The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction
Stepchildren of Voltaire
$55.00
In stock
About the Book
Following World War II, the Fleuve Noir publishing house published popular American genre fiction in translation for a French audience. Their imprint Anticipation specialized in science fiction, but mostly eschewed translations from English, preferring instead French work, thus making the imprint an important outlet for native French postwar ideas and aesthetics. This critical text examines in ideological terms eleven writers who published under the Anticipation imprint, revealing the way these writers criticized midcentury notions of progress while adapting and reworking American genre formats.
About the Author(s)
Bibliographic Details
Bradford Lyau. Series Editors Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 248
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2011
pISBN: 978-0-7864-5857-8
eISBN: 978-0-7864-6217-9
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Foreword by George Slusser 1
Introduction 7
One. Background 11
Two. The Moderates 31
F. Richard-Bessière 31
M.A. Rayjean 59
Kemmel 73
Chapter Summary 75
Three. The Extremist 76
Jimmy Guieu 76
Four. The Conservatives 94
Stefan Wul 94
Maurice Limat 115
Peter Randa 126
Kurt Steiner 132
Chapter Summary 139
Five. The Radicals 140
Jean-Gaston Vandel 140
B.R. Bruss 169
Chapter Summary 182
Six. A Last Word 183
Gilles D’argyre 184
Seven. Conclusion 193
Chapter Notes 199
Bibliography 211
Index 225
Book Reviews & Awards
“recommend it…should be acquired by all libraries sporting even a modest collection of SF criticism and history…students of twentieth-century French cultural history simply must consult this work”—Extrapolation; “remarkable”—Science Fiction Studies.