20 The term Pithecanthropus had been coined by Ernst Haeckel to refer to the hypothetical missing link that he believed, as an evolutionist, must connect humans to their apelike ancestors. When Renard wrote this story the only known example of an intermediate between such near-human paleontological specimens as Neanderthal man (discovered in 1857) and the great apes was Dubois’ “Java man,” discovered in 1891 and initially classified as Pithecanthropus erectus. This lent some credence to the theory of an Oceanian origin for humankind, before Raymond Dart’s discovery of the first Australopithecine skull in Africa in 1924—after which evidence for an African origin piled up prolifically and irresistibly.
21 Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) was the inventor of a system of analytical deduction that allowed paleontologists to infer whole skeletons from limited samples of bones, by analogy with other species. His anticipations often proved correct when better skeletons were subsequently discovered, as in the case of the Iguanodon, but Chanteraine was not the only skeptic who wondered whether dubious analogies might sometimes lead to incorrect reconstructions. Gideon Mantell (1790-1852) was an English paleontologist whose works helped to popularize the science, including Cuvier’s method.
22 Râteau means “rake;” I have refrained from translating the cry as Raik! because Chantelaine specifically says that the word sounds French, and some of the associations it evokes in his mind are specifically French.
23 Jacques Callot (1592-1635) was an artist celebrated for his grotesque and fantastic designs.
24 The first “decisive experiment” in heavier-than-air flight to take place in France is generally agreed to have been carried out by Alberto Santos-Dumont on October 23, 1906, a year before the date of Chanteraine and Fleury-Moor’s supposed adventure. It is possible, however, that Fleury-Moor was unimpressed by the feat of flying 60 meters at a height of less than three meters, and found it difficult take such machines seriously until Louis Blériot flew across the English Channel on July 25, 1909; that might well have been the event that provoked his change of mind.
25 Léon Michaud is not an uncommon name, but this dedicatee does not seem to be one of the various writers who have used it as a by-line. Louis Michaud was the publisher of Renard’s Le Péril bleu and Monsieur d’Outremort before the war, although the company did not survive the conflict; it is possible that Léon was Louis Michaud’s son.
26 Volapük [world-speak] was invented by a German Roman Catholic priest, Johann Martin Schleyer, in 1879, after he received a message from God instructing him to invent a universal language; the third conference of Volapük speakers was held in Paris in 1889 but its fashionability declined rapidly thereafter, overtaken even in its own field by Esperanto, and the legacy of Babel continued to hold sway.
27 Prosope is derived from a Greek term signifying “face.” As a chosen pseudonym, it is obviously intended to be meaningful, but it may be worth noting that the names of the story’s other major characters also have meaningful resonances; Lebris means “the wreck,” Grive “thrush;” Bare is not a French word, but Renard would probably have been familiar with its English meaning.
28 A device invented by Heinrich Geissler in 1857, consisting of a glass tube containing a rarefied gas with an electrode at either end, which glowed when supplied with a current. It was the ultimate ancestor of numerous other experimental and practical devices, including modern neon lighting.
29 This is, unfortunately, incorrect; electricity is not a form of electromagnetic radiation, being composed of electrons and not of photons. Renard’s knowledge of physics seems to have been somewhat behind the times—perhaps forgivably, given that he had just spent more than four years fighting in the Great War. Prosope’s subsequent elaboration of the notion is confused by the mistake. For further comments on the scientific foundations of the story, see the afterword to this volume.
30 Renard inserts a footnote here recommending the reader to consult, in this regard, J.-H. Rosny’s “admirable” short story “Un Autre monde” (1895; tr. as “Another World” in Black Coat Press’ collection The Navigators of Space).
31 Octave Uzanne (1851-1931) was a bibliophile and journalist, with a particular expertise in ladies’ fashions, well-known on the Parisian literary scene; he seconded Jean Lorrain in the latter’s duel with Marcel Proust. He has a peripheral connection with scientific romance by virtue of a small number of satirical futuristic articles, most notably “La Locomotion Future” [Future Locomotion] (1895), which was illustrated by Albert Robida.
