The Scientific Marvel Fiction
of the French H.-G. Wells
THE DOCTORED MAN
And Other Stories
by
Maurice Renard
translated, annotated and introduced by
Brian Stableford
A Black Coat Press Book
Introduction
This is the fourth volume of a set of five, which includes most of the “scientific marvel fiction” of Maurice Renard, and some related works. It includes translations of four stories from the collection Monsieur d’Outremort et autres histoires singulières (Louis Michaud, 1913), the novella “L’Homme truqué,” first published in Je Sais Tout in March 1921, and a miscellany of later articles and short stories taken from various sources.
The first volume of the series, Doctor Lerne, includes translations of the novella “Les Vacances de Monsieur Dupont,” first published in Fantômes et Fantoches [Phantoms and Marionettes] (Plon, 1905), the novel Le Docteur Lerne, sous-dieu (Mercure de France, 1908) and the essay “Du Roman merveilleux-scientifique et de son action sur l’intelligence du progrès,” first published in the sixth issue of Le Spectateur in October 1909.
The second volume, A Man Among the Microbes and Other Stories, includes translations of the novel Un Homme chez les microbes, the first version of which was written in 1907-08, although no version was actually published until Crès released one in 1928, and the entire contents of the collection Le Voyage Immobile suivi d’autres histoires singulières (Mercure de France, 1909).
The third volume, The Blue Peril, comprises a translation of the novel Le Péril bleu (Louis Michaud, 1911).
The fifth volume, The Master of Light, comprises a translation of the novel Le Maître de la lumière, which first appeared as a feuilleton serial in L’Instransigeant between March 8 and May 2, 1933.
The introduction to the first of the five volumes includes a general overview of Renard’s life and career in relation to his scientific marvel fiction, which I shall not reiterate here, confining the remainder of this introduction to the specific works featured in this volume. Some further discussion of the themes developed in some of the stories—especially that of the title story—will be undertaken in an afterword, in order not to spoil the reader’s enjoyment of the stories by giving away too much in advance.
“Monsieur d’Outremort, un gentilhomme physicien,” here translated as “Monsieur d’Outremort, Gentleman Physicist,” echoes Renard’s fascination with the works of Edgar Allan Poe in a much less earnest fashion than “Le Rendez-vous” (tr. in volume two of the series as “The Rendezvous”), to the point of sarcastic caricature; its representation of Renard’s own political opinions and affection for automobiles is equally parodic. He had always been a humorist and his comedy had always had a black edge, but the affected bitterness of this story might have an element of double bluff about it, representing a significant step in the course of his own disillusionment with his prospects as a writer of scientific marvel fiction.
“La Cantatrice,” here translated as “The Cantatrice,” is not strictly relevant to the series’ theme, but is included here because it completes an eccentric thematic triptych with two stories included in volume two, there translated as “Death and the Seashell” and “Parthenope; or, The Unforeseen Port of Call.”
“L’Homme au corps subtil,” here translated as “The Man with the Rarefied Body,” is a sequel to “La Singulière destinée de Bouvancourt” (tr. in volume two as “The Singular Fate of Bouvancourt”), featuring an earlier exploit of the ingenious experimenter with invisible radiations.
An earlier English version of “Le Brouillard du 26 Octobre,” here translated as “The Fog of October 26,” was featured in the April 1941 issue of the American pulp science fiction magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories, as “Five After Five.” That version is, however, severely abridged—including the omission of the last few pages of the story—and altered to such an extent that it barely qualifies as a translation; it might be more accurately described as a synoptic paraphrase. The story carries forward the fascination with remote prehistory and evolutionary theory exemplified in “Les Vacances de Monsieur Dupont” (tr. as “Monsieur Dupont’s Vacation”) and laid some imaginative groundwork for the central premise extrapolated in Le Maître de la lumière (tr. in volume five as The Master of Light).
