Thursday, February 10, 2011

The Iron Dream, Belgian style



What does this have to do with Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark? If you came to this blog expecting answers to this, and similar questions plaguing today's youth, you are out of luck …

The common denominator is … that's just what life's like, inexplicable nonsense.

If you're still dissatisfied (and who isn't these days), I'll placate you by telling you that the above drawing is a scene from a proposed French SF translation of mine, The Dead Earth by J.H. Rosny, Sr. The walking blobs seen here menacing our hero Targ are actually walking petroids, the Ferromagnons. They are beings composed of elemental iron and imbued with sentience by the effects of human pollution and excessive radioactivity. They are the bad guys and who can blame them, born as they were into a world not of their own making …

What makes this novella cool is, amongst several other things, is that the author made his hero a black man — and this was in 1910, when black heroes were pretty thin on the scientific romance ground. Full marks to J.H. Rosny, Sr.!

Don't worry, the Admirable Carroll will return in three days …

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