“Was there nothing in the world, after this night of madness, but horror and death, destruction and endless agony?”, asks the son of the all-powerful man of Metropolis towards the end of the novel of the same name.

Before continuing with the reflections and stories of the writers consulted by WMagazín (Read the first part HERE) about the coincidence of the novel set in 2026 and knowing what part of it has reached humanity, we recall the intertwined history of the book and the film with their twists and turns:

Thea von Harbou (Germany, 1888-1954) was one of the best screenwriters in German cinema during the 1920s. She was married to Fritz Lang (Austria, 1890-United States, 1976) when, in 1925, she began publishing the story of Metropolis in installments in the German magazine Das Illustrierte Blatt, while Lang was simultaneously working on his film adaptation, which allowed for the release of stills from the set. Before the end of that year, the story was compiled into a book. Lang released the film in 1927; it was UFA’s most expensive film to date and proved to be a box office failure. Both the cinemas and the two works faded into obscurity. To make matters worse, the film, which originally ran over 150 minutes, suffered numerous cuts due to censorship, and burns, other damage to the celluloid, and poor preservation reduced it to about ninety minutes, rendering the story difficult to understand. Finally, in 2010, a restored 153-minute version was released.

The story of Metropolis is told in the words of T&T Editions of Spain, which produced a new translation with 45 illustrations by Tomás Hijo, specially digitally engraved for this edition:

“In a futuristic city where the opulence of the powerful feeds on the sacrifice of the oppressed, two worlds coexist: a hedonistic elite living in a paradise of excess and a working class trapped in a mechanized underworld. This system, designed to maintain the status quo, falters when a charismatic leader emerges in search of a savior who can unite these two disparate realities.

More than a science fiction story, it is a powerful fable about justice, sacrifice, and the fight against oppression. With vivid descriptions, complex characters, and symbolism that draws from ancient myths, Von Harbou constructs a vision of the future as unsettling as it is fascinating.

This masterpiece, unjustly underrated in science fiction literature, not only explores the limits of human thought but also reminds us that, even in the darkest moments, hope and courage can triumph over the most implacable forces”.

Literature and film have inspired science and helped drive progress. This is highlighted in the book Things You Would Never Believe. From Science Fiction to Neuroscience (Debate), by neuroscientist, physics graduate, ICREA professor, and researcher with the Perception and Memory group at the Hospital el Mar Research Institute,

Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

“Metropolis takes me back to the Industrial Revolution, with the economic and social changes it brought. The same thing happened with the internet and these days with the use of artificial intelligence. Now we wonder if AI will make us obsolete and leave us jobless. I think it will be something similar to what happened with the internet or, further back, with the Industrial Revolution. The work matrix changes, and we have to adapt. Today, bookstores and tourist agencies hardly exist—we use the internet for that (Amazon, Expedia, Airbnb, etc.). But there are many new sources of employment that the internet has opened up. I think the same thing is happening and will happen with AI. I also don’t believe in technofeudalism because, at least in Europe and first-world countries, we have rules of social coexistence that limit the possibility of having classes as oppressed as in Metropolis.

Regarding neocolonialism and political change, we are seeing how powerful politicians can change everything as they please, and it is quite possible that we could end up with medieval colonialism—and this has nothing to do with technology. I am not afraid of technology; in fact, I am enthusiastic about it. What terrifies me is what I occasionally read in the newspapers”.

This is the same thing that happens to other authors when analyzing this coincidence of the dystopia in 2026 and the course of the world. The Colombian novelist, essayist, and winner of the Reina Sofía Award for Ibero-American Poetry describes it this way:

Piedad Bonnett (The Uncertain Woman /Alfaguara)

“In this age of information overload, it’s impossible not to feel overwhelmed by uncertainty, and even by the recurring intuition that we are plunging into a dystopian world, in which the events of profound moral degradation that humanity suffered under fascism could be repeated. This perception stems from what Rob Riemen calls ‘rebarbarization,’ which refers to the fact that the most powerful leaders, with Donald Trump at the forefront, have not only abandoned the hard-won principles of civilization, flouting international agreements and using illegal strategies when employing violence, but with shameless cynicism, they don’t even try to portray themselves as champions of anything—of justice, freedom, or democracy—but rather as what they are:

plunderers of the resources of the weakest countries. ‘I’ll go as far as I’m allowed’. ‘My own morality’, Trump said in an interview with The New York Times.

