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Le Chant du barde
Les meilleurs récits de Poul Anderson
Exceptionnel best-of réunissant les meilleurs récits de science-fiction de l'un des plus considérables auteurs du domaine, soit neuf longues novellas, dont pas moins de six prix Hugo, chaque texte étant introduit et présenté par Jean-Daniel Brèque.
Au programme :
• Préface de Jean-Daniel Brèque
• Sam Hall
• Jupiter et les Centaures
• Long cours (Prix Hugo 1961)
• Pas de trêves avec les rois ! (Prix Hugo 1964)
• Le Partage de la chair (Prix Hugo 1969)
• Destins en chaîne
• La Reine de l'Air et des Ténèbres (Prix Hugo 1972 et Nebula 1971)
• Le Chant du barde (Prix Hugo 1973 et Nebula 1972)
• Le Jeu de Saturne (Prix Hugo 1982 et Nebula 1981)
• Bibliographie exhaustive de l'auteur
Exceptionnel best-of réunissant les meilleurs récits de science-fiction de l'un des plus considérables auteurs du domaine, soit neuf longues novellas, dont pas moins de six prix Hugo, chaque texte étant introduit et présenté par Jean-Daniel Brèque.
Au programme :
• Préface de Jean-Daniel Brèque
• Sam Hall
• Jupiter et les Centaures
• Long cours (Prix Hugo 1961)
• Pas de trêves avec les rois ! (Prix Hugo 1964)
• Le Partage de la chair (Prix Hugo 1969)
• Destins en chaîne
• La Reine de l'Air et des Ténèbres (Prix Hugo 1972 et Nebula 1971)
• Le Chant du barde (Prix Hugo 1973 et Nebula 1972)
• Le Jeu de Saturne (Prix Hugo 1982 et Nebula 1981)
• Bibliographie exhaustive de l'auteur
600 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1972
160 people want to read
About the author
Poul Anderson
1,621 books1,107 followersPseudonym A. A. Craig, Michael Karageorge, Winston P. Sanders, P. A. Kingsley.
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.
Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.
Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[2][3]
Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.
Series:
* Time Patrol
* Psychotechnic League
* Trygve Yamamura
* Harvest of Stars
* King of Ys
* Last Viking
* Hoka
* Future history of the Polesotechnic League
* Flandry
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 27, 2019
http://www.nicholaswhyte.info/sf/goatsong.htm
"Goat Song" is at first sight a retelling of the Orpheus myth (the title is a literal translation of the Greek phrase which became the English word "tragedy"). The narrator is a singer of old songs from Earth's distant past; his lover has died; the world is controlled by the computer known as SUM, which communicates with its inhabitants via a beautiful spokeswoman, and which also stores the personalities of the deceased in preparation for a future resurrection. Our hero seduces the spokeswoman and is allowed to enter the castle where SUM is located to ask for the return of his woman. His request is granted, subject to the condition that he must not look back as he leaves the castle. He looks back; and loses her. On his return to the outside world, he preaches revolution against the machines, and finally sacrifices himself to the female followers of a primitivist cult.
Anderson is quite a difficult author to grasp. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes that "With dozens of novels and hundreds of stories to his credit -- all written with a resolute professionalism and widening range, though also with a marked disparity between copious storytelling skills and a certain banality in the creation of characters -- [Anderson] is still not as well defined a figure in the pantheon of US sf as writers (like Isaac Asimov from the Golden Age of SF and Frank Herbert from a decade later) of about the same age and certainly no greater skill." Part of the problem for me is the way he packed so much material into all of his stories. For instance, There Will Be Time, published the same year as "Goat Song", is mainly about time travel, has a substantial subplot in Byzantine history, and features Anderson himself as an off-screen character. It's sometimes difficult to see the wood for the trees. Yet only Joe Haldeman and Fritz Leiber have equalled his feat of winning both Hugo and Nebula for the same story three times, and only Connie Willis has exceeded it, with the likes of Le Guin, Clarke, Ellison, Asimov, managing the feat only twice.
