The Green Gods by Nathalie Henneberg – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

This peculiar, stately, romantic novel is set towards the end of Earth’s long isolation from the rest of human civilisation. Knowing that the impassible atmospheric barrier is beginning to weaken, and that the spaceships of humanity’s descendants will soon arrive, the floronic overlords of an increasingly moronic Earth decide to grasp the nettle – rather than extend it – and eliminate all remaining opposition to their rule.

Against this background brave Aran, the last bright hope for the humans of A-atlan, is to be mated with his beloved queen Atlena; the tradition is that once mated she kills him, and if she does not, the plants make sure he dies anyway. He is forced to leave the last city: he will gather the mutants at the gates and lead them like Elric against his home and the woman he loves.

The Green Gods was originally published in 1961 (C.J. Cherryh’s translation dates from 1980), but its tone anticipates the science fiction films of the late sixties and the seventies. It has the staginess, pomp and grand ideas of a Planet of the Apes or a Logan’s Run – and a dash of their scientific implausibility. It also resembles those films in its portrayal of a dashing hero set on smashing the system.

I haven’t had the opportunity to compare the translation with the original French, but it maintains both the elegance and the occasional impenetrability of that language. That isn’t helped by one problem with this edition as a whole: a handful of (I’d guess) scanning errors that aren’t so obviously wrong that you don’t spend a little while puzzling over them before moving on.

For example in “The Blind Pilot”, one of four bonus short stories provided in translations by Damon Knight, a disabled man is said in two places to move about upon his “carnage”, which I came to think must mean the remains of his legs. A third instance helpfully identified it as a carriage.

The four stories are all interesting, and show Henneberg to be a science fiction writer of some range – albeit one with little more than a slight interest in science – but it’s the novel readers will remember. Its world of cactus soldiers, gigantic underground orchids and bloated, malignant peyotls is the stuff of oppressive, overactive summer nightmares.

The Green Gods, by Nathalie Henneberg, translated by C.J. Cherryh (the novel) and Damon Knight (the four short stories). Black Coat Press, pb, 266pp.

Strangers: Starlock – reviewed

Like the previously reviewed Strangers: Homicron, this is a translation from the archives of Editions Lug, and it begins in a very similar way, although Major Nick Thaler's life-changing alien encounter takes place on Mars rather than the moon. His excavation of a half-buried extra-terrestrial artefact awakens the ancient entity within, and their atoms are "fused together". Back on Earth, Nick feels out of sorts: an eclipse then lets a mysterious lunar crystal transform him into Starlock, who looks like Nick, but bigger. He's super-strong and super-tough, can bend humans to his will, controls the oceans, creates cosmic fields, and (perhaps least usefully) can make food rot in seconds.

Major Ted White became little more than one of Homicron's memories, but Nick Thaler is still alive, and often wakes up to find himself in uncomfortable situations. Homicron was a decent sort; Starlock is not terribly nice: "Nick Thaler might care about mankind... but I don't!" When dawn breaks the moon crystal's spell Nick begs a friend: "You've got to kill me while you can, Nate! That damned alien is ready to blow up the planet to build his spaceship!" There are obvious parallels with DC's Eclipso: both feature men transformed at inconvenient times by a crystal on the moon.

The story that follows their initial bonding is an action-packed serial similar to something like Doomlord from the resurrected Eagle or Invasion in 2000AD, and could easily have been drawn from the pages of those magazines. Starlock tears semi-randomly around the world in his efforts to avoid capture and build a spaceship; he steals jets and submarines, throws tanks around like toys, gets ensnared in the web of S.P.I.D.E.R. (the Society for the Pollution, Infestation and Destruction of Energies and Resources), and inadvertently brings the world to the brink of nuclear armageddon. All good fun.