Moreover, true power lies with a plutocracy of scandalous greed, which concentrates wealth in fewer and fewer hands. It’s hard not to think that we are witnessing the decline of an era that paradoxically boasts of enormous scientific and technological achievements. Because this plutocracy, with its fascist tendencies, ignores—or simply despises—scientific thought, and the most serious consequence is the threat to the planet, due to the open denial of climate change. Meanwhile, migrants are persecuted, entire countries are devastated, and legal institutions prove weak. And at a historical moment of transition, which is changing paradigms, the line between truth and lies is blurring. Catastrophism terrifies me, but sometimes it’s impossible not to feel discouraged and hopeless”.

These are emotions that erode morale as the divide between the powerful, wealthy, and technologists and the working class intensifies, as denounced by the Spanish poet and novelist:

Menchu ​​Gutiérrez (Life and Death of a Paper Garden -Siruela- and Guest of the Other -Árdora)

“That the gap is widening is an undeniable fact; so is the intrinsic stupidity that fosters this social imbalance. When you think about the dystopian world of Metropolis, there is a certain irony in the inversion of spaces that occurs in the present day, when the wealthiest excavate to build their brand-new, self-sufficient bunkers. It is the owners of great fortunes who will supposedly inhabit the underground, protected from the multitude of catastrophes to which they themselves largely lead.

Material greed and the insatiable thirst for power are always the same, now and in the 15th century, but technology is precisely a great machine for multiplying their effects. From its beginnings, Technology, which has been at the service of power, has also been used to manipulate facts and whitewash lies. The great surprise of our time is that, apparently, lies no longer need disguise. The message is: we’re going to steal because we’re stronger. And we find ourselves analyzing the deafening silence of those who, indeed, recognize the stronger party, and a few veiled responses.

It’s disheartening, but, in my opinion, the greatest hope for reversing this reality lies in some kind of collapse. Stupidity has a significant degree of self-destruction.

For now, seeing the president of a powerful country joke about the misfortune of the oppressed and hearing the laughter of those around him is reminiscent of thugs laughing at their mafia boss’s jokes. But we’re not witnessing a societal anomaly, a scene from film noir, but rather a movie for all audiences, one that could be shown in a school auditorium at Christmas”.

The coordinates have shifted, and some are trying to eradicate principles of harmony and coexistence in a version or evolution of the social strata of Metropolis, as explained by the Argentine illustrator who created a graphic version of this story in 2021:

Christian Montenegro

“There are no longer large industrial workshops with alienated workers chained to the assembly line, performing monotonous tasks for hours that dry up their brains and hearts (or at least this image has disappeared from the cinematic imagination). But I do notice a fundamental absence in the film that coincides with the present times and the future they want to impose on us as the only option: there is no state regulating capitalist profit or looking after the common good.

I live in Argentina, where we see a farcical and extremist neoliberal theatrical production. It is no longer necessary to subjugate the worker (or what remains of this social class). Now the worker is happy being a poor wretch who celebrates and admires his exploiter and executioner.

María can spend the rest of her life in the catacombs preaching that Nobody will listen to her; moreover, she should consider herself lucky if these same workers, inhabitants of dark underground, do not crucify her for being a communist and the origin of all their miseries”.

A similar idea is described by the Spanish essayist and expert in cutting-edge technologies:

Marta Peirano

“It’s the same dystopia, but grayer and more bureaucratic. Instead of describing it in Christian terms of the rich in heaven and the poor underground, we do so with an epidemic sensitivity to the bubbles that separate us, even though we inhabit the same plane. It’s clear that Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, and the members of the entourage of Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and MBS, inhabit different worlds, but they are in this one. I think of China Miéville’s The City and the City, where there are two cities that coexist within the same city, and their citizens must ignore each other because they inhabit different social, legal, and administrative spaces. And our city is not a mythical city ‘of ecstatic light and movement,’ but a bureaucratic prison of automated services and citizens entertained and monitored like rats in a laboratory display case.

The logic of limitless accumulation is necessarily imperialist: for their world Let them expand in whatever way they want, not only in territory, resources, and power, but also in years of life; ours has to disappear. And the consequences of imperialist expansion are colonization, feudalism, and slavery. Technology is their religion, but it is nothing more than a tool that accelerates the process and obscures its function. We don’t have to imagine it because that’s how it has always been”.

This is how the normalization of authoritarianism, the power of force, brutality, humiliation, ignorance, cruelty, discrimination, and a lack of solidarity progresses, to the detriment of understanding, generosity, empathy, harmony, kindness, and coexistence, as the French illustrator Benjamin Lacombe (illustrations for The Great Gatsby / Edelvives) denounced in an interview with WMagazín:

“We face this because we have instilled in people that values ​​like these are weaknesses. Because many would see solidarity, generosity, and empathy as a genuine weakness. And, instead, that what one must be is a bully, like a real-life Donald Trump. And that, in reality, is not a strength. I think it’s the opposite. Solidarity, generosity, tolerance, understanding, respect, kindness, and empathy are the opposite of a weakness. I think that is precisely what made To humanity’s success, because humanity, in the beginning, was in a bad position, and that is humanity’s secret.