This difficulty of grasping Anderson is demonstrated in his own account of the genesis of both "Goat Song" in his autobiographical collection, Going For Infinity, which turns out to be much more a story about Harlan Ellison's Hugo-winning story "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" . At the Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference in 1966, attended by "the likes of Gordon Dickson, Richard McKenna, James Blish, John Brunner, Anne McCaffrey, Alan Nourse, Ted Cogswell, Phyllis Gotlieb", amidst the "smoky, boozy, noisy, cheery turmoil", Harlan Ellison got inspired, took his typewriter into an empty room, and began writing. "I remember he asked me about a point in Norse mythology, and, caught off guard, I gave him a not-quite-correct answer; but no matter." (This presumably explains why the giant bird "from Norse mythology" in the Ellison story is described as "this Huergelmir" - almost but not quite like a name from the sagas.)
The story, the memory of the party and of Jean Cocteau's film Orpheus crystallised in Anderson's mind to produce "Goat Song". "About the only similarity between the two science fiction tales is the concept of human personalities preserved after death as data in a giant, probably quantum-mechanical computer system, for eventual resurrection either into virtual reality or as downloads into new bodies. Harlan didn't have a patent on it, but it was pretty new at the time, and I thought it proper to request his okay, which he graciously gave." Because of problems with the original buyer (a "well-paying magazine" which almost immediately folded - presumably Worlds of Tomorrow, whose editor, Frederik Pohl, is not mentioned even once in Going for Infinity) "Goat Song" didn't see the light of day until published in Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1972.
Added January 2005: Ellison's account confirms Anderson's: "Poul Anderson dropped me a note several months ago explaining that he had just written a story he was about to send out to market when he realised it paralleled the theme of a story [of mine] he had read at a writers' conference we had both attended, just a month or so before. He added that his story was only vaguely similar to mine, but he wanted to apprise me of the resemblance so there would be no question later. It was a rhetorical letter: I'm arrogant, but not arrogant enough to believe that Poul Anderson needs to crib from me." (Dangerous Visions, Ellison's preface to "A Toy For Juliette" by Robert Bloch.)
Anderson was wrong to think that the idea of personality storage in computers for potential later reincarnation was all that new. A number of stories had already been published which used this concept - most notably, Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars, first published in 1956; also Jack Vance's novel To Live Forever, likewise first published in 1956 and re-issued in early 1966 by Ballantine; and in Roger Zelazny's short story "For A Breath I Tarry", first published in spring 1966, the story is the other way round - his computer protagonist decides to become incarnated as a human. Zelazny came back to this theme several times - the human hero of his 1967 novel Lord of Light goes through the process of recording and reincarnation that the narrator of "Goat Song" seeks for his beloved; and the Recall process in Zelazny's novel Isle of the Dead, published in 1969, is almost identical to the resurrection process in "Goat Song" (except that it runs via skull plates rather than bracelets). It also crops up in another 1969 novel, Robert Silverberg's To Live Again.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction gives me the following cross-references for sf treatments of Orpheus: Samuel R Delany's The Einstein Intersection, Constantine Fitzgibbon's The Golden Age, Charles Harness's Wolfhead, Russell Hoban's The Medusa Frequency, Tim Powers' Dinner at Deviant's Palace, and in particular Patricia A. McKillop's Fool's Run. To that list one would now have to add Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet and of course Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Out of this list I've read only Powers and Gaiman, but I suspect it doesn't matter too much, because "Goat Song" relies at least as much on the Jean Cocteau film (see review by Roger Ebert) than on the original legend; in particular, the beautiful woman in a remarkable vehicle who is a mysterious intermediary with Death is a direct lift from Cocteau. Orpheus in the film is a poet rather than a bard, and in Anderson's story quotes other people's poetry, rather than (as in the legend) composing his own music. And in both cases, Death (or its representation as the computer SUM) is much more of an actor than in the classical myth.
And in any case, the story is more a libertarian parable than a retelling of classical myth - perhaps Ellison's "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" is more relevant than "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream". I refer back to Clarke's The City and the Stars, where (as in "Goat Song") a young man from a mechanised, unchanging city finds a new meaning for his life in a rural setting. But whereas Clarke's Lys is a civilised country town, Anderson's wilderness is very wild indeed, a place where ordinary laws do not hold; and where Clarke's hero discovers a spaceship and goes off to find the meaning of life, leaving his home city to adjust to the discoveries he has made, Anderson's hero comes back from his life-changing experiences determined to smash the system, in a rage against the tyranny that humans have imposed on themselves by handing themselves over to SUM. His final self-sacrifice at the hands of his fellow humans and indeed the earlier promise of a physical resurrection are both (probably deliberately) reminiscent of Christianity.
