by Theo Varlet
The Golden Rock
by
Théo Varlet
translated, annotated and introduced by
Brian Stableford
A Black Coat Press Book
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 4
THE GOLDEN ROCK 10
THE THUNDER OF ZEUS 181
THE LAST SATYR 193
MESSALINA 205
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION 217
Introduction
Le Roc d’or by Théo Varlet, here translated as The Golden Rock, was originally published in Paris by Plon in 1927. Two of the other three stories included here first appeared in the short-lived periodical Le Beffroi, and are among the author’s earliest prose works, written while he was still affiliated to the Symbolist Movement; “Le Tonnerre de Zeus,” here translated as “The Thunder of Zeus,” appeared there in 1904; “Le Dernier satyre,” here translated as “The Last Satyr,” in 1905. Both stories were reprinted in the author’s first short story collection, La Bella Venere, in 1920, and then again in the expanded “édition définitive” of that collection issued in Amiens 1923 by Edgar Malfère as Le Dernier satyre. “Messaline,” here translated as “Messalina,” was one of three further items added to the later collection, and was probably original to it, although some bibliographies give an original date of 1922.1
Le Roc d’or was Varlet’s first solo roman scientifique, although he had previously written two based on original versions by Octave Joncquel, collectively known as L’Épopée martienne (1921-22)2, and one on an original version by André Blandin, La Belle Valence (1923)3. He published one other during his lifetime, La Grande panne (1930)4, but the sequel to the last-named, Aurore Lescure, pilote d’astronef [Aurora Lescure, Spaceship Pilot], was only issued posthumously. Varlet was also an important pioneer and practitioner of “cosmic poetry” reflecting scientific notions and astronomical discoveries.5
In a preface added to a 1936 reprint of La Grande panne, Varlet complained bitterly that it had been reported to him that the fundamental premise of that novel—microbes developed from extraterrestrial spores causing havoc on Earth—had been subsequently used in a story in an American pulp science fiction magazine, which circumstance he interpreted as plagiarism. He was, perhaps, being slightly inconsistent in so doing, given that La Belle Valence explicitly borrowed H. G. Wells’s time machine as its initial premise, and Le Roc d’or is, in effect, a variation on the theme of Jules Verne’s posthumously issued novel—revised for publication by Michel Verne—La Chasse au météore (1908)6.
It is possible that, if he had been charged with this inconsistency, Varlet might have used the same defense as Oscar Wilde, to whom it was pointed out when he complained bitterly about one of his ideas being stolen, that he was a frequent borrower of ideas himself. Wilde replied that when he saw a beautiful flower with four petals, it was only natural that he should be inspired to produce one with five, but that he could not see for the life of him why anyone would want to produce one with only three. Whether or not Varlet would have made that reply, however, it is actually the case that the history of speculative fiction is replete with instances of authors taking up the innovative ideas of others and developing them further, or in different directions, and that that capacity is one of the strengths and glories of the genre. Although Le Roc d’or does use the same premise as Verne’s novel, it extrapolates it in a very different fashion; it is far from being a mere copy, and its supplementation enhances the interest of the two works, viewed as a pair.
Verne’s novel is an amiable comedy whose principal plot-line concerns the dispute between two amateur astronomers in a small American town over which of them deserves priority for the discovery of what would nowadays be called a “near-Earth object,” which they have both spotted at the same time. Their quarrel causes a rift between their two families, which threatens to disrupt a projected marriage between two of the younger members. In Verne’s story, the stray mass is captured by the Earth’s gravitational field and assumes a stable orbit around it, effectively becoming a tiny second moon. When the discovery is made, spectroscopically, that it is made of gold, the bonanza seems to be permanently out of reach, but in a secondary plot-line an eccentric genius builds a kind of ray-gun capable of causing its orbit to decay, so that the object will fall to Earth—a feat that he eventually contrives, bringing the mass down on the shore of an island off Greenland.
