O tym, jak zrobiony jest Lód Jacka Dukaja
On How Jacek Dukaj’s Ice Is Made

Author(s): Piotr Gorliński-Kucik
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The article is an attempt to study the structure of one of Jacek Dukaj’s presentedworlds: the world of Ice. In the novel, an alternative history is created by virtue ofa pattern in which an event of major transformative power influences the courseof history, activating a series of modifications. The writer – resorting to extrapola-tion (retropolation) – builds a chain of causality, which yields a concise construct asa result. A meteorite impact causes the appearance of substantial amounts of tunge-tite – a chemical element hitherto unknown to the Earth – which event, eventually,gives rise to dark physics. The stylization strategy Dukaj adopts in his descriptions isinteresting insofar as the technology appears as magical, even sacred, since it foretellsa bright future for humankind.The motif of techno-utopia recurs throughout Dukaj’sprose; it is present in other novels of his authorship as well.

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