The World in 2000 Years
Page 22
11 The author’s footnote credits this passage to article one of Pascal’s Pensées, “Against the indifference of atheists.”
12 The author gives a reference to Book VI, lines 548-558 of the Aeneid. Tisiphone, usually but not always identified as one of the Furies, had a name identifying her as the avenger of murder
13 Ibid., lines 575-627. Tityon was held to have raped Latona, the mother of Apollo. The Lapiths waged murderous war against the centaurs after a dispute arose at the wedding of Pirithous; Theseus aided them. Phlegyas set fire to a temple of Apollo as an act of vengeance.
14 Phylloxera is a genus of plant lice: a species imported to Europe from the Americas in the 1850s, to which Europeans vines had no resistance, began to devastate the French wine industry in the 1860s by destroying its root-stocks, cutting production by three-quarters by the mid 1880s. Resistant stocks had to be imported from America, on to which indigenous vines were grafted, but the problem was never conclusively solved.
15 Words are fleeting; writing permanent.
16 Again, the citation is one of Aesop’s fables, in which the dissatisfied frogs unwisely exchange King Log for King Stork.
17 “An excess of justice [leads to] an excess of injustice!” A Latin saying, cited by Cicero in De Officiis.
18 The author’s reference for this quotation is Pascal’s Pensées, “De la justice,” article IV. Garnier edition
19 The author’s reference for this quotation is II Kings 8:2 ff. but that is incorrect; it is actually from II Samuel 13:11-13. I have given the version of the text contained in the King James Bible, as I have with the other quotations from scripture. The quotation is highly misleading, in any case; in fact, when Ammon rapes Tamar the incest horrifies the other members of his family and David is outraged.
20 I have reproduced this term as the original text renders it. It might conceivably be a derivative of Garbhadanam, a term used in the context of Indian marriage ceremonies to refer to consummation, but it is more likely that the first part of the portmanteau word is simply the French for “great” and the second a contraction of “Ahuras,” that being the plural of one of the ancient Aryan terms for a god.
21 Again, the author gives an incorrect reference here, to Genesis 15:1 ff instead of Genesis 16: 2-3. Abram (who only starts calling himself Abraham subsequently) does indeed consent to the arrangement, but the Lord evidently does not, cursing Hagar’s son, Ishmael—although neither Hagar nor Ishmael has done anything wrong—and subsequently consenting to grant Sarai (then renamed Sarah) a son of her own, Isaac, in advance of the notorious Covenant.
22 Yet again, the author gives an incorrect reference, to Kings 3: 1ff, rather than to I Kings 1: 2-4. The fact that he then goes on to insinuate, slyly, that the assertion of the scripture that no intercourse took place might not be reliable, together with the fact that he could have cited much more outrageous examples of David’s immorality had he so desired (the Bathsheba/Uriah incident, for example), strongly suggests that the sequence of “errors” is deliberate, occasioned by motives that are unclear.
23 An esoteric joke. As well as “to kiss,” the Latin verb in question can mean “to make a fuss.” There is no trace of the double meaning in either French or English.
24 The author gives a reference to Pascal’s Pensées, article XXIV, chapter IV.
25 I have improvised somewhat in translating these institutions into modern terminology, especially in the second case, where the reference is to “maisons centrales” [literally, central houses]—prisons whose inmates were forbidden all communication, thus having the effect of permanent solitary confinement.
26 The Edinburgh-born John Law (1671-1729) was appointed as France’s Controller General of Finances under the Regency, before Louis XV came of age. He organized the French equivalent of the British and Dutch East India Companies, which failed conspicuously to duplicate the wealth generated by its rivals, and reorganized the French banking system in such a fashion that it suffered a spectacular collapse.
27 The author includes a reference to Turgot, Letter to the King from Compiègne, August 24, 1774. Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot’s reforms, following the economic theories of the Physiocrats, would indeed have made a vast difference to France’s finances had they been fully introduced. He was appointed controller general in August 1774 but was dismissed in 1776 and his brief introduction of free trade in corn abolished. He is now best-known as the first great elaborator of the philosophy of progress, of which M. Landet is such an enthusiastic supporter.
28 Jean Maurepas was Louis XVI’s prime minister. Charles-Alexandre de Calonne became controller general of finances, disastrously, in 1784 and was replaced in 1787 by the even more disastrous Étienne-Charles de Loménie Brienne.
29 The author inserts a footnote: “September 29, 1792 to August 23, 1795.” This makes the text reference to “two years” slightly puzzling, but it is probably referring specifically to the Terror, which did indeed last less than two years within the three years of the Convention’s rule. The Convention was actually set up on September 21, 1792 (the Republic was proclaimed the following day); the new constitution voted in on August 23, 1795 handed power over to the Directoire, but did not take effect until the end of October.
30 The author adds a footnote repeating the date of the new constitution, August 23, but adds that it was “the so-called Year III Constitution,” although it was actually promulgated in Year V of the new Revolutionary Calendar.
31 As noted in the introduction, the author gives no reference here, but the quote is from Gustave Dupuynode’s Études d’économie politique sur la proprieté territoriale (1843), a significant contribution to Physiocrat economics. The Danaides were the 50 daughters of Danaus, who murdered the 50 sons of Aegyptus; their punishment in the afterlife was to collect water using sieves.
32 The author gives a reference to La Fontaine Fables, Book IV, Fable XXI, but does not specify the edition to which he is referring. The fable itself dates back much further; La Fontaine only modified it and put it into verse; I have provided a literal translation without making any attempt to retain the rhyme-scheme or scansion.
33 The author gives a reference to Plato’s Republic Book V.
34 The argument in question is, in fact, attributed to Socrates in the dialogue; the real Socrates could not have raised any objection, because he was dead before the Republic was written.
35 The “white terror,” as opposed to the “red terror,” initially referred to the anti-Jacobin backlash of 1795, in which many Revolutionaries were massacred in the French provinces, in supposed revenge for the Convention’s Terror. The phrase was then carried forward to refer to other such backlashes in 1799, after Napoléon’s overthrow of the Directoire, and 1815, after his fall.
36 The author gives a reference to Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, Conversation of June 12, 1816, which he credits to Michel Chevalier, presumably the name of a publisher. The conversations in question—which ran to six volumes—were compiled and published by Emanuel Las Cases
37 The full line from book IX of Virgil’s Aeneid from which this exhortation is extracted is Macte animo! generose puer, sic itur ad astra. Its approximate translation is “Buck up, child! This is the way to the stars.”
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY 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
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. 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 (w/Octave Joncquel). The Martian Epic; (w/André Blandin) Timeslip Troopers
Paul Vibert. The Mysterious Fluid
English adaptation and introduction Copyright 2011 by Brian Stableford.
Cover illustration Copyright 2011 by Jean-Pierre Normand.
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ISBN 978-1-61227-058-6 First Printing. December 2011. 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.