The probability that the advent of a meteorite made of gold would inflame the kind of “gold fever” that had provoked “gold rushes” in Australia and California during the early 19th century and the Klondike gold rush of 1897-99 within living memory—the last-named extensively and memorably featured in fiction by Jack London and poems by Robert W. Service—is treated flippantly in Verne’s novel, and the potential economic upheaval consequent on a sudden massive increase in the world’s gold supply is barely mentioned, although the scientist’s banker is able to use his inside knowledge to make a fortune. In the climax of Verne’s novel, it is the romantic settlements that take pride of place, while wider implications are complacently swept under the carpet.
In Varlet’s novel, on the other hand, the humor is conscientiously underplayed and much blacker in tone, the element of satire is correspondingly more scathing, and the economic and political aspects of the consequences of the meteorite’s fall, discovery and exploitation are the principal dramatic focus of the story. Although the narrative does appear, briefly, to be shaping up as a conventional spy story with a formulaic “love interest,” that dimension is swiftly marginalized in favor of its cynical analysis of the of the economic and political impact of the meteoric gold on a world whose currencies’ long dependence on the gold standard is on the brink of falling apart by virtue of the hectic inflation that followed the fallout of the Great War of 1914-18.
Although we now live in a world in which the gold standard is ancient history—although the price of gold still remains an economic obsession—it is arguable that our current economic troubles, as the world’s banks and the euro teeter on the edge of an abyss of irredeemable debt, are sufficiently closely akin to the inflationary upheavals of the 1920s to allow contemporary readers to take a more sympathetic interest in the plot of Le Roc d’or than might have been possible in the later decades of the 20th century. Varlet could not foresee the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression, nor could he anticipate the precise circumstances in which World War II—which he could and did foresee—would actually break out, but he certainly has a clearer consciousness of such apocalyptic possibilities than many other writers of the period.
Perhaps there is an element of whimsical fantasy in Le Roc d’or’s depiction of the French people’s psychological reaction to the revaluation of the talismanic franc, but it is an element of fantasy with which modern readers can identify quite strongly, as we suffer similar anxieties and preoccupations with regard to the value of our own currencies. In addition, Varlet’s cynicism concerning the functioning and achievements of the League of Nations can hardly help but strike a resonant chord with contemporary views of the United Nations, which was set up as the earlier organization’s more competent successor. We now know that Le Roc d’or was not a prophetic novel, but we also know that it was a novel with its finger firmly on the pulse of real issues and real concerns, which addresses them with an admirable verve and perspicacity.
Although the reputation that economics has of being the “dismal science” has not recommended it strongly for frequent treatment in popular speculative fiction, Varlet demonstrates that its melodramatic potential is by no means inconsiderable. The fact that Le Roc d’or carries forward and varies the fundamental premise of Jules Verne’s novel makes both works more interest
ing rather than less, and invites fruitful comparison. Although it might seem the least weighty of Varlet’s endeavors in the field of the romans scientifiques, he was a consistently ambitious and artful writer in that genre, and his works of that sort all made a valuable contribution to the unfortunately-fugitive development of the genre in the difficult decades following the end of the Great War.
Le Roc d’or explicitly, if somewhat ironically, looks back to the period before the Great War as a kind of Golden Age. It did not seem so at the time, of course, when nostalgia tended to look to a much more remote imaginary past for inspiration, especially in a nation where a “good education” was still held to consist of fluency in Greek and Latin and ability to appreciate the Classics. The three short stories appended to the novel are quite different in their generic affiliations, but exhibit nevertheless the same blithely cynical skepticism, as well as the same preoccupation with the corrosive effects of time and the ambivalence of progress. An essential element of Varlet’s career as a writer of prose fiction was the imaginative impetus provided by his realization that the world had changed completely within his lifetime, thanks to the advent of new means of travel and media of communication. The development of this consciousness throughout his career is mapped out by the two pairs of stories included herein, thus permitting another exercise in comparison, more visible now to our historically-educated eyes than it was at the time when the works were produced.