Several other striking things need to be mentioned about the story. The only two named characters are Thrakia, the woman who eventually kills the narrator, and SUM, the computer he plots to destroy. The narrator himself is never named, and the two other women, the Eurydice character and the Dark Queen, are given epithets but no names. This gives the whole story a mythical, almost archetypal feel. The other point, mentioned earlier, is that the narrator does not compose his own songs, but quotes from Swinburne, Brooke, Dunbar, Arnold, Wolfe, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, the Psalter, and "Tom O'Bedlam". This is partly to illustrate the way in which the mechanised city culture has cut its inhabitants off from their own cultural heritage. It's also a bit of a relief in that many other authors have succumbed to the fatal temptation to try and compose their own verse to fit in with the plot. (Are you listening, A.S. Byatt?)
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3227190.html
Coming back to it now, the only point I feel I missed in 2004 was Anderson's really inventive use of language - "the westering sun wanbright"; "true wood of different comely grains", "Hoarfrost is gray on the steel shapes". It's a story that would sound well when read aloud.
"Goat Song" is at first sight a retelling of the Orpheus myth (the title is a literal translation of the Greek phrase which became the English word "tragedy"). The narrator is a singer of old songs from Earth's distant past; his lover has died; the world is controlled by the computer known as SUM, which communicates with its inhabitants via a beautiful spokeswoman, and which also stores the personalities of the deceased in preparation for a future resurrection. Our hero seduces the spokeswoman and is allowed to enter the castle where SUM is located to ask for the return of his woman. His request is granted, subject to the condition that he must not look back as he leaves the castle. He looks back; and loses her. On his return to the outside world, he preaches revolution against the machines, and finally sacrifices himself to the female followers of a primitivist cult.
Anderson is quite a difficult author to grasp. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes that "With dozens of novels and hundreds of stories to his credit -- all written with a resolute professionalism and widening range, though also with a marked disparity between copious storytelling skills and a certain banality in the creation of characters -- [Anderson] is still not as well defined a figure in the pantheon of US sf as writers (like Isaac Asimov from the Golden Age of SF and Frank Herbert from a decade later) of about the same age and certainly no greater skill." Part of the problem for me is the way he packed so much material into all of his stories. For instance, There Will Be Time, published the same year as "Goat Song", is mainly about time travel, has a substantial subplot in Byzantine history, and features Anderson himself as an off-screen character. It's sometimes difficult to see the wood for the trees. Yet only Joe Haldeman and Fritz Leiber have equalled his feat of winning both Hugo and Nebula for the same story three times, and only Connie Willis has exceeded it, with the likes of Le Guin, Clarke, Ellison, Asimov, managing the feat only twice.
This difficulty of grasping Anderson is demonstrated in his own account of the genesis of both "Goat Song" in his autobiographical collection, Going For Infinity, which turns out to be much more a story about Harlan Ellison's Hugo-winning story "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" . At the Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference in 1966, attended by "the likes of Gordon Dickson, Richard McKenna, James Blish, John Brunner, Anne McCaffrey, Alan Nourse, Ted Cogswell, Phyllis Gotlieb", amidst the "smoky, boozy, noisy, cheery turmoil", Harlan Ellison got inspired, took his typewriter into an empty room, and began writing. "I remember he asked me about a point in Norse mythology, and, caught off guard, I gave him a not-quite-correct answer; but no matter." (This presumably explains why the giant bird "from Norse mythology" in the Ellison story is described as "this Huergelmir" - almost but not quite like a name from the sagas.)