These four stories in Monsieur d’Outremort et autres histoires singulières included the last three items of scientific marvel fiction that Renard published before the outbreak of the Great War, although he might have done some work then on one, two, or even three of the longer works to which he returned his attention afterwards.
“L’Homme truqué,” here translated as “The Doctored Man,” was the first new item of scientific marvel fiction that Renard published after the Great War, although the version published in Je sais tout was probably not the work that he envisaged writing when he advertized the title in the 1920 reprint of Le Péril bleu (tr. as The Blue Peril) as “a paraître” [forthcoming], where he described it as a “roman” [novel]. It seems probable that the work was still incomplete when he placed that advertisement, and that he intended at that time to develop it as a full-length novel, but that he subsequently decided to modify the project and redevelop the incomplete text as a novella, perhaps as a result of his increasing despair regarding the imminent future of scientific marvel fiction in general and his own endeavors of that sort in particular. Although it remains an interesting story, it does give the impression of leaving off at the point at which it was just becoming more interesting, effectively aborting what might have been a visionary text in the same radical vein as Le Péril bleu in favor of a calculatedly-limited story of a type that would eventually come to be known as “technothrillers.”
“L’Homme qui voulait être invisible,” here translated as “The Man Who Wanted to be Invisible,” first appeared in Oeuvres Libres 19 (January 1923), thus becoming one of the very few stories Renard published in an upmarket literary periodical. He had little opportunity to do so; Oeuvres Libres published speculative fiction by Pierre Mille, J.-H. Rosny Aîné and, most prolifically, André Couvreur before its editors apparently decided, in the late 1920s, that such material was either too outré or too disreputable to be entertained there any longer, but it was the last reputable literary periodical to do so regularly, although many of those specializing in popular fiction had no such qualms.
Although it is not, strictly speaking, a scientific marvel story, “L’Homme qui voulait être invisible” constitutes an important response to one of the most famous works in that genre. It was reprinted in Invitation à la peur, a collection issued by Crès in 1926, where it was given a section of its own, headed “Intermède critique” [Critical Interlude], placed between “Quatre contes au stylographe” [Four Fountain-Pen Tales] and “Quatre contes à la plume d’oie” [Four Goose-Quill Tales], the former group being contemporary stories with a horrific element and the latter historical fantasies with a horrific element.
The article “Depuis Sinbad,” here translated as “Since Sinbad,” was written at the request of Jean Ray, who interviewed Renard at his home in the Rue de Tournon in 1923; it was published in the same issue of L’Ami des livres (June 15, 1923) as the interview and an overview of Renard’s work by Ray. It updates and revises the manifesto for the “roman merveilleux-scientifique” (tr. in volume one as “Scientific Marvel Fiction and its Effect on the Consciousness of Progress”) that Renard had published in Le Spectateur in 1909, and gives clear expression to Renard’s disillusionment with the genre’s prospects—a disillusionment not unconnected with his explicit rejection in the essay of the earlier label, the example of which I have obviously not followed in compiling this collection.
The second article included, “Le Roman d’hypothèse,” translated as “Hypothetical Fiction,” first appeared in the December 15, 1928 issue of A.B.C., and represents yet another attempt to find a more useful label for the kind of fiction to which Renard had just been enabled to return, albeit briefly, by the belated publication of Un Homme chez les microbes (tr. as A Man Among the Microbes).
“La Découverte,” translated as “The Discovery,” and “La Verité sur Faust,” translated as “The Truth About Faust,” are both taken from the collection Le Carnaval du mystère (Crès, 1929), the contents of which provided a fine illustration of Renard’s craftsman-like development of ultra-short fiction. The former is the only story in the collection that can qualify, even marginally, as scientific marvel fiction, but the latter is an interesting, if rather oblique, revision of the modern legend of the man who was reputed to have sold his soul for scientific insight, and it provides yet another interesting illustration of Renard’s own disillusionment.
