FARRERE, Claude

   Pseudonym of French writer Frederic Charles Pierre Edouard Bargone (1876-1957), author mainly of "colonial" novels after the model of Pierre Loti (1850-1923). His sf books are La maison des hommes vivants (1911; trans Arthur Livingston as The House of the Secret 1923 US) and, more notably, Les condamnes a mort (1920; trans Elisabeth Abbott as Useless Hands 1926 US; 1973 US as by Charles Bargone), whose harshsocial-Darwinist terms render a 1990s workers' revolt as bleakly pathetic: when the "useless hands" go on strike, they are disintegrated by a new weapon and machines take over their jobs.

   JC

   Other works: Black Opium (coll trans Samuel Putnam 1929 US), tales linked by reference to opium.

   See also: AUTOMATION; DYSTOPIAS; SOCIAL DARWINISM.