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Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy #24
The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction: Stepchildren of Voltaire
Following World War II, the Fleuve Noir publishing house published popular American genre fiction in translation for a French audience. Their imprint Anticipation specialized in science fiction, but mostly eschewed translations from English, preferring instead French work, thus making the imprint an important outlet for native French postwar ideas and aesthetics. This critical text examines in ideological terms eleven writers who published under the Anticipation imprint, revealing the way these writers criticized midcentury notions of progress while adapting and reworking American genre formats.
- GenresNonfiction
248 pages, Paperback
First published September 3, 2010
20 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 25, 2014
A nice academic monograph that illustrates the both the genre’s strengths and its uncertain future.
Bradford Lyau, like yours truly, is a former academic who has continued to do scholarly research and try to publish it—although this may be to both of our detriments. Lyau studies French science fiction, which is oddly neglected. Jules Verne is one of the seminal writers in science fiction, yet he has been ill-served by poor and infrequent translations, and the rest of French science fiction—which has an interesting reciprocal relationship with Anglo-American varieties of the genre—has largely gone untranslated. Lyau wants to make us acquainted with a small part of post-World War II science fiction, that published under the “Anticipation” imprint during the 1950s. His choice of subject is inspired, allowing him to concentrate—and drill down—on small, but important, segment of science fiction.
The novelists who wrote for the imprint—all of them under a pseudonym—did so with many concerns in mind, he admits, while highlighting three. The first—the weakest claim, although very interesting—is Voltaire (hence the subtitle) and the so-called conte philosophique. Philosophical novels, he says, which downplayed character and plot in favor of ideas, was a prominent competitor of the realistic novel in the late 1800s and early 1900s before losing out. He claims that the French science fiction writers resurrected the form—a claim he can make mostly based on stylistic similarities, only rarely on direct influence. The second was a response to Anglo-American—especially American-science fiction, which came to France as a ready made genre, self-contained with tropes and vocabularies and scenes, tailor-made for the post-industrial revolution since American popular culture came of age with the industrial revolution. The third, and most pressing, concern was what to do about France in the years after World War II: how was a country destroyed militarily, rent culturally, to reintegrate and enter the modern world?
After an introduction and chapter setting out these issues, Lyau details the several answers of the French science fiction writers for the imprint, categorizing them thematically. He first discusses the moderates, those who wanted France to modernize—to progress, as it was phrased then—pragmatically, by integrating science with humanistic values. He then turns to the Jimmy Guieu, about whom almost nothing is known, who was—in Lyau’s terms—an extremist, arguing that science and technology ended to be embraced even if that meant completely reconstructing what it meant to be French, or human: in may cases, aliens intervention was needed to save humans from their own technological foibles. Conservatives wanted France to look back upon its own history and find solutions to the problems of modernity—much as Charles de Gaulle had suggested, in a quotation used as the book’s epilogue. The radical writers wanted French society to revisit the question of what it meant to be human—what relationship,s what forms of communication most counted—and rebuild post-War civilization based around these ideas.
The argument is at times clever, but tau is almost never leaning beyond his skis: he keeps to the evidence. And the evidence is interesting, bringing to the reader a body of knowledge he is not likely otherwise to come across, either from secondary sources—there are none—or by direct reading—because of the language barrier. Certainly the connection to Voltaire and the conte philosophique is something of a stretch, since only a few of the writers seem to know of this tradition, but even if the historical link is not there—and it may be!—it is a useful heuristic.
The problem with the book, such as it is: it cost $55. And it is about a small sliver of a subject. I don’t see how academic publishing overcomes this problem. Perhaps, in the age of the internet, academics need to be encouraged to publish on-line, with tenure and other rewards coming to them from this. (But then what of peer review?) Because I want to see books like this—it was interesting and taught me a lot. But I bought it used, and even then paid more than I felt was fair. What to do, what to do?
Bradford Lyau, like yours truly, is a former academic who has continued to do scholarly research and try to publish it—although this may be to both of our detriments. Lyau studies French science fiction, which is oddly neglected. Jules Verne is one of the seminal writers in science fiction, yet he has been ill-served by poor and infrequent translations, and the rest of French science fiction—which has an interesting reciprocal relationship with Anglo-American varieties of the genre—has largely gone untranslated. Lyau wants to make us acquainted with a small part of post-World War II science fiction, that published under the “Anticipation” imprint during the 1950s. His choice of subject is inspired, allowing him to concentrate—and drill down—on small, but important, segment of science fiction.
The novelists who wrote for the imprint—all of them under a pseudonym—did so with many concerns in mind, he admits, while highlighting three. The first—the weakest claim, although very interesting—is Voltaire (hence the subtitle) and the so-called conte philosophique. Philosophical novels, he says, which downplayed character and plot in favor of ideas, was a prominent competitor of the realistic novel in the late 1800s and early 1900s before losing out. He claims that the French science fiction writers resurrected the form—a claim he can make mostly based on stylistic similarities, only rarely on direct influence. The second was a response to Anglo-American—especially American-science fiction, which came to France as a ready made genre, self-contained with tropes and vocabularies and scenes, tailor-made for the post-industrial revolution since American popular culture came of age with the industrial revolution. The third, and most pressing, concern was what to do about France in the years after World War II: how was a country destroyed militarily, rent culturally, to reintegrate and enter the modern world?