This translation of Le Roc d’or was made from a copy of the 1927 Plon edition. The translations of the three short stories were all made from a copy of the 1923 Malfère edition of Le Dernier satyre.
Brian Stableford
THE GOLDEN ROCK
I. By Wireless
Jovial and agitated, under pressure as usual—even when on holiday—my friend René Jolliot, the famous film-director, greeted me with open arms at the entrance to the veranda. Then he drew me into the loggia, open to the sea breeze, where his wife the film star was chatting with two people I didn’t know, near a table set for aperitifs.
He scarcely gave me time to bow to the nonchalant Lucienne Jolliot, sprawled on the divan with a carnation in her hand and made up as in the Superbo films that had rendered all her quasi-Oriental charm familiar. He introduced me to the two strangers.
“My old friend Antoine Marquin, member of the Barcot expedition, who is getting ready to leave on the Erebus II for the conquest of the South Pole.”
I bowed to: “Doctor Hans Kohbuler, honorary professor at the University of Basle, and his charming daughter, Mademoiselle Frédérique-Elsa Kohbuler, doctor of mathematical sciences…who wanted to meet you, Antoine, and who also, when she learned that you would be here today at noon, did us the honor of staying to lunch. You’ll be taking pot luck, I warn you!”
By way of corrective commentary on this dire augury, which his wife greeted with an indignant “Oh!” Jolliot launched himself toward the next room with a mischievous wink.
In the dining room, adjacent to the veranda, which overlooked the sunlit sea from the top of the cliff, the beach with its multicolored tents and the roofs of Wimereux, two discreetly-circulating valets were completing the setting of a lavish and promising table. I only darted one grateful glance at it, however, my interest returning to the young female doctor. The sight of her produced a bizarre, hitherto unknown emotion in me; it was as if, in that tall, slim young woman with the blonde hair in a Florentine bob, the soft and serious face and the blue eyes enlivened by black lashes and eyebrows, I had rediscovered an old friend. She looked at me with an undisguised sympathetic curiosity.
I was scarcely able to collect myself in order to listen to her father, who was speaking to me. That individual, with a worldly air, scholarly baldness, a prominent Semitic nose and a salt-and-pepper beard, was looking at me from behind his round spectacles with eyes of a troubling malachite-green color.
“My dear colleague,” he said, “since our exquisite hostess has been kind enough to contrive this meeting with you, I’ll get straight to the point, with a businesslike frankness—for unlike you, I’m not only a scientist. The necessities of everyday life...
“Firstly, permit me to ask a question. The South Pole has already been discovered, some years ago. Commander Barcot is going back there. Is that to take possession of it, officially, in the name of your country?”
A slight German accent and a hint of veiled aggression beneath the courteous tone prejudiced me against the Swiss professor, but the seduction—or rather the magnetism—exerted on me by be the person I was already thinking of as “Frédérique” attenuated the dryness of my reply.
“Not at all, Professor. Our mission has nothing official about it; its goals are entirely scientific. We’re going to explore the higher regions of Antarctica.”
“You see, Father?” said the young doctor, in impeccable French, in a contralto voice that made me quiver delightfully.
Without paying any heed to his daughter, the professor said: “I congratulate you, my dear colleague. If I were ten years younger, and if the personnel of the Erebus II were not doubtless complete, I’d gladly join you...”
“Oh, Doctor!” said the film-director, impetuously, who was pouring the port and had only heard the end of the sentence. “If I wasn’t so busy, I too would offer my services to Commander Barcot. Antarctica! What marvelous films one could shoot there…even our dear star, who’s as sensitive to the cold as a snake...” He glanced at his wife. “But Barcot’s expedition has been complete for a long time, isn’t that so, Antoine? And but for your friend Jean-Paul Rivier...”
He left the sentence unfinished, and lifted his glass to his lips with a complicit smile.