The story, the memory of the party and of Jean Cocteau's film Orpheus crystallised in Anderson's mind to produce "Goat Song". "About the only similarity between the two science fiction tales is the concept of human personalities preserved after death as data in a giant, probably quantum-mechanical computer system, for eventual resurrection either into virtual reality or as downloads into new bodies. Harlan didn't have a patent on it, but it was pretty new at the time, and I thought it proper to request his okay, which he graciously gave." Because of problems with the original buyer (a "well-paying magazine" which almost immediately folded - presumably Worlds of Tomorrow, whose editor, Frederik Pohl, is not mentioned even once in Going for Infinity) "Goat Song" didn't see the light of day until published in Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1972.
Added January 2005: Ellison's account confirms Anderson's: "Poul Anderson dropped me a note several months ago explaining that he had just written a story he was about to send out to market when he realised it paralleled the theme of a story [of mine] he had read at a writers' conference we had both attended, just a month or so before. He added that his story was only vaguely similar to mine, but he wanted to apprise me of the resemblance so there would be no question later. It was a rhetorical letter: I'm arrogant, but not arrogant enough to believe that Poul Anderson needs to crib from me." (Dangerous Visions, Ellison's preface to "A Toy For Juliette" by Robert Bloch.)
Anderson was wrong to think that the idea of personality storage in computers for potential later reincarnation was all that new. A number of stories had already been published which used this concept - most notably, Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars, first published in 1956; also Jack Vance's novel To Live Forever, likewise first published in 1956 and re-issued in early 1966 by Ballantine; and in Roger Zelazny's short story "For A Breath I Tarry", first published in spring 1966, the story is the other way round - his computer protagonist decides to become incarnated as a human. Zelazny came back to this theme several times - the human hero of his 1967 novel Lord of Light goes through the process of recording and reincarnation that the narrator of "Goat Song" seeks for his beloved; and the Recall process in Zelazny's novel Isle of the Dead, published in 1969, is almost identical to the resurrection process in "Goat Song" (except that it runs via skull plates rather than bracelets). It also crops up in another 1969 novel, Robert Silverberg's To Live Again.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction gives me the following cross-references for sf treatments of Orpheus: Samuel R Delany's The Einstein Intersection, Constantine Fitzgibbon's The Golden Age, Charles Harness's Wolfhead, Russell Hoban's The Medusa Frequency, Tim Powers' Dinner at Deviant's Palace, and in particular Patricia A. McKillop's Fool's Run. To that list one would now have to add Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet and of course Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Out of this list I've read only Powers and Gaiman, but I suspect it doesn't matter too much, because "Goat Song" relies at least as much on the Jean Cocteau film (see review by Roger Ebert) than on the original legend; in particular, the beautiful woman in a remarkable vehicle who is a mysterious intermediary with Death is a direct lift from Cocteau. Orpheus in the film is a poet rather than a bard, and in Anderson's story quotes other people's poetry, rather than (as in the legend) composing his own music. And in both cases, Death (or its representation as the computer SUM) is much more of an actor than in the classical myth.
And in any case, the story is more a libertarian parable than a retelling of classical myth - perhaps Ellison's "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" is more relevant than "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream". I refer back to Clarke's The City and the Stars, where (as in "Goat Song") a young man from a mechanised, unchanging city finds a new meaning for his life in a rural setting. But whereas Clarke's Lys is a civilised country town, Anderson's wilderness is very wild indeed, a place where ordinary laws do not hold; and where Clarke's hero discovers a spaceship and goes off to find the meaning of life, leaving his home city to adjust to the discoveries he has made, Anderson's hero comes back from his life-changing experiences determined to smash the system, in a rage against the tyranny that humans have imposed on themselves by handing themselves over to SUM. His final self-sacrifice at the hands of his fellow humans and indeed the earlier promise of a physical resurrection are both (probably deliberately) reminiscent of Christianity.
Several other striking things need to be mentioned about the story. The only two named characters are Thrakia, the woman who eventually kills the narrator, and SUM, the computer he plots to destroy. The narrator himself is never named, and the two other women, the Eurydice character and the Dark Queen, are given epithets but no names. This gives the whole story a mythical, almost archetypal feel. The other point, mentioned earlier, is that the narrator does not compose his own songs, but quotes from Swinburne, Brooke, Dunbar, Arnold, Wolfe, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, the Psalter, and "Tom O'Bedlam". This is partly to illustrate the way in which the mechanised city culture has cut its inhabitants off from their own cultural heritage. It's also a bit of a relief in that many other authors have succumbed to the fatal temptation to try and compose their own verse to fit in with the plot. (Are you listening, A.S. Byatt?)