Despite the cover, Starlock doesn't appear in costume until page 222, in the sequel, "The Return of Starlock". In these later pages Starlock becomes a more traditional and slightly less interesting cosmic hero. He gains an origin, but Nick Thaler is retconned to death, and it's a slightly scrappy end to an enjoyable if unremarkable book. It's the original stories that make this volume worth reading. They aren't exceptional, and don't stand comparison with more carefully created BD, but they make for simple, undemanding entertainment.

Strangers: Starlock, by Claude J. Legrand, Luciano Bernasconi, et al, Hexagon Comics, pb, 256pp. Reviewed from print review copy.

Brian Stableford: New Worlds of Fantasy

I interviewed Brian Stableford about his work with Black Coat Press for issue 56 of Dark Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society, published in March 2010.

Could you tell us a bit about the kinds of books you've been translating for Jean-Marc Lofficier's Black Coat Press? And how many translations have you produced for them so far?

At present BCP has published 37 volumes of translation by me, plus a handful of my own works, but Jean-Marc has a further twelve in hand, including four further volumes of Maurice Renard and six of J.H. Rosny the Elder. I'm now plugging away with such writers as Henri Falk and Han Ryner while waiting for the likes of Jose Moselli and Edmond Haracourt to fall into the public domain in the next year or two. I aim to keep going at least until 2014, when André Couvreur will fall into the public domain. Alongside my choices I'll be doing translations for Jean-Marc, mostly of more recent writers from whom he's obtained permission to have their work translated, although I still have a couple of Feval's Habit Noir novels to do and may well do more Feval thereafter.

BCP have recently moved up to three volumes a month, which is comparable with what its companion French publisher Rivière Blanche does, and Jean-Marc will try to keep a reasonable balance between the various genres and between pulp fiction and classic works. If my eyesight holds up (it's not too good these days) I hope to be doing between twelve and twenty volumes a year for him for the next few years, as well as a modest amount of my own fiction - maybe two to three volumes - which will go to other outlets.

How did you get involved with Black Coat Press? Were you working on the translations already and looking for a publisher?

I first discovered the existence of Black Coat Press while looking things up online. I'd already translated two vampire-related novellas by Paul Feval for another small press so I asked Jean-Marc Lofficier if he'd be interested in a translation of the Feval novel La Vampire. He said yes (he eventually published it as The Vampire Countess) and expressed an interest in doing more Feval. I was more interested in the supernatural material, while he was more interested in the crime fiction, especially the pioneering Jean Diable and the Habits Noirs novels so we came to an informal arrangement whereby I would translate any books he wanted me to do if he would publish any books I wanted him to do. Things went on from there, and I was eventually able to conceive a grand plan of doing all the untranslated classics of French scientific romance that had already fallen into the public domain or were about to do so - this was a couple of years ago, when Maurice Renard (died Nov. 1939) and J.H. Rosny the Elder (died Feb. 1940) were, as it were, looming up on the copyright horizon.

I found Black Coat Press in a similar way. I was searching www.amazon.fr for more in the Volumes Lefrancq series (they produced a series of gigantic collections of writers such as Henri Vernes, Francis Carsac, Stefan Wul and Pierre Barbet in the nineties) and, disappointed to find that they were no longer publishing, I turned to Google and discovered Jean-Marc's treasure trove of French literature, albeit in translation. In both cases I was reminded of Brian Aldiss's comment that a perk of encountering alien civilisations would be gaining access to entire libraries of brand new science fiction and fantasy... How did your interest in French writing begin, and develop?

I first got involved with translation when I was doing some work for a small press named Dedalus, whose proprietor asked me if I could take over The Dedalus Book of Decadence, whose original editor had let him down. I agreed before realising that I wouldn't be able to pay a translator to do any French material, and then thought "I've got O level French (grade 6) - how hard can it be?" Quite hard, as it turned out, but one improves with practice, and it was interesting - it's like a cross between writing and doing crossword puzzles. I did two more volumes of translation for Dedalus, and numerous short pieces, before the proprietor and I fell out and our ways parted. I did one volume for Tartarus and two for Sarob Press before hooking up with Black Coat, which will hopefully be the only refuge I'll need in future.

