Fantastic Metropolis

French SF has a glorious past (remember Jules Verne?) and will, hopefully, have a bright future. But the present situation is a little more complex and difficult to decode, especially when one attempts to evaluate it on the same grounds as American—or Anglo-American—SF. The definition of SF is not exactly the same on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, it is often confused with sci-fi (Star Trek juveniles, series of fantasy lite or shared universes, to name a few commercial examples) while most French authors claim it is “literature at its best.” Disney versus “the Louvre,” if you know what I mean. Of course, both formulations are too narrow to be entirely true but they’re not entirely false, either. Let’s see why.

1. The cultural background

First, one has to understand that France—and most of Europe, in fact—has a distinct cultural background and that SF does not play the same role as in the English speaking world. French TV, for example, is not really interested in SF. French miniseries are often based on novels from the 18th or 19th century (not as boring as you might think, but rather short on special effects and light sabers—not to mention Depardieu always plays in one of the principal roles). Popular TV series like Star Trek, Babylon 5, Millenium and Doctor Who are almost ignored in France. The X Files was a huge success but we are one year behind the US, which means that several details from The X Files movie did not make sense to most of us.

Neither do we have the direct equivalent of comics books. No Batman, X-Men or Spider-man. No shared universes where Judge Dredd meets the Punisher to fight against the villains… No equivalent to Sandman—which is bad. But we have tons of SF “bande dessinées”, with plenty of famous artists from Moebius to Caza, Bilal, Bourgeon and Mézières (who worked with Besson and was an inspiration to many US series like Babylon 5) as well as many newcomers. The plots are often elaborate and quite complex and they are considered as acceptable cultural objects. However, an album of “bande dessinées” is often priced at over $10. Parents can buy it. Not kids.

And if you’re a famous film maker who wants to shoot a SF movie (Luc Besson, for example, or Jeunet), you’re almost forced to work with Hollywood. It seems that there’s no money available for SF projects in the French cinema, even though the situation may change in the near future.

So, what we call SF in France is mainly “written SF”. The cultural gap between French SF books and the visual equivalent coming from the other side of the Atlantic is quite large.

2. A brief journey in history

French Science-Fiction was nearly killed by World War I and its resurrection as a movement only started in the late 1950s. A few Anticipation books were published in the meantime but with no SF label on them—for instance, Planet of the Apes or Imprudent Traveller.

During the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, many important authors from the USA and Great Britain were published regularly in France. Many different imprints—from deluxe hardcovers to paperbacks—were almost entirely devoted to foreign SF. In parallel, a popular imprint entitled Fleuve Noir Anticipation specialized in short novels—French equivalent of pulps—from local authors. At that time, the public considered that French authors were merely pale copies of their Anglophone counterparts.

This situation evolved a little in the mid-1970s when a few French authors—Michel Jeury, Philippe Curval—were published by famous imprints like Ailleurs & Demain (meaning “Elsewhere & Tomorrow”). These books were not only excellent in the traditional Anglophone SF sense, they were different. Inspired by literary experiments like the “Nouveau Roman”, they could be considered as the French equivalent of the British “New Wave”.

In the meantime, a younger generation of angry young men was using Science-Fiction as a means to question the French society as it was. They wished to use SF as a political medium. One of the imprints created at that time was called Ici & Maintenant (“Here & Now”), in answer to the well established Ailleurs & Demain. It is interesting to note that good authors like Jeury or Curval were published by both.

Unfortunately, even though the messages expressed by this “French political SF” were interesting, too many books—and short stories—from that period were seen as poorly written by the public. In reaction, a brief but intense neoformalist movement called “Limite” emerged in the beginning of the 1980s, featuring new authors like Emmanuel Jouanne, Francis Berthelot and Antoine Volodine. They considered Science-Fiction as a medium for literary experimentation and adopted a post-modern attitude toward writing. Several novels and short stories were published independently by the authors but their first common anthology was also their last…

It must be noted that French Science-Fiction was not really interested in space even if a few “space westerns” were published regularly. The “space opera” genre was mostly something associated with Anglo-Saxon SF.