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Stephens, James

Le Pot d'or [Texte imprimé] : [The Crock of gold] / James Stephens ; trad. de l'anglais par A. et M. Malblanc. - 4e éd.. - Paris : F. Rieder, 1925. - 240 p. ; 19 cm.
. - Trad. de : The Crock of gold
Les Prosateurs étrangers modernes

Qui a été réédité ici :

Stephens, James (1880-1950)

Le pot d'or [Texte imprimé] / James Stephens ; trad. de l'anglais par A. et M. Maublanc. - Rennes : Terre de brume, 1997 (42-Saint-Etienne : Impr. Dumas). - 163 p. : couv. ill. en coul. ; 24 cm. - (Bibliothèque irlandaise).
. - Trad. de : The crock of gold
ISBN 2-908021-93-5 (br.) : 109 F

Une autre, presque simultanée, à l'intérieur de cet ouvrage :

Cosnier, Colette (1936-....)

Les quatre montagnes de George Sand [Texte imprimé] / Colette Cosnier. Suivi de Laura, voyage dans le cristal / roman de George Sand. - Chamonix : Guérin, 2004 (impr. en Italie). - 235 p. : ill., couv. ill. en coul. ; 17 cm.

Éd. originale numérotée : n° 11. - Bibliogr. p. 83
ISBN 2-911755-74-X

Au même moment que quoi ?

Essai sur le drame fantastique est paru dans la Revue des deux mondes, le 1er décembre 1839

Quelle simultanéité d'inspiration remarquable !

Article du dictionnaire en ligne "Fantastic Victoriana", lettre G :
(www.geocities.com/jessnevins/vicg.html)

Geister, Carl. Carl Geister was created by “Chrysostom Trueman” and appeared in The History of a Voyage to the Moon, with an Account of the Adventurers' Subsequent Discoveries. An Exhumed Narrative, Supposed to Have Been Ejected from a Lunar Volcano (1864). “Chrysostom Trueman” is the pseudonym of an unknown British author. The History of a Voyage to the Moon is, as the title indicates, an early (if uninfluential) work of science fiction.

The narrator of The History of a Voyage to the Moon is Stephen Howard, a Brit who meets Carl Geister at the University of Gottingen in the 1850s. The pair hit it off immediately; Howard thinks highly of Geister and is attracted to him, and Geister finds Howard amenable as a friend. After they graduate from Gottingen they travel to Spain, where Geister, doing research in old Church archives, reads the account of a Spanish priest who, in the 16th century, saw the “earth rising” in the Colorado Rockies. This inspires Geister, who has always had a dream of traveling into space, and he goes to the Rockies to find the source of the “rising.” He sends a letter back to Howard, telling him of his success. Geister is scornful of the crudeness and lack of culture of the Coloradan natives, but he takes some natives with him as guides and miners, and with their help (and by following the directions of the priest’s narrative) he locates the natural elements which when mixed together create what he calls Repellante, an anti-gravity element. Iron is impervious to Repellante, which is good, because that will allow Geister to manipulate Repellante and pilot a ship into space. Geister meets up with Howard and the pair go to Arkansas, where they meet Butler, an eccentric Quaker inventor who takes Geister’s designs for an airtight building-sized ship, “The Terrinsula,” and makes it a reality. Howard and Geister spend a month inside The Terrinsula, testing its airtightness and its flight capabilities, and then the pair return to the Rockies to gather more of the elements needed to create Repellante. They fight off an attack by the Apache, make more Repellante, and then have Howard create a smaller ship, the “Lunaviot.”

Geister and Howard pilot the Lunaviot to the moon, but are forced into a crash-landing. They find that the moon has a breathable atmosphere, and even more luckily that the moon has enough water for them. (They brought months’ worth of food but little water). They find fruit-bearing trees and then watch some natives gather around the trees and hold what seems to be a religious ceremony. The natives are similar to humans in most respects but only 4' tall. Both Geister and Howard are struck by the innocent goodness of the natives, and so they make first contact, which goes peacefully, although they have to communicate by pantomime. Geister and Howard go to the natives’ village, Notol (also the name of the natives) and stay there for a whole year. They learn the language and get to the know the natives, and they become convinced that what they have found is a true utopia. They learn about the Notol belief that they are reincarnated Earthlings, though lacking in memories of Earth. There’s no evidence to support this, but Geister and Howard meet Zilgah, the Notol Administrator of the Records, and Zilgah shows them the written history of Notol, which was founded and formed from barbarity “several epochs ago.” Geister and Howard fly around the moon on the roc-like Egastos and meet various Notol poets and philosophers. Geister and Howard are perfectly happy and decide that they must get word to Earth about the utopia on the moon, and so they inscribe their story on some metal tablets which they enclose in a meteor, which is then sent to Earth via a lunar volcanic explosion.