One of the remarkable things about these books is the wealth of supplementary information you provide, a level of apparatus similar to and even surpassing what you'd find in a Penguin Classics volume. Are you drawing on a lot of previous work you've done, for example in your essays for Wormwood, or have these projects necessitated a great deal of original research? And are there any lost works of British and American fiction that would benefit from similar attention?

I do a lot of supplementary material because I'm interested in examining the origins of the work and putting it in context - I always make a note of anything in a text that I don't understand and try to look it up, adding an explanatory footnote if it seems appropriate. I used to look things up in the London Library, but Google has made much of that sort of work far simpler. Obviously, I do draw on the knowledge I already have, which is thus subject to a continual increase, and I often do spinoff articles for Wormwood or The New York Review of Science Fiction recycling the research. Yes, I dare say that there are numerous works of antique English-language sf that would benefit from similar analysis and commentary, but most reprinters can't be bothered. If I ever get around to doing definitive collections of the fantasies of John Sterling, Walter Herries Pollock and other writers of whom no one has ever heard and in whom no one but me has the slightest interest, I'll doubtless be just as intrusive.

I was interested that your credit on the cover of the books is "Adapted by Brian Stableford". As a result I initially thought that they would be rewritten, perhaps updated versions of the original works. Upon reading a couple it's clear that you've been extremely careful to stick to the originals, and outlined exactly the small departures you've made. Is the credit worded thus just for copyright or PLR reasons?

I always put "translated by" on my typescripts, but Jean-Marc always alters it, presumably to comply with his "house style" (he really does tend to rewrite his own translations, and sometimes urges me to do likewise, but such alteration seems to me to be a futile deception).

From the two of your books I've read so far - The Nyctalope on Mars by Jean de la Hire, and Doctor Lerne, Subgod, the first in your series of Maurice Renard translations, (both of which I thoroughly enjoyed) it's clear that English-language science fiction was a powerful influence on its French equivalent, the former being an unofficial sequel to The War of the Worlds, and the latter developing the ideas in The Island of Doctor Moreau in some rather raunchy directions. Do you think writers like H.G. Wells were aware of their devotees across the channel? Was the influence all one way?

Wells would certainly have been aware of the popularity of Henry Davray's translations of his books, and doubtless duly grateful. Whether he was aware of such direct copies as La Hire's and Arnould Galopin's is difficult to determine, although Davray might well have brought Rosny's earlier works to his attention when they were reissued by the Mercure de France (Davray's employer, which published some of his translations). By the time those writers (and Renard) had started writing "Wellsian fantasies", however, Wells had given up, and had probably stopped taking much notice of other people's scientific romances. Renard and Rosny also gave up in despair, of course, believing that there would never be an audience for the kind of work they wanted to do, so their work, seen as a whole, is pretty much a study in frustration although it produced some undoubted masterpieces (e.g. The Blue Peril).

In your introduction to Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension, you discuss how Gaston de Pawlowski conceives the fourth dimension very differently to Wells, as "the dimension of the mind, of the imagination, of art and - fundamentally, in his definition - of quality". Many French science fiction comics, for example those of Jodorowsky, Mobius or Bilal, are also surprisingly metaphysical, at least when contrasted to their British and American equivalents. Do you think there is a difference in English and French approaches to this kind of subject matter, and if so to what would you attribute that?

The metaphysical bent of much French scientific romance, even in bande dessinée form, is partly due to the enduring French reverence for "le philosophe" - still reflected in the French educational system - and partly due to a number of key exemplars, such as Camille Flammarion's Lumen. The French occult revival was more elaborately entwined with literary endeavour than its English equivalent, which resulted in exotic metaphysical influences on symbolist and surrealist writers, and many French occult romances made much of their pseudoscientific elements, adding to the confusion. The authors I'm translating at present - Louis Mullem and Han Ryner - are both heavily into fanciful metaphysics, which makes the former rather hard going and the latter a trifle sententious, but I'm sufficiently intrigued by it all to make the effort seem worthwhile.