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3227190.html
Coming back to it now, the only point I feel I missed in 2004 was Anderson's really inventive use of language - "the westering sun wanbright"; "true wood of different comely grains", "Hoarfrost is gray on the steel shapes". It's a story that would sound well when read aloud.
December 26, 2021
4 out of 5
October 10, 2020
Ce recueil marque ma découverte de l’auteur. Belle surprise ! Les nouvelles mettent en scène des univers parfois très différents, elles explorent diverses thématiques, et la plupart sont de grande qualité !
Sam Hall (Sam Hall) : écrite au début des années 50, elle décrit déjà un avenir où tout le monde est fiché et noté ! Un des responsables du système de fichage modifie les données, au départ pour se protéger. Puis, par révolte contre le monde militarisé dans lequel il vit, il crée de toutes pièces la fiche d’un homme en marge de la société. Sans l’avoir prémédité, notre protagoniste déclenche une succession d’événements… Une nouvelle qui aborde des problématiques graves, et que j’ai beaucoup appréciée.
Jupiter et les Centaures (Call me Joe) : basé sur un des satellites de Jupiter, un homme est chargé de contrôler par l’esprit un être vivant adapté aux conditions de vie extrêmes de la planète géante, et créé à cet effet par des scientifiques. Une nouvelle intéressante sur le thème de la conscience et de l’esprit humain, mais qui n’est pas ma préférée du recueil.
Long cours (The Longest Voyage, Prix Hugo 1961) : sur une planète inconnue, des hommes vivent dans une civilisation prétechnologique. Un capitaine et son équipage prennent la mer, persuadés que leur terre n’est pas plate mais ronde, et partent à la recherche des mythiques Cités d’Or. Même si j’ai deviné la conclusion bien avant la fin, j’ai lu avec beaucoup de plaisir cette nouvelle sur le thème du devenir des groupes humains échoués sur des planètes isolées.
Pas de trêve avec les rois ! (No Truce With Kings, Prix Hugo 1964) : après une guerre dévastatrice, l’humanité est revenue technologiquement en arrière. Deux camps s’affrontent militairement au sein des Etats-Pacifique : des faucons va-t-en-guerre et adeptes de la centralisation, contre des modérés qui sont attachés à une société un brin féodale. Le lecteur découvre rapidement que des extra-terrestres évolués agissent en sous-main pour influencer l’Histoire, et à terme intégrer une humanité pacifiée dans la galaxie. Une nouvelle intéressante sur la destinée humaine et le libre arbitre.
Le Partage de la chair (The Sharing of Flesh, Prix Hugo 1969) : des milliers d’années après l’effondrement de l’Empire, des chercheurs appartenant à un peuple ayant conservé un bon niveau de technologie sont sur une planète où les groupes humains ont beaucoup régressé, y compris physiquement. Soudain, un des chercheurs est assassiné par un indigène dans des conditions ignobles. Sur le thème de la différence des cultures quand existe un écart technologique important, une nouvelle qui se révèle agréable à lire, avec une fin humaniste.
Destins en chaîne (The Fatal Fulfillment) : une nouvelle un peu à part : sur un prologue écrit par un auteur, quatre écrivains imaginent une suite… Poul Anderson s’est plié à l’exercice, mais je n’ai pas accroché à son récit, ou je n’ai pas compris l’intention. C’est la seule de ce recueil qui ne m’a pas donné de plaisir de lecture.
La Reine de l’Air et des Ténèbres (The Queen of Air and Darkness, Prix Hugo 1971, Locus et Nebula) : sur une planète au climat hostile, un jeune enfant est enlevé par des indigènes. Sa mère, désespérée que la police ne croie pas à un enlèvement, fait appel à un détective privé, alors que dans les régions reculées de cette planète, on croit à la présence d’êtres quasi magiques qui enlèvent les petits enfants. Une très jolie variation sur le thème des changelings revu dans une optique science-fiction, mêlée à une allégorie de la conquête des Amériques et la quasi-disparition des Indiens. L’auteur a réussi à garder une tonalité poétique et douce-amère sur le conflit entre la rationalité scientifique et le besoin de croyances. Cette nouvelle a reçu des prix largement mérités !