As an early work of science fiction, The History of a Voyage to the Moon is of some small interest. Whether or not works like The History of a Voyage to the Moon are science fiction has been tossed around by sf critics for a few decades now. There are critics who feel that pre-Vernean works of scientific imagination cannot be called science fiction simply because there was no coherent genre in which to write these stories. As far as that goes, it’s true, but there was certainly a consciousness on the part of the writers of what they were writing; they may not have had a word or phrase for it, but they knew they were writing stories within the same general vein as other, previous stories. This can be seen in the dime novels, where the story of Johnny Brainerd and his man-shaped steam engine spawned imitators and eventually an entire genre of technothriller Edisonade characters, from Electric Bob to Frank Reade to Tom Edison, Jr. And this genre creation by imitation can also be seen in the Trip To The Moon stories like The History of a Voyage to the Moon.

“Trueman” wasn’t doing anything particularly original in The History of a Voyage to the Moon. The novel is an updated version of the French voyages imaginaires of the 17th and 18th century, many of which dealt with travel to other worlds, and some, like Charles Sorel’s Recit du Voyage de Brisevent (Tale of Brisevent’s Journey, 1642) and Cyrano de Bergerac’s Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune (Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon, 1657), described utopian societies on the moon. There were several stories of flight into space and to the moon written in the 19th century before Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (1865), including J. L. Riddell’s Orrin Lindsay’s Plan of Aerial Navigation (1847), which featured a scientist creating an anti-gravity field through subjecting an amalgam of mercury and steel to a strong magnetic field, and taking a spherical craft, propelled by this field, to the moon. “Trueman” was working in this vein. He (or she, what the hell) may not have been able to articulate what he was writing, but he was aware of the nameless genre he was working in.

The difference between Verne and pre-Verneans like “Trueman” (and The History of a Voyage to the Moon only predated From the Earth to the Moon by a year) is that the pre-Verneans wrote techno-fantasies, in which the science of the story is not described at all, or is done through authorial hand-waving. Verne wrote the equivalent of hard science fiction; his science was as accurate and realistic as he could make it. That was more than writers like “Trueman” managed.

As prose The History of a Voyage to the Moon is only serviceable. “Trueman” takes a very long time to progress beyond establishing the premise of the novel; 80 pages pass before the Lunaviot takes off. There’s little action to the novel, really, and the characterization is one-dimensional. Most of the novel is filled up with long, speechifying monologues, usually Geister’s, science lectures in the form of dialogue, endless, rambling holdings forth on philosophy, life after death, Nature’s meaning, and the soul. “Trueman” no doubt thought his words insightful and deep; the modern reader is likely to find them less so. Finally, there’s a scene of racist ugliness involving several black grooms speaking in atrocious, stereotypical dialogue.

Geister is 30 and independently wealthy. In Howard’s words, Geister has “admirable moral character” and is a “leading spirit” whose “advanced opinions and unique manner of thought and observation” repel most other men. What we see of him in The History of a Voyage to the Moon is somewhat different, however. Others are turned off by him only because of his radical ideas, rather than his personality. He’s sure he’s right about most things, but he is not overbearing about his opinions. He’s adventurous, quite willing to risk his life in the trip to the moon. He’s idealistic, not just about the Notol but about the justice, humanity, and many other philosophical questions. He’s science-oriented, good at theory and invention. And, differently from other, similar characters in Victorian sf, when Geister finds an alien Utopia he enjoys it and appreciates it. He’s not the worm in the bud, but a grateful visitor who wants to stay and enjoy what he’s found.

N'oublions pas non plus, parmi les textes importants de l'année 1865 : Laura de G. Sand

En passant par la BNF, j'ai ramassé ça qui dit peut-être qqch à qq ?

Forbin, Victor

Le Mystère de l'île. Z [Texte imprimé] / Victor Forbin ; Illustrations de Jean Routier. - Vendôme, Paris, Impr. des Presses universitaires de France ; Paris, libr. Félix Alcan, 108, boulevard Saint-Germain, 1932. (8 août 1933.) In-16, 208 p., fig., couv. ill. 8 fr. [6361].