“Eux,” here translated as “Them,” and originally published in La Revue des Vivants 8 (August 1934), was Renard’s last revisitation of a theme he had touched on several times before, perhaps reflecting his regret at not having been able to develop it more elaborately in “L’Homme truqué.”
The three remaining stories all appeared in the newspaper Le Matin, as elements in a series of ultra-short stories entitled “Les Mille et un matins”—a title that had been used before but undoubtedly seemed particularly apposite to the paper’s editor. All of them appeared in 1939, the year of Renard’s death. I do not know the specific date of “Le Requin,” here translated as “The Shark,” but it probably appeared somewhere between “Quand les poules avaient des dents” (“When Hens Had Teeth”), which appeared in the February 11 issue, and “Sur la planète Mars” (“On the Planet Mars”), which appeared in the August 5 issue. The last-named was Renard’s last contribution to the scientific marvel genre, but—in spite of its blithe triviality—not quite his least.
The translations from Monsieur d’Outremort et autres histoires singulières were made from the Louis Michaud edition published in 1913 (although it bears no date). The translations of “L’Homme truqué,” “Depuis Sinbad,” “Le Roman d’hypothèse” and “Le Requin” were made from the versions in Maurice Renard: Romans et Contes Fantastiques published by Robert Laffont in 1990. The translations from Invitation à la peur were made from the Crès edition of 1926. The translations from Le Carnaval du mystère were made from the Crès edition of 1929. The translations of “Eux,” “Quand les poules avaient dents” and “Sur la planète Mars” were made from the Gramma collection Les Vacances de Monsieur Dupont (1994).
Brian Stableford
MONSIEUR D’OUTREMORT, GENTLEMAN PHYSICIST
To Léo Larguier1
Extract from the Memoirs of Monsieur de La Commandière, dated July 15, 1911
This morning newspapers did not refrain from commenting at length on an astonishing drama that took place yesterday, and whose protagonist I knew quite well—a certain Marquis Savinien d’Outremort. He was my fellow student at the Ecole Polytechnique, where I met him for the first time. We soon formed ties of friendship, impelled by our common nobility—which did not reside in our titles and surnames, as so often happens, but in our beliefs, manners and breeding.
I believe, moreover, that I was Monsieur d’Outremort’s only friend. The sepulchral name that he bears was the first thing that led our comrades to distance themselves; his personality, moreover, did not provoke advances. He was handsome, to be sure, but singularly so, in a simultaneously cruel and archangelic fashion. His bearing was always that of a wrathful seraphim—in a word, that of Azrael, the Angel of Death. He was to retain until his declining years the same adolescent face and judgmental expression that he offered to our 20-year-old eyes; at 60, he still seemed to be what he had been then: a splenetic and silent young man.
It is doubtless to the severity of his external appearance that one must attribute the unusual deference mingled with dread that he soon inspired in each of us, for which I can find no better comparison than the respect with which one customarily surrounds those who are the instigators of formidable events.
However, as I was not long delayed in learning from his own lips, he had never perpetrated anything out of the ordinary, any more than any of his ancestors. Their name, he added, did not derive from some ancient fantastic adventure, and had obtained its present consonance by a simple process of etymological corruption, the n in Outremont having mutated into an r by virtue of being mispronounced by the inhabitants of the marquisate.2
This confidence was unable to weaken Monsieur d’Outremort’s prestige to the slightest degree in my eyes, and as I experienced no less veneration in his regard once I knew about the nullity of his accomplishments to date, I fell into the habit of regarding him as a man predestined, for whom Dame Fortune was reserving her most dazzling favors—Bonaparte at Brienne, if you wish.
In spite of my presentiments, Monsieur d’Outremort has lived in obscurity; and I doubt, at present, that he will know glory—for that word is inappropriate to describe the ephemeral, frightful and bizarre kind of reputation that he has recently acquired, the cause of which, after all, might well be that of his imminent demise.