Le Chant du barde (Goat Song, Prix Hugo 1973 et Nebula) : une étrange nouvelle dans un futur indéterminé. Des entités (robots ? dieux ?) ont l’omnipotence sur l’humanité qui s’est déchargée de toute responsabilité sur ces entités. Le Harpiste a perdu sa bien-aimée, et réclame qu’on la lui rende… Narrée comme un songe, une histoire qui réinterprète certains mythes antiques et suggère la reprise en main de son destin.
Le Jeu de Saturne (The Saturn Game, Prix Hugo 1982 et Nebula) : des scientifiques sont partis pour un long voyage vers un des satellites de Saturne. Pour passer le temps, certains s’investissent dans un jeu de rôle. Arrivés à destination, quatre d’entre eux atterrissent sur le satellite, mais font-ils encore la différence entre la vie de leurs personnages et la vie réelle ? En cas d’incident grave, sauront-ils envisager rationnellement la situation, ou s’enfuir vers un monde imaginaire proposant des épopées héroïques périlleuses ? Une nouvelle douce-amère explorant le danger des jeux pour ceux qui ne sont plus intégrés dans une société réelle et complexe.
Sam Hall (Sam Hall) : écrite au début des années 50, elle décrit déjà un avenir où tout le monde est fiché et noté ! Un des responsables du système de fichage modifie les données, au départ pour se protéger. Puis, par révolte contre le monde militarisé dans lequel il vit, il crée de toutes pièces la fiche d’un homme en marge de la société. Sans l’avoir prémédité, notre protagoniste déclenche une succession d’événements… Une nouvelle qui aborde des problématiques graves, et que j’ai beaucoup appréciée.
Jupiter et les Centaures (Call me Joe) : basé sur un des satellites de Jupiter, un homme est chargé de contrôler par l’esprit un être vivant adapté aux conditions de vie extrêmes de la planète géante, et créé à cet effet par des scientifiques. Une nouvelle intéressante sur le thème de la conscience et de l’esprit humain, mais qui n’est pas ma préférée du recueil.
Long cours (The Longest Voyage, Prix Hugo 1961) : sur une planète inconnue, des hommes vivent dans une civilisation prétechnologique. Un capitaine et son équipage prennent la mer, persuadés que leur terre n’est pas plate mais ronde, et partent à la recherche des mythiques Cités d’Or. Même si j’ai deviné la conclusion bien avant la fin, j’ai lu avec beaucoup de plaisir cette nouvelle sur le thème du devenir des groupes humains échoués sur des planètes isolées.
Pas de trêve avec les rois ! (No Truce With Kings, Prix Hugo 1964) : après une guerre dévastatrice, l’humanité est revenue technologiquement en arrière. Deux camps s’affrontent militairement au sein des Etats-Pacifique : des faucons va-t-en-guerre et adeptes de la centralisation, contre des modérés qui sont attachés à une société un brin féodale. Le lecteur découvre rapidement que des extra-terrestres évolués agissent en sous-main pour influencer l’Histoire, et à terme intégrer une humanité pacifiée dans la galaxie. Une nouvelle intéressante sur la destinée humaine et le libre arbitre.
Le Partage de la chair (The Sharing of Flesh, Prix Hugo 1969) : des milliers d’années après l’effondrement de l’Empire, des chercheurs appartenant à un peuple ayant conservé un bon niveau de technologie sont sur une planète où les groupes humains ont beaucoup régressé, y compris physiquement. Soudain, un des chercheurs est assassiné par un indigène dans des conditions ignobles. Sur le thème de la différence des cultures quand existe un écart technologique important, une nouvelle qui se révèle agréable à lire, avec une fin humaniste.
Destins en chaîne (The Fatal Fulfillment) : une nouvelle un peu à part : sur un prologue écrit par un auteur, quatre écrivains imaginent une suite… Poul Anderson s’est plié à l’exercice, mais je n’ai pas accroché à son récit, ou je n’ai pas compris l’intention. C’est la seule de ce recueil qui ne m’a pas donné de plaisir de lecture.
