I know some readers don’t class this novel as science fiction at all—it’s not really about the future, it’s not at all about predicting the future, and so on—but I’ve reread Camp Concentration a number of times now and, for me, it’s an example of what SF can be at its very best.
    It is the near-future here (or the near-future from 1968 when Thomas Disch wrote it) and there’s a large-scale war in progress. The story itself is set inside a complex called Camp Archimedes, built deep underground in a disused goldmine and which is simultaneously both prison and research facility. Its inmates (who volunteered for this as a way of escaping life in a conventional prison or US Army brig) are human guinea-pigs deliberately infected with Pallidine, a preparation containing a bacterium derived from the one which causes syphilis. In real life, syphilis has often been linked with genius—as if the spirochaete which causes the one also somehow unleashes the other—and so it is here: “Sometimes I think maybe it wasn’t such a big mistake. I’ll say this for the stuff they gave us—it beats acid. With acid you think you know everything; with this, you goddamn well do.” There’s quite a price to pay though: in the space of just a few short months this Pallidine not only raises your IQ to genius level—it also kills you.
    Into this antechamber of Hell comes poet Louis Sacchetti, jailed as a conscientious objector to the ongoing war, then transferred to Archimedes and assigned the task of keeping a journal as an additional, independent and more subjective record of the experiment as it proceeds. By the time he arrives, some of the inmates have been there for months already and, as their minds soar, are very close to death. And they seem to be wasting their genius: the aim of the programme was to devise entirely new kinds of weaponry for the military, yet the prisoners seem to have become obsessed with … alchemy. Yes, this is what Sacchetti stumbles into: Camp A’s collective genius is being frittered away on concocting an Elixir of Everlasting Life, on attempting to cheat death using alchemy.
    I love everything about this book. For a start, there’s the richness and imagery of Disch’s prose (his journalist Louis Sacchetti is a published poet). Then there’s the subterranean setting: laboratory-like, hermetic, a former goldmine. In fact there’s a lot of alchemical symbolism, but just as in medieval Europe where alchemy was sometimes a cover, a harmless-looking front for more covert experimentations, so too here. Much of the medieval version, too, was really about the transformation, not of base metals into gold, but of the alchemist.
    Camp Archimedes also resembles a stage—claustrophobic, artificial, the prisoners’ every word and deed minutely scrutinised—and the play being acted out on its boards is familiar enough: selling your soul to Satan in exchange for knowledge and all that. But, with the liquid gold of Pallidine coursing through your veins, might you become cunning enough to outwit even the Devil? ( )

The ending is such an abrupt about face in terms of mood/theme that it feels like either there was some clue it was a dream/delusion I missed or there was some weird editorial intervention to give it a happier ending.

Most of the book is kind of a mediation on inevitable death and what beforehand could make it worth it. There's some parts that resonated, some that didn't (I should have guessed he'd do it from the title, but comparisons to Dachau are always going to be pretty tasteless) There's some homophobia and racism from the narrator, but although there's no non-narrator voice it seems pretty obvious he's supposed to come across like a dumbass. There's also 1 pretty explicit mention of rape which is handled weirdly.

There's quite a bit of references to other classical literature and art, some of which is untranslated.

There's definitely interesting stuff here and a lot of it is pretty ambitious in trying to talk about a difficult subject but too little resonated for me the other qualms ( )

Década de los setenta del siglo xx: Los Estados Unidos han declarado la guerra al resto del mundo y a gran parte de su propia ciudadanía, y están dispuestos a usar cualquier arma que les asegure la victoria. Louis Sacchetti, un poeta encarcelado por negarse a ser alistado, es llevado a una instalación secreta llamada campo Arquímedes, donde es testigo involuntario de los experimentos despiadados de «maximización de la inteligencia» llevados a cabo por el ejército. Los prisioneros a los que se les administra Pallidine, una droga derivada de la espiroqueta de la sífilis, pronto se convierten en genios, pero hay un desafortunado efecto secundario. El Pallidine resulta mortal en todos los casos.

It's difficult to decide if I liked this book. The idea of infecting prisoners with a virus is not horrible to me because of what they do to lab Animals. If you're writing a book about characters who are supposedly becoming geniuses, how are you going to portray that? Unless you think you're a genius yourself, I guess. But I wasn't much convinced. The ending was a surprise, but hopeful for the ones infected. I did enjoy the main character's solution to overpopulation. ( )

Ho dato un indecisissimo 6. Ero propenso ad una sufficienza piena fin quasi a metà, poi scende molto di tiro per rialzarsi egregiamente nella parte finale ma sopratutto nel finale stesso.
Oggi sarebbe considerato un pò un romanzo trito e ritrito (non dico noioso perchè le parti noiose sono brevissime) ma mi rendo conto che contestualizzandolo agli anni 70 quando è stato scritto poteva considerarsi qualcosa di originale o quantomeno attuale. Essendo comparso in Italia negli anni 80 (correggetemi se sbaglio) secondo me non ha avuto nessun genere di successo che forse avrebbe meritato.
Devo essere sincero, non è che mi sia piaciuto cosi tanto da osannarlo o da consigliarlo e sono particolarmente felice che fosse breve e scorrevole.
La storia in se è buona, niente di troppo originale o sconvolgente, ma che si poteva svolgere in una 50ina di pagine. Il resto è chiacchiere deliranti e pretenziose senza un reale significato per la storia, pieno di riferimenti, camei e citazioni che, se non contestualizzate nel testo, non hanno nemmeno molto motivo d'essere. ( )