“Monsieur Jolliot is mistaken regarding my father’s intentions,” the young woman said, serenely. “My father is not asking to join the expedition.”
“I only desire one thing,” declared Kohbuler, curtly. “To make the acquaintance of the Maecenas whose name has just been mentioned. I have a business proposition to make to him, and since you’re his friend, my dear colleague...”
“An old school friend,” I confessed. “It’s thanks to him that I’m part of the personnel of Erebus II…and that wasn’t without difficulty. Commander Barcot...”
“Say, Antoine,” Jolliot interrupted, if you’re still leaving for Marseille the day after tomorrow, you’ll have difficulty introducing Dr. Kohbuler to Jean-Paul Rivier.”
“Oh! You’re leaving the day after tomorrow?” said the Swiss, staring at me. “But I assume you’ll be in Paris tomorrow.”
The hope of seeing Frédérique again at the same time as her father made my heart beat faster. “Yes, I will, for twenty-four hours, from this evening.”
“Well, we’ll arrive there tomorrow at eleven o’clock. Do you think that Monsieur Rivier would accept an invitation to dinner at Claridge’s…if you were to help me meet him, initially as if by chance, at a café?”
“I think so—providing that he’s in Paris.”
At that moment an electric bell rang in a corner of the veranda.
“Excuse me,” said Jolliot, setting off to answer it. “No, it’s not the telephone; it’s a wireless bell—a new invention, quite ingenious. The signal signifies that a telephonic transmission from the Tower7…twenty past noon? That’s unusual. What can it be?”
He sat down to an item of furniture laden with a complex apparatus, and began tripping switches. Bulbs lit up. With a set of headphones over his ears, he looked at us obliquely, with an astonished expression.
“You don’t say?” he muttered, in the midst of our attentive silence. Then, in a louder voice, he said to us: “Sensational news! Do you want to hear it?”
He flicked a switch, and a clear voice emerged from a loudspeaker, captured in mid-sentence.
“…ravaging the North Atlantic. Seven distress calls have been received by the coastguard in the course of the last half-hour. Preceded by a gigantic wave, the cyclone is moving at a velocity of more than a hundred kilometers an hou
r. The Cunard Company’s Lutetia, in a message abruptly cut short, signaled the distant appearance of a waterspout and vapor, followed by a formidable explosion…apparently that of a submarine volcano...
“Au revoir, Mesdames et Messieurs; a further broadcast will be made at two o’clock to provide supplementary details…I shall repeat, for those who have not heard: Hello, hello, Eiffel Tower here. An unprecedented cyclone is ravaging the North Atlantic. Seven distress calls...”
Jolliot let the voice go on to the end for a second time. Gripped by emotion, I looked at Mademoiselle Kohbuler, sitting bolt upright on the divan, whose eyes, attached to mine, were expressing an acute anguish. The star was looking out at the apparently-impassive sea, breathing in the scent of her red carnation. The attentive Swiss professor took regular puffs on his cigarette.
The voice fell silent—but a curt and imperious “Shh!” from Jolliot cut short the exclamations and comments. He fiddled with his apparatus…and the loudspeaker resumed. Now, however, it was the modulated stridencies of Morse code, unintelligible to the profane. Pencil in hand, the film-director scribbled on a notepad.
“An S.O.S. call…from the Norwegian cargo vessel Oslo,” he announced, finally.
Then, on another wavelength, the sound of a child’s trumpet intoned dots and dashes.
“Another one in distress. Cod-fishing steamboat Saint-Anne, from Paimpol...”
It required the insistence of his wife to drag the radio ham away from his passion and remind him of his duties as a host. “Come on—we’ll soon find out anyway, via the broadcast from the Tower...”
Pirouetting in his chair, he turned toward us.
“A pity that television’s still in its infancy, eh? I’m sure that, in ten years’ time, apparatus will exist to give us here in Europe, in our homes, the spectacles that are in the process of unfolding out in the Atlantic, three thousand kilometers away. It must be phenomenal…splendid!”