La Reine de l’Air et des Ténèbres (The Queen of Air and Darkness, Prix Hugo 1971, Locus et Nebula) : sur une planète au climat hostile, un jeune enfant est enlevé par des indigènes. Sa mère, désespérée que la police ne croie pas à un enlèvement, fait appel à un détective privé, alors que dans les régions reculées de cette planète, on croit à la présence d’êtres quasi magiques qui enlèvent les petits enfants. Une très jolie variation sur le thème des changelings revu dans une optique science-fiction, mêlée à une allégorie de la conquête des Amériques et la quasi-disparition des Indiens. L’auteur a réussi à garder une tonalité poétique et douce-amère sur le conflit entre la rationalité scientifique et le besoin de croyances. Cette nouvelle a reçu des prix largement mérités !
Le Chant du barde (Goat Song, Prix Hugo 1973 et Nebula) : une étrange nouvelle dans un futur indéterminé. Des entités (robots ? dieux ?) ont l’omnipotence sur l’humanité qui s’est déchargée de toute responsabilité sur ces entités. Le Harpiste a perdu sa bien-aimée, et réclame qu’on la lui rende… Narrée comme un songe, une histoire qui réinterprète certains mythes antiques et suggère la reprise en main de son destin.
Le Jeu de Saturne (The Saturn Game, Prix Hugo 1982 et Nebula) : des scientifiques sont partis pour un long voyage vers un des satellites de Saturne. Pour passer le temps, certains s’investissent dans un jeu de rôle. Arrivés à destination, quatre d’entre eux atterrissent sur le satellite, mais font-ils encore la différence entre la vie de leurs personnages et la vie réelle ? En cas d’incident grave, sauront-ils envisager rationnellement la situation, ou s’enfuir vers un monde imaginaire proposant des épopées héroïques périlleuses ? Une nouvelle douce-amère explorant le danger des jeux pour ceux qui ne sont plus intégrés dans une société réelle et complexe.
November 7, 2019
This review is a bit of a ramble. This was an interesting retelling of the Orpheus myth. The long walk to the 'living word' was excruciating reading because I knew what was going to happen. That Harper should think a zombie was possibly following him seemed a bit ridiculous to me, considering he has seen the Dark Queen up close and knows that SUM is capable of recreating a human and imprinting them with their 'original soul'.
The ending with Harper walking out to meet the women was meant to be a parallel to the maenads who tore Orpheus to pieces. Before Harper leaves to be killed, he says "The god must die, that his followers may believe he is raised from the dead and lives forever. Then they will go on to conquer the world." This smacks of Christianity more than Greek mythology. A quick scan of Wikipedia tells me it's not actually part of the myth. Anderson did put quite a bit in that I didn't even know. I note that Harper never names his 'woman' only using pet names when referring to her which I thought was a bit weird.
The ending with Harper walking out to meet the women was meant to be a parallel to the maenads who tore Orpheus to pieces. Before Harper leaves to be killed, he says "The god must die, that his followers may believe he is raised from the dead and lives forever. Then they will go on to conquer the world." This smacks of Christianity more than Greek mythology. A quick scan of Wikipedia tells me it's not actually part of the myth. Anderson did put quite a bit in that I didn't even know. I note that Harper never names his 'woman' only using pet names when referring to her which I thought was a bit weird.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 16, 2017
Une dizaine de nouvelles. Certaines ont très bien vieilli, d'autres moins.
January 1, 2019
Enjoyed the retellings of myths.
January 22, 2024
Perfect.
March 9, 2018
Le Chant du Barde regroupe neuf récits de science-fiction, dans lesquels l'auteur déploie des situations souvent tragiques et des environnements magnifiques, sur Terre et dans l'espace, pour réfléchir sur l'Homme et certains problèmes de sa civilisation.
Mention spéciale aux descriptions de Jupiter et de Japet (un satellite de Saturne).
https://leschroniquesduchroniqueur.wo...
Mention spéciale aux descriptions de Jupiter et de Japet (un satellite de Saturne).
https://leschroniquesduchroniqueur.wo...
may-read
August 16, 2015Reprinted in Admiralty (to reread)
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