32 Renard inserts a reference here: “La Mort de la Terre (1912) by J.-H. Rosny Aîné.” (1895; tr. as “The Death of the Earth” in Black Coat Press’ collection The Navigators of Space).
33 Renard inserts further references here to “The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells” and “Un Autre monde” (1898) by Rosny Aîné.” The latter (q.v.) was actually first published in 1895.
34 Renard inserts a note to identify Hanns Heinz Ewers as the author of two items, “Mandragore et L’Araignée;” the former has been translated into English under its German title, Alraune (1911) and the second—“Die Spinne” in German—as “The Spider.” Ewers enjoyed a brief period of fashionability in France when stories from two German collections issued in 1908 and 1909 were translated for such periodicals as the Mercure de France, but he lost that fashionability with the outbreak of the Great War, when he became German propagandist in the USA.
35 In 1909, Renard had published an article in Le Spectateur on “Du Roman Merveilleux-Scientifique et de son action sur l’intelligence du progrès” [On Scientific Marvel Fiction and its Effect on the Consciousness of Progress], a translation of which is included in volume one of this series, in which he drew a distinction between the traditional genre of “the marvelous” and a nascent genre of fiction extrapolating “the scientific marvelous,” along exactly the same lines as the distinction he draws here between “the fantastic” and “the parascientific.” He had evidently become dissatisfied with his earlier terminology, perhaps because of negative responses from the readers of the earlier article, or simply because it now seemed too cumbersome.
36 Aristarchos was a renowned critic who became an archetype of rigor by daring to argue—cogently—that even Homer was not perfect.
37 “Les Xipéhuz,” tr. as “The Xipehuz,” is available in Black Coat Press’ collection The Navigators of Space; La Force Mystérieuse, tr. as “The Mysterious Force,” is available in Black Coat Press’ collection The Mysterious Force.
38 The story of Philemon and Baucis is related in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. While Zeus and Hermes are visiting Phrygia disguised as mortals they are refused hospitality in a thousand homes before being taken in by the eponymous old couple; when offered a reward for their generosity the two aged lovers ask that neither of them should outlive the other, and their wish is granted.
39 Jules Simon (1814-1896) was a famous statesman and philosopher who shaved his face in a distinctive but rather ridiculous fashion, so as to leave a frame of hair around his face, connecting his side-whiskers under his chin.
40 References to cravats tied “à la Collin” crop up occasionally in 19th century French literature; one suspects that Renard is borrowing the phrase from literary sources rather than expecting his readers to recognize its rather obscure reference to the comic poet Jean-François Collin d’Harleville (1755-1808).
41 A martingale is a primitive betting system, which consists of doubling up on losing bets in order to recover the losses.
42 A myograph is an instrument for recording and measuring the intensity muscular contractions.
43 The reference to the Queen of Spades is intended to remind the reader of Alexander Pushkin’s famous novella, first published in 1834, in which that card—reflected in the person of a sinister temptress—is fatal to the gambler who is the story’s protagonist.
44 This observation is a trifle disingenuous. The reference is presumably to the story of Gyges in the Republic, to which reference is made more than once in
Le Péril bleu, but Renard’s purpose in quoting it here is presumably to defend himself against the charge that he had been imitating Wells in compiling his own romance of invisibility, by emphasizing the antiquity of the idea.
45 Jacques Copeau (1879-1949) was most famous as a theater director and dramatist—he founded the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier—but he was also an active promoter of literary work and helped to found the Nouvelle Revue Française.
46 This judgment might seem a trifle odd to modern science fiction readers, but if Renard knew, in 1928, of the existence of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories and other examples of “scientifiction,” he might well have considered them to be products of German rather than American enterprise. He was probably better acquainted with the success in the 1920s of the German Zukunftsroman [futuristic fiction], whose technophilic practitioners included the best-selling Hans Dominik, but his plaintive comment about hypothetical fiction being better appreciated on the far side of the Rhine may well have more to do with his familiarity with Fritz Lang’s movie Metropolis (1926) and the fact that his own modestly hypothetical novel Les Mains d’Orlac had been filmed in Germany (in 1925) rather than France—the American version was not made until 1935.
