Christoph Ransmayr's first poetic work, written in rhythmic prose in 1982, tells with grim irony about the disappearance of the Lord of the World, mankind. As a subject—hero or victim?—of a new science that only brings devastation and can produce nothing but the organization of disappearance, this lord is subjected to an irrigation project in the Sahara, left without water and food in a terrarium, and abandoned to his doom. As he stumbles toward death by thirst among dunes and rubble, an anonymous representative of the new science instructs an academic delegation in the oasis of Bordj Moktar that what began billions of years ago under the rays of the sun is now being concluded strictly according to the laws of logic under a scorching sun: organic life, the human presence.