After an introduction and chapter setting out these issues, Lyau details the several answers of the French science fiction writers for the imprint, categorizing them thematically. He first discusses the moderates, those who wanted France to modernize—to progress, as it was phrased then—pragmatically, by integrating science with humanistic values. He then turns to the Jimmy Guieu, about whom almost nothing is known, who was—in Lyau’s terms—an extremist, arguing that science and technology ended to be embraced even if that meant completely reconstructing what it meant to be French, or human: in may cases, aliens intervention was needed to save humans from their own technological foibles. Conservatives wanted France to look back upon its own history and find solutions to the problems of modernity—much as Charles de Gaulle had suggested, in a quotation used as the book’s epilogue. The radical writers wanted French society to revisit the question of what it meant to be human—what relationship,s what forms of communication most counted—and rebuild post-War civilization based around these ideas.
The argument is at times clever, but tau is almost never leaning beyond his skis: he keeps to the evidence. And the evidence is interesting, bringing to the reader a body of knowledge he is not likely otherwise to come across, either from secondary sources—there are none—or by direct reading—because of the language barrier. Certainly the connection to Voltaire and the conte philosophique is something of a stretch, since only a few of the writers seem to know of this tradition, but even if the historical link is not there—and it may be!—it is a useful heuristic.
The problem with the book, such as it is: it cost $55. And it is about a small sliver of a subject. I don’t see how academic publishing overcomes this problem. Perhaps, in the age of the internet, academics need to be encouraged to publish on-line, with tenure and other rewards coming to them from this. (But then what of peer review?) Because I want to see books like this—it was interesting and taught me a lot. But I bought it used, and even then paid more than I felt was fair. What to do, what to do?
Read
July 19, 2014Audience: Any thinking reader with an acquaintance with European culture and an interest in science fiction. It does not depend on knowledge of terms and concepts of 20th century literary criticism.
Scope: This study treats 11 French writers--those who wrote for one imprint of a particular publishing house. It is time-bounded by the 1950s which both narrows which authors are selected and which of their books are reviewed.
He categorizes the 11 to illustrate their diversity. Within the categories he is careful to note the members difference as well as their commonalities.
Chapter 3 covers just 'Jimmy' Guieu who Bradford Lyau labels as an 'extremist,' here meaning that his stories embrace technical progress unhesitantly.
Chapter 4 covers four 'conservatives,' a term that in this text includes a reverence for a historically defined identity, maintaining the importance of religion in humanity's future, celebrating either rugged individualism, and/ or embracing knight-like guardians of societal direction.
Chapter 5 covers two 'radicals.' The label in this book refers to its primary meaning: one who goes back to the roots, not to its popular secondary meaning of extremist. This can mean drawing on J. J. Rousseau's naturalistic views on humankind, or a more modern examination of the social relations among us.
Chapter 2 is about three writers that the author classifies as 'moderates,' that is: anyone whose views are not shrouded but who doesn't fall into any of the above categories. Loosely they are writers who have some ambivalence about the impacts of technical progress.
One chapter is devoted to G. Klein (AKA G. d'Argyre). He was not otherwise classified because it is problematic to say to what degree he espoused his stories' views, or how much he embraced the popular literary form that contains his tales.
A theme throughout is the meld of the philosophical story in the tradition of Voltaire to the new science fiction form, with the blend viewed as distinctively French.
In the background chapter and here and there elsewhere in the book are useful sketches of literary, intellectual and political history that help elucidate Mr. Lyau's views on the chosen 11 authors.
Scope: This study treats 11 French writers--those who wrote for one imprint of a particular publishing house. It is time-bounded by the 1950s which both narrows which authors are selected and which of their books are reviewed.
He categorizes the 11 to illustrate their diversity. Within the categories he is careful to note the members difference as well as their commonalities.
Chapter 3 covers just 'Jimmy' Guieu who Bradford Lyau labels as an 'extremist,' here meaning that his stories embrace technical progress unhesitantly.
Chapter 4 covers four 'conservatives,' a term that in this text includes a reverence for a historically defined identity, maintaining the importance of religion in humanity's future, celebrating either rugged individualism, and/ or embracing knight-like guardians of societal direction.
Chapter 5 covers two 'radicals.' The label in this book refers to its primary meaning: one who goes back to the roots, not to its popular secondary meaning of extremist. This can mean drawing on J. J. Rousseau's naturalistic views on humankind, or a more modern examination of the social relations among us.
Chapter 2 is about three writers that the author classifies as 'moderates,' that is: anyone whose views are not shrouded but who doesn't fall into any of the above categories. Loosely they are writers who have some ambivalence about the impacts of technical progress.
One chapter is devoted to G. Klein (AKA G. d'Argyre). He was not otherwise classified because it is problematic to say to what degree he espoused his stories' views, or how much he embraced the popular literary form that contains his tales.
A theme throughout is the meld of the philosophical story in the tradition of Voltaire to the new science fiction form, with the blend viewed as distinctively French.
In the background chapter and here and there elsewhere in the book are useful sketches of literary, intellectual and political history that help elucidate Mr. Lyau's views on the chosen 11 authors.
Read
November 28, 2011The Anticipation Science Fiction Novelists of 1950s France (Paperback)
by Bradford Lyau
This was a pleasure to read. Before the discussion there is a summary.
I think anyone who enjoys reading science fiction will enjoy this book.
by Bradford Lyau
This was a pleasure to read. Before the discussion there is a summary.
I think anyone who enjoys reading science fiction will enjoy this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews