RENARD, Maurice

(1875-1939)

   French writer, generally regarded in FRANCE as the most important native sf writer for the period 1900-1930, whose career began with the stories assembled as Fantomes et fantoches ("Phantoms and Puppets") (coll 1905) as by Vincent Saint-Vincent. He is best known byEnglish-language readers for his sf novel Les mains d'Orlac (1920; trans Florence Crewe-Jones as The Hands of Orlac 1929 US; new trans Ian White 1981 UK), filmed in 1924 as ORLACS HANDE; another version was Mad Love (1935). The story deals in GOTHIC terms with the ominous consequences of a hand transplant. A less well known though more wildly imaginative novel is Le docteur Lerne, sous-dieu("Doctor Lerne, Undergod") (1908; trans anon asNew Bodies for Old 1923 US), in which a sinister SCIENTIST's experiments in grafting produce, for example, rats with leaves; the transplantation of a man's brain into a bull's body, and vice versa, creates a smart cow and a Minotaur. Ultimately the German villain - who has already occupied the scientist's brain - transplants himself into the body of a car, but the machinery, thus rendered mortal, putrefies.Le Singe (1925; trans Florence Crewe-Jones as Blind Circle 1928 US) with Albert Jean (1892-) is agruesomely comic mystery story whose solution reveals the manufacture of a series of identical ANDROIDS by a kind of electrolysis. The title story of Le Voyage Immobile, suivi d'autres histoires singulieres (coll 1909; rev1922; title story trans anon as The Flight of the Aerofix 1932 chap US) features an unsteerable craft, powered by ANTIGRAVITY and detrimental to its passengers.MR's untranslated works include the collections Monsieur D'Outremort et autres histoires singulieres ("Mr Overdeath and OtherCurious Stories") (coll 1913; vt Suite Fantastique 1921); L'Homme truque("The Altered Man") (coll 1921), the long title story of which described by Pierre VERSINS as "a nightmare based on the Universe as seen by a mutilated giant whose eyes have been replaced by 'electroscopes' . . . the pretext for many pages of a strange, visual poetry"L'invitation a la peur("Invitation to Fear") (coll 1926),Le Carnaval du mystere ("Mystery Merry-go-Round") (coll 1929) and Celui qui n'a pas tue ("He Who Did NotKill") (coll 1932). These volumes include many fine stories on a great variety of sf themes: CLONES, invisibility, time travel, cyborgs, gravity, space-time paradoxes, ESCHATOLOGY and, especially and often, altered modes of PERCEPTION. His untranslated novels include Le peril bleu ("The Blue Peril") (1911), about an extraordinary civilization of lifeforms living onthe top of an atmosphere as if it were a sea; Un homme chez les microbes, scherzo ("A Man Amongst the Microbes: A Scherzo") (1928), a journey into the microcosm with more sophistication and verbal wit than those of Ray CUMMINGS; and Le maitre de la lumiere ("Master of Light") (1933L'Intransigeant; 1947), about the creation of a new form of glass which condenses space and time, similar to the "slow glass" invented (independently) by Bob SHAW. The huge Maurice Renard: Romans et contesfantastiques ("Maurice Renard: Fantasy Novels and Tales") (omni 1990) contains most of his work of genre interest.

   PN/JC

   See also: HISTORY OF SF.