About ten years ago I carried a suitcase full of books back from my honeymoon in Paris, spoilt only by the realisation on Eurostar that I had developed a bald spot. The bald spot is now a bald head and my stock of French books is running low... Can you recommend any current French writers to look out for?

I'm not very familiar with contemporary French sf and fantasy, apart from the translations issued by BCP (the Dunyach volumes are well worth reading), but I've been impressed by what little I've read of Jean-Marc Ligny's work, and Pierre Bordage is highly regarded.

Although we've focused here on your translations, most readers will probably be just as interested in your own novels. You mentioned two to three volumes a year - what are you working on at the moment? Personally I'd love to see more adventures of the Hooded Swan or the Daedalus, but would it be cynical to suggest this might be a good time to explore the lives of teenagers in the world of The Empire of Fear...?

The books I did for DAW were very much products of their time, which is well and truly dead. I made the mistake in The Empire of Fear of ruling out any possibility of a sequel, which was probably a bad career move but one that I got stuck with, and I really think that vampires have now been thematically exhausted, at least for a while. The next work of my own fiction due for publication (from Perilous Press in March) features two Lovecraftian novellas, one of which - The Legacy of Erich Zann - features Poe's Auguste Dupin as its hero, and I'm currently tempted by the prospect of involving poor Dupin in further metaphysical adventures - at present I have Further Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar and The Return of the Xipehuz pencilled into my schedule for the summer.

Thank you immensely for your time and indulgence.

On this blog we have reviewed Brian's translations of The Nyctalope on Mars and Doctor Lerne, Subgod, both of which were highly enjoyable.

Strangers: Homicron, by Lina Buffolente and others

Disaster strikes a mission to the moon, but luminous Homicron, the envoy from Alpha, helps the astronauts return safely to Earth. Upon meeting his rescuer Major Ted White suffers a fatal heart attack, leading Homicron to possess his body, inherit his memories, and, as Homicron comes to realise, his feelings for Doctor Rita Tower. From the beginning he has the power of telepathy and mind control, and soon he is able to unlock his Alphan abilities, including flight, superhuman strength and phasing through solid objects.

The first section of this book was originally serialised in Futura, a French comics magazine, beginning in 1971. This English adaptation is by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, whose previous translations include Marvel's Moebius graphic novels. The second section is from a later revival in Fantask, written by Lofficier and with art by Jean-Jacques Dzielowski. It's a grittier take on the story, focusing at first on Frank Universal and Sally Swift, ecological investigators for the World Safety Unit and eventually introducting a new female Homicron.

This isn't a fantastic book or an remarkable discovery – it would be kind to describe the dialogue as functional, and the storytelling is very basic – but reading it was an absolutely lovely way to spend an afternoon. In its broad strokes the story resembles Fantastic Four or Green Lantern, but the approach is entirely European, and that gives it a very unusual feel. It's similar in style to Starblazer or Bonelli comics, and if you like that kind of thing you'll probably enjoy this very much.

Strangers: Homicron, Lina Buffolente et al, Hexagon Comics/Black Coat Press, pb, 364pp.

Doctor Lerne, Subgod, by Maurice Renard

This volume, the first of five collecting the complete scientific marvel fiction of Maurice Renard, "the French H.G. Wells", includes a story, "Monsieur Dupont's Vacation", a novel which shares the book's title, and an essay, "Scientific Marvel Fiction and its Effect on the Consciousness of Progress".

Monsieur Dupont, a maker of sewing machines and bicycles, receives an invitation from his friend Professor Gambertin to holiday in Les Ormes for a season. Gambertin is an amateur palaeontologist, and caught up in his enthusiasm Dupont spends his holiday digging for dinosaur bones. But what's been nibbling at the bushes? Could one of the dinosaurs have somehow survived?

