Michel Jeury (1934–2015)

In rural France a mild-mannered, neurotic, not very successful encyclopedia salesman comes home one day and finds someone has parked in HIS parking place. Strange people are driving around the village in large German cars. Because his wife hasn't cooked his evening meal, and has an appointment somewhere, he goes to the local restaurant where he meets his more adventurous lifelong friend. They watch some of the strange German car driving people at the next table eat a meal that consists show more entirely of eggs. Going home he wakes in the middle of the night to find his village cut off from the outside world by an intangible dome of energy. He meets up with his more adventurous friend again and they try to leave the village but are turned back and pursued by the strangers. Eventually cornered they are given a long lecture by some weirdly squabbling aliens in human form. Their village has, they tell them, become (or has the potential to become) a vital part of a galaxy-wide translation program that is trying to negotiate the end to an aeons-old conflict between two warring races. All that is needed is that some of the inhabitants of the village agree to becoming components in 'The Process'. They would not be aware of being part of 'The Process', or of even having agreed to take part, but would be rewarded in intangible ways. After having sex with one of the aliens our hero agrees. (As sales techniques go not a bad one, let me tell you it'd work on me.)

End of part one.

Part two: In rural France a mildly successful encyclopedia salesman comes home one day and parks in his usual parking place. He should be happy but there is something nagging at the back of his brain that disturbs him. Why is he suddenly selling more encyclopedias than he has ever done? It can't be because the people in the area have suddenly become more inquisitive and intelligent can it? Why do people think he has paid for things when he has no memory of having paid them? Why does he have strange memory lapses when he cannot account for his actions? And the dreams! What about the dreams? He narrows down the time when all this strangeness started happening to him to one particular night but no one he asks remembers anything peculiar happening on that date. He goes to an amateur hypnotism session and gets himself hypnotised with no discernable result - but his wife later tells him she was given a word to unlock a post-hypnotic command to release his regressed memories. He forces her to say the word... and all heck breaks lose!

The village is once again suddenly cut off from the world. The phone rings and it's alien sex girl on the other end of the line telling him 'The Process' is now trying to reject him as a faulty component and all the other components of the village will try to kill him. Lots of running around in the dark pursued by villagers carrying guns and strange, water-based simulacra of villagers carrying guns. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the girls from the hypnotism session turns up and helps him evade capture before they are whisked away to safety by alien sex girl in her pear-shaped helicopter spaceship. In a secret base (somewhere unspecified but not on earth and closer than Proxima Centauri) the faction that has rescued them try to repair 'The Process'. ('The Process', by the way, allows people to alter their reality, so the environment in which this all takes place is constantly morphing and fluxing.)

'The Process' is in danger - one of the aliens charged with extending it to Earth was part of a faction that wants to bring the whole thing down. There is no proof, this faction claims, that the warring factions for which it was created ever actually existed. They refuse to be disposable parts of some self-replicating ever-expanding system with no purpose other than to exist. Our hero, it transpires, has become that most van Vogtian of creations The Most Important Person in the Universe. If he is removed (willingly or unwillingly) from 'The Process' the whole thing will collapse. The base is captured. All is lost. When suddenly!... Deus ex Machina! One of the warring factions for which 'The Process' was created - which no one is sure whether ever actually existed - turns out not only to have existed but still exists.... and, not only that, is attentive to the pleas for help from minor components of their interstellar computer.

Mildly successful encyclopedia salesman and Saviour of the Universe returns home. The phone rings. Bad guy alien faction representative is on the other end of the line. "The war isn't over!" he snarls. Mildly successful encyclopedia salesman and Saviour of the Universe hangs up.

His wife is cooking his tea.

Fin

Aside from the rather abrupt Get Out of Jail Free ending I really enjoyed this one. There was a real sense of 'WTF IS going on?' about it for most of it that I like. The characters acted like real people, the aliens were suitably unpredictably alien. It read like a long strange bewildering fever dream. I know its not to everyone's taste but I like being bewildered. I like stories that almost make sense and are always at the point of promising some sort of rational resolution but always just manage to shift the goalposts far enough to keep you guessing but not far enough for you to notice that the author has no more idea what is going on in his book than the reader does.

Les Hommes-processeurs got the mix just about right for me. I shall look out for more of this guy's books. show less

While my French is still rudimentary, it seems to me that this book is written in a somewhat stillted style. I liked the ecological ideas, but the ending was a bit difficult to believe.

S. Destinie
MEOW Date Thursday, May 9. 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era)

While my French is still rudimentary, it seems to me that this book is written in a somewhat stillted style. I liked the ecological ideas, but the ending was a bit difficult to believe.

S. Destinie
MEOW Date Thursday, May 9. 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era)

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