Philippe Curval (1929–2023)

A real proper grown up French SF novel, not the page-turning pulp drivel I usually read. It was the first non-translated novel to win the French Apollo Prize in 1977 - previous winners having included Robert Silverberg, John Brunner, and Roger Zelazny.

I'm not going to give a full synopsis because, to be honest, quite a lot of the time I was utterly lost as to what was going on - in a good way. Curval went the full Philp K Dick on this one with a sudden lurch into Robert Sheckley's Status show more Civilisation with side orders of Frank Herbert, and Jose Farmer - there was a lot of sex, some of it quite revoltingly scatological, including a scene towards the end where both participants manage to die violent deaths while f***ing.

In the future, The Marcom (the former Common Market) has cut itself off from the outside world with an impenetrable barrier of psychic weaponry and its residents live isolated lives, turning their back on each other, happy to be ruled by a 'Secret Government'. Residents are protected from any kind of harm by strict pollution laws and mandatory protective clothing legislation. Most people are happy to stay indoors within the cocoon of their Time Slowing devices which... erm make time go more slowly.

A spy from the outer lands infiltrates, in response to a message in a bottle thrown into the sea some years before, but is caught up in the psychic weaponry barrier and is nursed back to sanity by a priest of the Dream Cult a new religion tolerated by the secret government who seek enlightenment through sleeping - sounds like the sort of religion I could get into.

All is not tickity-boo however in the Marcom and the time-slowers are having an unusual effect on the harvest. There are malcontent biker gang-like rebels, our hero gets sent to a Rehabilitation Centre which is basically anarchy - live long enough to see the error of your ways and you get out. While he is in there he falls in with a scientist who has obviously read Herbert's Green Brain and has synthesised a drop dead hotty shape-shifting woman out of hive-mind insects which is now in need of a mate. So our hero has sex with it - it conveniently opens up a set of vulva in its belly so save him bending down, and it reproduces him.

There's lots of running around. The spy turns out to be our hero's dad. The hero's adopted dad is the head of the time stretching machine company and has now developed a Space-Expanding machine too and converts his flat into the entirety of the Marcom with his flat inside it in an endless Kline Bottle loop of bigness. This is going to destroy the everythingness of everything but the priest of the Dream Cult goes where he shouldn't into the dreams of another character, becomes a van Vogtian super-metalist character and folds up the wrong kind of universe and puts it away in a dream somewhere where it can't do any harm. Our hero, his insect double, hot naked insect girl, and the Atomic Motorbike Rebels ride their atomic motorbikes around a living room the size of France trying to find a way out when, for reasons I cannot remember, they decide the way to do this is to drive to Gibraltar and, by driving off the top at just the right speed, they will go through the flat's only window and end up in the sea outside.

Utterly bonkers. I loved it. show less

du mal a rentrer dans l'hidtoire ave ces personnages trop differents et surtout tout est raconte du point de vue de loti qui n'est en utopie que pour son plaisir en particulier sexuel,sans jamais tenir compte de l'autre, marjorie sauf a la toute fin ou apres s'etre simpletement separe d'elle il realise a la derniere minute qu'il ne peut pas vivre sans elle et parler meme de la reconstruire,niant akisi son individualite et sa personnalite.marjorie n'existe que pour et par lui.