined castle located in a remote place. The composition of his knowledge, and the meaning of these in Smerstrom’s life, are synthesized in the various names used by the narrator to describe this inventor: “artist,” “dreamer,” “magician,” “sorcerer,” and “scientist.” These names guide the reader towards the formation of a personal heterodox library, where “modern science” and “esoteric science” share the same place. Once these modes of knowledge and their relevance are revealed, the narrator identifies the humanist project of the wise man, which gives the story its title: to build a machine of happiness that will “remedy social afflictions,” turn the earth into a “biblical Eden,” spread “peace, progress and happiness over the nations,” regenerate “the species,” and eradicate kings and bloodthirsty despots.

What instruments are involved in the design of this machine, conceived for moral and political purposes? It is composed of two devices: the first, a “producer of electric force;” the second, responsible for transforming this energy “into a fluidic atmosphere susceptible of being embodied by thought.” It is further complemented by “a crystal ball,” and “a sort of chimney,” “from which a cloud of white smoke rose when the mechanism was working.”

Now, in the thinking of the wise man in Lossada’s story, the plan to regenerate the “human species” and “remedy” social maladies coincides with a hedonistic stance linked to the pleasure of annihilating evil and the imperfect. In this way, the story returns the idea of the scientific artist—obsessed with the administration and mechanical organization of happiness—to the unchecked desires of an ego where subjectivity and perversity coincide. Smerstrom activates his machine to terminate the cruel and ambitious monsters of the contemporary world, along with the irrational and inhuman doctrines, drawing arguments from eugenics. Biology provides the theoretical foundation for eradicating the disease of unhappiness and imposing tranquility and well-being. The result: a “luxuriant and vigorous” humanity. The next step in the wise artist’s plan is to materialize the socialist utopia of an egalitarian world, establish “economic equality,” which, combined with the eugenic thesis, would create a society with “free, healthy, rich and strong beings.”

Up to this point, the narration seems to follow the development of yet another story of social utopias. But what is the fate of this science fiction fable? Let us not forget something: at the origin of the design of this enlightened (and eugenic) machine are the desires of the inventor. The machine becomes, then, a device that works on and with desires, integrating them as part of its functioning. The activation of the machine reveals a delicate but key aspect of the story’s language: “It was enough for the sorcerer to make his wish come true, to turn the handle crank.” Desire, machinery, and spiritualism converge in this ethical-political discourse on hope and happiness.

And so, we come to the final scene: What would be the next stage in achieving “perfect happiness”? Humanity finally lives in a state of bliss, without disease, suffering and poverty. Everything has been suppressed. An empty, uneventful temporality rests. However, one day, the wise man peers into the “crystal ball” and observes “a procession of bored faces.” And then, says the narrator, Smerstrom “had a pout of displeasure.” He decides to act, activates his desiring machine, eliminates “ennui,” freeing humanity from the burden of historicity, from the fatiguing perception of time. Finally, he takes a last look at the “ball,” and “with the pallor and coldness of death” he observes that the “world was uninhabited.”

With this apocalyptic resolution, Lossada’s narration goes beyond those fictions in which the hope for a better life is represented as a struggle against technical rationality, offering instead a revision of the assumptions implicit in the debate on rationality and catastrophe. The deconstructive irony of this machine lies in the fact that in order to remedy and regenerate, it must eliminate, suppress. The happiness produced by the sorcerer/sage’s artifice is not just any happiness. It is conceived as a response to a prior social diagnosis where politics and eugenics converge. Under Smerstrom’s messianic perspective, the remedy is framed in terms of “annihilation.” The meaning of “anomaly” and “imperfection,” in Smestrom’s words, points to a solution where the concept of happiness ultimately coincides with the project of destroying the problem, that is, “people.”

This project of mankind’s liberation through an apparatus can be found in several avant-garde science fiction stories. Responses to how these machines elaborate ideas of change could be examined as fantasies about a better life are almost always imagined in the enclosed and isolated space of the laboratory. Such an approach seems a direct critical response to the liberal imaginary of the time, more specifically, to the liberal humanist subject and its progressive doctrines. In a partial way, the wise artist Smerstrom derives from this early twentieth century liberal humanism, but in a borderline or extreme version. His dreams of happiness, perfection and evolution stem from this biopower machine which postulates the best possible social order. To achieve this, it is crucial to create a space-time where human's actions are free of moral and legal limits, from which life, the “living” and the “monstrous” can be disposed of. A parodic and profane imitation of the divine creative power, Smerstrom’s apparatus ends up producing desolation and absolute violence.

References

Lossada, Jesús Enrique. La máquina de la felicidad, Caracas: Élite, 1938.