47 Literally, the bottom of a lamp—but the term is used in architecture to refer to any rounded suspended ornament, and is thus suggestive here of “rounding out” the argument. Although culs-de-lampes play a highly significant role in the art of the imaginary world featured in Un Homme chez les microbes (tr. in volume 2 of this series as “A Man Among the Microbes”), the term is not used in the version that had recently been published (very belatedly) shortly before this article appeared in the December 15, 1928 issue of A.B.C.
48 The bronze statue by Jean de Bologne (1529-1608) to which Renard refers is to be found in the Louvre; it became an oft-copied stereotype.
49 The original referent of the French term for a glass lens, lentille, is a lentil. Although it makes little difference merely as a specification of shape, the choice of translation is bound to have a considerable effect on the reader’s conceptualization of the Martians, and the other possibility needs to be noted.
50 Translated in the Black Coat Press collection The Navigators of Space, which also includes “The Astronauts.”
51 Translated in the Black Coat Press collection as The World of the Variants.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION COLLECTION
Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company
Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse
Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller
Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future
Alphonse Brown. City of Glass
Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow
Didier de Chousy. Ignis
C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)
Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole
Alfred Driou. The Adventures of a Parisian Aeronaut
J.-C. Dunyach. The Night Orchid; The Thieves of Silence
Henri Duvernois. The Man Who Found Himself
Achille Eyraud. Voyage to Venus
Henri Falk. The Age of Lead
Charles de Fieux. Lamékis
Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega
Edmond Haraucourt. Illusions of Immortality
Nathalie Henneberg. The Green Gods
Michel Jeury. Chronolysis
Octave Joncquel & Théo Varlet. The Martian Epic
Gustave Kahn. The Tale of Gold and Silence
Gérard Klein. The Mote in Time’s Eye
André Laurie. Spiridon
Gabriel de Lautrec. The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait
Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny. The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (2 vols.)
Gustave Le Rouge. The Vampires of Mars
Jules Lermina. Mysteryville; Panic in Paris; The Secret of Zippelius
José Moselli. Illa’s End
John-Antoine Nau. Enemy Force
Henri de Parville. An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars
Gaston de Pawlowski. Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension
Georges Pellerin. The World in 2000 Years
Henri de Régnier. A Surfeit of Mirrors
Maurice Renard. The Blue Peril; Doctor Lerne; The Doctored Man; A Man Among the Microbes; The Master of Light
Jean Richepin. The Wing
Albert Robida. The Clock of the Centuries; Chalet in the Sky
J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Helgvor of the Blue River; The Givreuse Enigma; The Mysterious Force; The Navigators of Space; Vamireh; The World of the Variants; The Young Vampire
Marcel Rouff. Journey to the Inverted World
Han Ryner. The Superhumans
Brian Stableford (anthologist) The Germans on Venus; News from the Moon; The Supreme Progress; The World Above the World; Nemoville
Jacques Spitz. The Eye of Purgatory
Kurt Steiner. Ortog
Eugène Thébault. Radio-Terror
C.-F. Tiphaigne de La Roche. Amilec
Théo Varlet. The Xenobiotic Invasion
Paul Vibert. The Mysterious Fluid
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. The Scaffold; The Vampire Soul
English adaptation, introduction and afterword Copyright 2010 by Brian Stableford.
Cover illustration Copyright 2010 by Gilles Francescano.
Visit our website at www.blackcoatpress.com
ISBN 978-1-935558-18-7. First Printing. May 2010. Published by Black Coat Press, an imprint of Hollywood Comics.com, LLC, P.O. Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416. All rights reserved. Except for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The stories and characters depicted in this novel are entirely fictional. Printed in the United States of America.
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