The most curious and objectionable thing is that he is being held up simply as an illustration of the present century. You shall see why.
On leaving the Ecole, when my inclination led me to the Inspection des Finances, Monsieur d’Outremort, whose private income was by no means paltry, undertook private research projects in the domain of physics. Directed especially toward electricity, they gave rise to remarkable discoveries. In truth, it appears to be to Monsieur d’Outremort that we owe the principles of “telemechanics.” I am not very well-versed in that subject, but someone has undertaken to instruct me. By “telemechanics” it is necessary to understand the government of machines at a distance, without wires and by the sole intermediation of so-called “Hertzian waves,” which operate in space.
If the experts can be believed, that was something which might have led the inventor to great renown, if only he had followed his invention through and manifested it in reality rather than in formulas. Why did my friend leave it to other engineers to put his work into practice? Telemechanical torpedoes, which can be operated from several kilometers away, are in current usage today, I am told. Was it not Monsieur d’Outremort who laid the groundwork for them? And why did he not even point out the other practical utilizations of his theory which are easily imaginable and numerous, even to a layman?
Monsieur d’Outremort has always been capricious. As the extreme descendant of a lineage that emerges from Medieval darkness, ten centuries of nobility press down upon him the crushing weight of their heredity. Ten centuries of nobility—which is to say, let us admit, 1000 years of increasingly refined existence; 1000 years of turmoil, preoccupation and ardent ambition; a millennium of luxury, passion and debauchery. Each generation of d’Outremorts was a step the family took toward what a few call “the perfection of being,” and many others “degeneracy.” For you cannot peruse the sequence of their unions and find a single one of those fine proletarian misalliances which so propitiously renew the blood of an ancient house from time to time, nor a single bastard issued from a rustic mistress or a plebeian lover: nothing but nobles emerged from nobles. That is a great calamity for a lineage. The La Commandières have been well-protected from such hazards, where the Outremorts have failed.
That is why the Marquis Savinien, my comrade, inherited from his ancestors
the sort of excessive and sensitive soul in which genius is sometimes tainted with delusion in disturbing ambivalence. With him, the loftiest genealogical tree in the Vosges terminated in a precious and morbid branch: an élite ornament or monstrous bough. The interest he provoked remained ambiguous; one hesitated between admiring its rarity and deploring its anomaly. In consequence, no family in France possesses a sense of status to such a high degree. And it must be said that the sentiment in question was maintained in him by a state of affairs that was scarcely banal and which is scarcely to be found anywhere else. No matter how far back one went in his archives, one never ceased to find traces of an eternal discord between the lords of that name and their vassals. The history of the fief was a violent series of revolts and repressions, rebellions and punishments—an interminable drama in which not the least tragic act was staged in 1793, involving the ambassador François-Joseph d’Outremort and his sister, a canoness: Savinien’s great-great grandfather and great-aunt.
Too proud to emigrate, like their son and nephew Théophane, the two old people, having not quit the paternal château, busied themselves, one with his administrative duties and the other with her charities, in the midst of the atrocities of the provincial Revolution. And the Terror was terrible—more terrible than anywhere else in the Republic—in its effects on the welfare of the d’Outremorts. After many riots, Jacques Bonhomme had passed his Master of Arts; the peasants were pitiless. They were led by a furious patriot named Houlon, who played the same role as Carrier in Nantes.3 On his decree, the local sans-culottes and tricoteuses seized the ambassador and the canoness. A thousand derisions were reserved for them, at the climax of which they were hanged from the lantern of a shop overlooking the village square, at the foot of the manor. A faithful servant cut them down during the night, and placed them in the family vault in the château. The Consulate saw that good man restore the property to Marquis Théophane on his return from Coblentz—where he might perhaps have met Ludovic de La Commandière, who is to the author of these lines what Théophane is to Savinien d’Outremort.
The Doctored Man Page 1