The first story in this anthology of French scientific romances, “Mademoiselle de La Choupillière,” was published in a collection of Nouvelles (1832) by the archeologist and paleontologist who signed his works Jacques Boucher de Perthes, although his full name was Jacques Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes (1788-1868). It is one of numerous fanciful stories extrapolating ideas inspired by the activities of Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782), the famous builder of automata, whose machines were long gone by the time the story was written but had left behind a legacy of rumor whose marvels were exaggerated by the passage of time.
The anthology contains two other stories in the same vein. The earlier of the two, L’Automate, récit tiré d’un palimpseste by Ralph Schropp, initially published in 1878 and reprinted as a booklet by A. Ghio in 1880, here translated as “The Automaton: A Story Translated from a Palimpsest,” takes up an older legend relating to the manufacture of an artificial human being, crediting the achievement to the 13th century scholar Albertus Magnus. The legend originally related to the magical creation of a “homunculus,” but Schropp updates the supposed method employed to place it in a scientific rather than a supernatural context.
It was reported in 1896 that Léon Daudet (1867-1942) was working on a new novel entitled L’Automate, not long after he had published his first novel, Les Morticoles [literally, The Death-Cultivators; metaphorically, Doctors] (1894). The short story of that title, here translated as “The Automaton,” was presumably originally intended to be the opening section of the novel in question. It was reprinted in the posthumous collection Quinze contes (1948) but probably appeared in a periodical long before then, perhaps being rewritten for that purpose a few years after first being drafted (there is a reference in the story to a book published in 1898). As with the previous item, it draws upon the legend of the homunculus, and, although it retains a supernatural context in the creator’s conviction of diabolical aid, it addresses the question of the possible psychological make-up of the homunculus in a more philosophically-sophisticated manner than Schropp’s tale, with which it forms an interesting contrast.
In between “Mademoiselle de La Choupillière” and the Schropp story, placed there in order to maintain the chronological order of the inclusions, is L’Uraniade, ou Ésop juge à la cour d’Uranie, scènes dialoguées au sujet des hypothèses Newtoniennes: songe scientifique [The Uraniad, or Aesop judges in Urania’s Court; dialogue scenes on the subject of the Newtonian hypothesis: A Scientific Dream] signed Père Brémond, first published by the author in Avignon in 1844, and here translated as “The Uraniad,” which recommends itself for consideration in the context of the history of roman scientifique by virtue of its eccentricity and its determined combativeness. So far as can be ascertained with the current state of search engines, the phrase roman scientifique [scientific fiction] was first used by Élie Fréron (1719-1776), a diehard opponent of Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, as a pejorative characterization of that theory. In 1844 the term had not yet been adapted for application to new kinds of literary work that appeared in the 1860s, so Brémond’s work is a notable example of literary protest against what he considered to be a roman scientifique in the original sense of the phrase.
We now know, of course, that the criticisms leveled against Newtonian theory by the unorthodox theorists featured in L’Uraniade are utterly mistaken, and one suspects that any modern schoolboy could poke the holes in them that Newton’s defenders conspicuously fail to bring up when invited by the fabulist and ad hoc judge to argue their case—the real individuals on whom those characters are based could undoubtedly have put up a far more robust and devastating show—but that only adds interest to a debate that is interesting not so much in regard to the problems it addresses but in respect of the issues in the philosophy and sociology of science that it raises in the process.
Little seems to be known about Brémond except that his first name was Pierre and that he was a Jesuit, and his supposed magnum opus—or pièce de resistance—criticizing Newton’s theses, which L’Uraniade was written and published to advertise, never did see print. Whether the manuscript that he left on deposit in his local library in Avignon still exists, I have no idea. It is highly unlikely, however, that the earnest work in question could have had the saving graces that allow L’Uraniade to retain some interest above and beyond its status as a literary and philosophical curiosity: its enterprise, its liveliness and its sheer bizarrerie.
Also placed between two of the stories of automata is “La Mort de Paris” by the prolific writer Louis Gallet (1835-1898), which first appeared in 1892 in La Nouvelle Revue, here translated as “The Death of Paris.” It is a slightly offbeat addition to the rich tradition of stories featuring the ruins of Paris, offering an account of how the city and its remaining inhabitants perish from suddenly-accelerated climate change—the advent of a new Ice Age—rather than poking fun at the mistaken conclusions of far-future archeologists. Its conscious affiliation to the tradition, however, adds an extra gloss to what might otherwise have been an ordinary disaster story, equipping it with a delicately ironic elegiac quality. The author was best known for his operatic libretti, and “Le Mort de Paris” has a kind of operatic sweep and flourish about it that suits its theme very well.
In the interests of diversity, the short novel following the Daudet story, L’Homme en nickel, here translated as “The Nickel Man,” is an item of popular pulp fiction, initially published as a feuilleton serial in La Science Française in 1897 and reprinted in book form the same year. It was the work of one of the most prolific contributors to the periodical in question, and it appeared there under the pseudonym “Georges Bethuys,” one of several signatures employed by the military historian and journalist Georges-Frédéric Espitallier (1849-1923) (who also used the pseudonym of “Pierre Ferréol”). Like most of the fiction published in the popular science magazines of the day, it attempts to place scientific notions in the context of a plot that reproduces many of the standard features of the feuilleton fiction of the day, in this case borrowing abundantly from the nascent genre of detective fiction.
One suspects that the puzzle with which L’Homme en nickel confronts the detective who functions as its main protagonist would not have confused Sherlock Holmes for more than a few minutes, and the fact that the reader knows the answer from the very beginning only serves to make the policeman’s deductive powers seem even weaker, but the story tries as hard as it can to make up for that rickety logic with zest and fast-paced movement, in a manner that was to become familiar in pulpish speculative fiction; in consequence, deserves some credit as a pioneering exercise in a hybrid genre that was to become far more sophisticated as it became much more prolific during the 20th century.
The anthology is concluded by five brief stories by Pierre de Nolhac (1859-1936), which were reprinted in book form in the collection Contes philosophiques, published by Bernard Grasset in 1932, although they had presumably appeared in periodicals previously. Nolhac was a prolific writer, best known as a historian, although he also had some reputation as a poet, and he wrote very little prose fiction, but what he did write tended to be inspired by his reflections on the way the world was going, informed by the clinical eye of a narrative historian. The speculations embodied in the stories are small-scale and handled with a deft and delicate wit, representing the end of the literary spectrum opposite to that of the unashamedly populist Espitallier, and illustrating the breadth of the spectrum in question.
The translation of “Mademoiselle de la Choupillière” was made from the version of Nouvelles reproduced in Google Books. The translation of L’Uraniade was made from the copy of the 1844 edition reproduced on the Bibliothèque Nationale’s gallica website. The translation of L’Automate, récit tiré d’un palimpseste was made from the copy of the Ghio edition reproduced on archive.org, except for the four pages missing from that version, which were filled in from the Kindle version of the ArchéoSF reprint of 2012. The translation of Léon Daudet’s “L’Automate” was made from a copy of the undated Guy Boussac edition of Quinze contes published in 1948. The translation of “La Mort de Paris” was made from the version in the Kindle edition of Philippe Éthuin’s ArchéoSF anthology Paris futurs (2014). The translation of L’Homme en nickel was made from the feuilleton version reproduced in gallica in the relevant volumes of La Science Française. The translations of the five stories by Pierre de Nolhac were made from a copy of the Grasset edition of Contes philosophiques.
Brian Stableford