Doctor Lerne is a Moreauvian figure working to graft parts both physical and spiritual from one species to another, from animals to plants, from humans to animals. When a nephew comes to visit it interferes with plans both scientific and romantic, and the outcome can only be tragic. Well, tragic – and rather funny, and quite raunchy. I note without disclosing spoilers that this novel's narrative approach had interesting parallels in the next book I read, Twisthorn Bellow, by Francophile Rhys Hughes.

Renard writes extremely well, and there's a sly wit in evidence throughout. There's Flaubertian mockery of the scientific mindset, and Moliere's delight in flim-flam and doubletalk. Though an intellectual writer, he is entertainingly cruel to his characters. As with Brian Stableford's other translations for Black Coat Press there's an exceptionally useful amount of apparatus, making this a very attractive package. For more information on the series see the interview with Stableford in Dark Horizons #56.

Doctor Lerne, Subgod, by Maurice Renard, tr. Brian Stableford, Black Coat Press, pb, 328pp. Amazon US. Amazon UK.

The Nyctalope on Mars, by Jean de La Hire

Saint-Clair, the Nyctalope, is a twentieth-century Riddick, able to see perfectly in the dark. It’s not much of a superpower, but it’s enough to put him one up on Flash Gordon! After twelve girls are abducted to become the wives of the Twelve – a criminal organisation which has established a base on Mars, in order to conquer the Martians from The War of the Worlds, before returning to conquer Earth – the Nyctalope heads to Mars to rescue them.

This is an old French pulp novel given the Penguin Classics treatment by Brian Stableford and Black Coat Press. As well as translating, Stableford provides much useful apparatus. A highly informative introduction puts the novel in context, draws out its themes, and provides biographical information. An afterword deals with the problem of the story’s uneven chronology, caused in part by its episodic construction, and partly by de la Hire’s decision to introduce contemporary figures. Thirty-six footnotes alert the reader to de la Hire’s many mistakes, scientific and literary. Reproductions of several covers round out a generous package. Numerous typos spoil the effect a bit, but I imagine Jean de la Hire would have been delighted to see his novel receiving such loving attention after all these years.

Perhaps I should say careful attention, rather than loving: I probably enjoyed this book much more than Brian Stableford, who calls it a “thoroughly badly-written book”. The novel is certainly flawed, but enjoyable nevertheless. I don’t need all books to be good; it’s okay for some to be silly and entertaining. This book delivers entertainment in abundance, even if it’s not always deliberate.

There’s an Austin Powers feel to the novel at times. For example, one of my favourite lines recognises that Saint-Clair must already know everything he is being told: “‘I know all that,’ said Saint-Clair, ‘but every time you repeat it, it seems new, and I admire you…’” (p. 63). I’ve heard of hanging a lantern on awkward exposition, but that’s more like hanging a lighthouse on it! In another scene (p. 114), two villains stare at a dial in total silence for an entire hour to see if the power levels fluctuate. There’s lots of pipe and cigar-smoking. Characters monologue at ludicrous length, and nobody in the book seems able to think without speaking out loud. Even when hiding from hordes of enemies they still murmur long speeches to themselves (p. 280, for example). The book is full of that kind of endearing daftness. At one point the Nyctolope seems to propose putting someone to death for (among other things) “an extreme irreverence for science” (p. 86).

The book plays interestingly with other texts, for example establishing early on that Wells was a historian rather than a novelist (though why France was apparently unaffected by the Martian invasion is left unclear), foreshadowing similar experiments by Philip Jose Farmer, Alan Moore, and so on. Similarly the Nyctalope himself anticipates the pulp heroes that would follow: Doc Savage, Flash Gordon, and so on, all the way through to Tom Strong.

But for me this wasn’t just of historical interest. It was exciting, amusing, eccentric and quite unique, and I’d recommend it highly to anyone who prizes those qualities.

The Nyctalope on Mars, by Jean de La Hire, tr. Brian M. Stableford, Black Coat Press, pb, 312pp.