What, truly, is humanity’s success and prosperity? Helping one another. That is what has made the difference, but we are forgetting that the origin of humanity’s success is solidarity and generosity”.

Despite these realities, there is a philosopher whose perspective contradicts this dystopian world and allows past, present, and future to coexist:

Javier Gomá Lanzón

“We are in a superior position to that presented in the novel and film Metropolis. In this century, especially in the West, there has been extraordinary progress, both materially and morally. And, although there is no necessary law and no capacity for certain prediction, there is confidence that such progress has indeed occurred over millennia, and in the last century and the one to come, in the year 2126, we will also be, both materially and morally, better off than we are now and much better off than a century ago.

I have argued, many times, that we are now living in the best moment in history in aspects such as material and moral development. And, as has happened in other eras that have considered themselves to be at their peak, such as the Age of Pericles, the Italian cities of the Renaissance, and so many others, the great difference between our The common thread between the current boom and previous eras is that people who lived through that peak felt fortunate to be part of it. Whereas what describes the great novelty of our time is that, clearly, we are the best in every respect; yet discontent is rampant.

We are a very angry society, full of anguish, unease, and dissatisfaction. So, what progress often produces—a feeling of novelty, of strangeness, and sometimes even of a certain suffering—when coupled with the current malaise, leads to a proliferation of apocalyptic literature, but that literature is not reality. Because the truth is, we do feel bad, we readily embrace apocalyptic literature, dystopian imagery, expressions like neo-feudalism, and others that express this unease, and yet, from the point of view of the facts, the West is experiencing the best moment in history. Sometimes, I define it more precisely: it’s not that we are the not better, which we are, but rather that our current society is imperfect, flawed, must be corrected, produces much suffering, is unequal, is unjust; in short, it is very imperfect, but it is the least imperfect in all of history.

However, since there is so much discontent, this discontent can be used by populist forces to call into question one of the great achievements of history, which is liberal democracy. Consequently, the fact that we are the best does not mean that we are exempt from danger. There are many dangers, but one of them is precisely taking apocalyptic literature seriously”.

In his 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech, László Krasznahorkai asked: “Human being, wondrous creature, who are you?” The text, filled with ideas, images, and denunciations of the bewilderment, desolation, and hopelessness of the present, lamented humanity’s plight, as if the damage caused by the ambition and inhumanity of some weren’t enough.

“By destroying imagination, you are now left only with short-term memory, and thus you have abandoned the noble and common possession of knowledge, beauty, and moral good”.

Or as Irene Vallejo, author of The Infinite in a Reed, wrote on her Facebook page on January 15, 2026:

“When I am saddened to hear so many calls to crush, to defeat, to make the adversary weep; when we are told that we don’t hate enough; when we reach the daily high tide of insults; when we feel thirsty for tenderness, then we must return to Emily Dickinson:

If I can keep a heart from breaking

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

• Read the first part of the report HERE.

***

All articles from our English edition are available HERE

‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emerald Fennell: The Reader as Sovereign of Emily Brontë’s Novel. You can Watch HERE.

Heated Rivalry or the success of the cultural phenomenon of clandestine love in ice hockey in a series based on books. You can Watch HERE.

Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ and O’Farrell’s ‘Hamnet’ (and 2): origin and evolution of the story of the Prince of Denmark leading up to Chloé Zhao’s film. You can Watch HERE.

Benjamin Lacombe: “We forget that the origin of humanity’s success is generosity and mutual support”. You can watch HERE.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “If more men read books about women’s lives, literature could improve communication”. You can watch HERE.

Venezuela: Why Chavismo Came to Power, How the Country Collapsed, Maduro’s Fall, and an Uncertain Future. You can watch HERE.

WMagazin’s Top 50 Books of 2025, Listed by Literary Genre. You can watch HERE.

This is how life, beauty, love, sex, and happiness have changed in the 21st century, according to 250 writers, artists, philosophers, sociologists, and scientists. Read the article about the book HERE.

László Krasznahorkai, 2025 Nobel Laureate in Literature: “Human beings remain the same, dangerous to themselves”. You can watch it HERE.

Complete series of Artificial intelligence in the world of books and literature:

• Artificial Intelligence in the World of Books and Literature (1): Authorship and the New Role of Humans in Creation. You can watch it HERE.
• Artificial Intelligence in the World of Books and Literature (2): Writing and creativity in the posthumanist era. You can read the article HERE.
• Artificial intelligence in the world of books and literature (3): Cultural revolution and paradigm shift. You can read the article HERE.

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