Collection Benjamin

Je copiecolle un truc tiré du topic Jean Louis Bouquet (1er du nom, y en a deux !)

Auteur(s) :  Bouquet, Jean-Louis (1898-1978)
Titre(s) :  L'Affaire des squelettes [Texte imprimé], par Nevers-Séverin
Publication :  Lille, Janicot (S.I.L.I.C.), 1944. In-16 (190 x 130), 32 p., couv. en coul. 5 fr. [D. L. 560] -XcR-
Note(s) :  Collection rouge

Un petit quizz fondé sur une bizarrerie dans la collection :

Dans un des volumes de Tallandier bleu, l'éditeur a annoncé, pour la semaine suivante (donc le numéro suivant), la parution des Fiancées du soleil de Victor Forbin (qui était déjà paru en 1923 chez Lemerre).
La semaine suivante, le Forbin n'est pas paru et un autre ouvrage a été publié à la place. Quel est le numéro de ce volume ???

Oui confirmé, C. Audigier est mort le 15 octobre 1939.

Depuis décembre ? Non le fantomas a commencé à foutre sa zone à partir du 21 janvier, a commis un ou deux posts intéressants en un mois, le reste n'étant que bouletudes, messages foireux, parasitages de topic et n'importe quoi en général, le tout pour faire l'intéressant et du scoring

bouletas boutetatis (air connu...)

Te laisse pas faire, y sont l'air méchants comme ça, mais ça leur passera

Les titres suffiront... Un petit effort, mais rien ne presse ! Faut ranger d'abord pour ensuite déranger.
Cela dit, un livre rangé plus dur à trouver qu'un livre pas rangé ? Bizarre autant qu'étrange...

ON S'EN FOUT !

Et ça c'est Saturne !

On est pas contrariant

Certaines années sont plus remarquables que d'autres, du point de vue de la sf, surtout au 19e siècle. L'année 1865 en fait partie. D'où ce sujet qui le met en évidence.

Alors que Verne envoie ses héros vers la Lune, on va plus loin ici :

Eyraud, Achille (Pseud. Achille Lafont)

Voyage à Vénus, par Achille Eyraud [Texte imprimé]. - Paris : Michel Lévy, 1865. - In-18, 299 p..

Dans l'ordre :

Sémant, Cousturier, pseud. Paul de

Paul de Sémant. Gaëtan Faradel, explorateur malgré lui [Texte imprimé]. - Paris : E. Flammarion, (1907). - Gr. in-4°, 277 p., fig., couv. ill..

Paul de Sémant. Gaëtan Faradel, champion du tour du monde [Texte imprimé]. - Paris : E. Flammarion, (1907). - Gr. in-4°, 304 p., fig., couv. ill..

Sémant, Cousturier, pseud. Paul de
Paul de Sémant. Gaëtan Faradel, champion du tour du monde 1907 

   Sémant, Cousturier, pseud. Paul de
Paul de Sémant. Gaëtan Faradel, explorateur malgré lui 1907 

   Sémant, Cousturier, pseud. Paul de
Paul de Sémant. Le Lac d'or du docteur Sarbacane 1900

Sémant, Cousturier, pseud. Paul de

Paul de Sémant. Le Dernier raid de Nelly Sanderson. Illustrations de l'auteur [Texte imprimé]. - Paris : E. Flammarion, (1907). - Gr. in-4°, 295 p., fig.

Ca c'est de la doc !

D'après ce site, la bibliographie complète de "La guerre des salamandres" est :

— La Guerre des salamandres (Válka s mloky, 1936), roman traduit du tchèque et postfacé par Claudia Ancelot. [Paris], Éditions Les Éditeurs Français Réunis / [Prague], Éditions Artia,  1960, 292 p., épuisé
— rééditions : avec une préface de Jacques Bergier. [Verviers], Éditions A. Gérard, « Bibliothèque Marabout. Série fantastique » n° 324, 1969, 1972, 1986, 304 p., épuisé
— avec une préface de Jan Rubeš. [Paris], Éditions Messidor, « Les Grands romans de la liberté », 1990, VIII-308 p., épuisé ;
— [Paris], Éditions Ibolya Virag, 1996, 330 p., 18.29 €.