Jean-Marc Lofficier

This is a book that is very much "of a specific moment" in Doctor Who fandom, chronicling many of the script and storyline concepts that were developed to try and create a movie between the end of the original series in 1989 and the TV movie/backdoor pilot in 1996. Mostly, they come off like what they are: 1990s TV sci-fi adventure schlock, heavily derived from obvious inspirations like the Indiana Jones movies, Terminator movies, and Flash Gordon. You can absolutely see strands of the 1996 show more TV movie emerge over the various concepts - and the amazing thing is, even if you don't like it, that TV movie is absolutely better (and frankly, less controversial) than anything else documented in the book. It all makes for a fun read - once - but you'll be relieved none of these films were actually made! show less

In 2000, McFarland published the Lofficiers’ massive 800-page tome entitled French Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Pulp Fiction: A Guide to Cinema, Television, Radio, Animation, Comic Books and Literature from the Middle Ages to the Present. In 2003, Black Coat Press was founded by the Lofficers to publish, for an English-speaking audience, some of the works they talked about.

Recently, they’ve reworked and reorganized that volume into four books that have started to be published by show more Black Coat Press.

This book is 315 pages of text and an index – more on that later.

Organized chronologically, the book starts with the 1500s and goes through 2000. While there is a bit about French science fiction after that year, the Lofficers say they made no real attempt to extend their original coverage of their subject.

After a chapter on utopias, most of the following chapters are divided into “Journeys to Other Worlds” (space or alternate dimensions or dream worlds), “Journeys to Other Lands” (earthbound tales of lost races, utopias, and science and technology), and “Journeys to Other Times” (future tales, alternate histories, and time travel) sections. Some chapters add sections on major authors, notable authors, publishers, young adult titles, publishers, and mainstream authors who also produced science fiction. Only Jules Verne gets his own section.

I read this book cover to cover and found must of it interesting. It was only toward the modern periods with their abbreviated lists of authors and descriptions that my eyes started to glaze over.

Many major works get enough of a description to pique your interest, and footnotes give the ISBNs of all the referenced works that have been issued by Black Coat Press. The coverage of an author or theme doesn’t always neatly stay in the chronological borders assigned its chapter.

The broad outlines of French science fiction were known to me up to 1950, the stopping point of Brian Stableford’s The Plurality of Imaginary Worlds, so Lofficers’ coverage of the next 50 years was all new to me. The Silver Age of 1950 to 1970 saw a massive introduction of translated American science fiction into France. While the period was one of ‘rebirth, growth, and consolidation”, French science fiction found its themes and “modes of expression” dominated by American examples of the genre. The 1970s saw the French New Wave in science fiction and the pollicization of the genre. The number of published works greatly expanded until the mid-1980s.

There may have been a much larger number of titles – but many sold poorly. The 1980s saw a retrenchment of more traditional works that sold better. Gone were many of the literary experiments and political works. The publishing boom in science fiction had ended. The 1990s saw a modest recovery of the field and more titles issued. As of today, science fiction publishing in France exceeds all other non-Anglo countries’ in Europe printed (if you take Germany’s Perry Rhodan titles out).

In a long tradition of science fiction scholarship, the Lofficiers, as champions of French science fiction, note the many cases where it was the first to develop certain fictional conceits and themes or significantly develop them.

Things that stuck out in my mind as unique to French science fiction is the number of mad scientist stories or stories just dealing with the allegedly strange psychology of scientists. Medical doctors frequently show up with mad or dangerous schemes. Early romans scientifiques also have way more off-Earth voyages than the English scientific romance or early American science fiction. French science fiction definitely has a lot of works dealing with socialism and anarchism. It also has a fair number of proto-superhero stories.

I should add that this book covers all French language science fiction, not just that published in France.

The book showed me Black Coat Press has published a lot more post-1940 titles than I thought.

So, if you’re interested in French science fiction and just want a book you can look up a period of interest or one of the many authors listed in the index . . .

Well, you could do that if the index wasn’t such a mess. I won’t bore you with specific examples, but I will note there are several page numbers indexed that go beyond those 315 pages of text. So, if you are looking at this as strictly a reference book you’ll just dip into now and then, you’re going to be frustrated.

Even with that, I’m happy I read this one and think it will be useful for future research – even if with that index. show less

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3537950.html

This is the story of several film treatments for Doctor Who written between 1987 and 1994 by Mark Ezra, Johnny Byrne, Denny Martin Flinn, the not-yet-disgraced Adrian Rigelsford, John Leekley and Robert DeLaurentis. Apart from Rigelsford, these are all serious writers with serious records, and it's interesting to see how the pressures of cinematic production and consumption formed what now seems the inevitable Philip Segal end product of 1996. show more Various plot elements came and went - one can see some threads emerging in New Who of both the RTD and Moffat eras; some of the outlines are clearly a four-part TV story written as a film script. It's interesting that the one-off female sidekick and the streetwise kid sidekick became established at a relatively early stage. My jaw dropped at the brief involvement of Leonard Nimoy, which I don't think I'd known about, but I was less surprised at the crucial role of the Gallifrey One convention in the story.

Anyway, I think this really is for completists only. Normally when I say that, it's about something that isn't very good; in this case it's because none of these scripts was ever made, and none is likely to be made now, so they are of limited relevance to the wider history of Who. show less

Another Elseworld story.

While I thought the art was atrocious [it was purposeful, but that doesn't mean I have to like it], the story was engaging.

Especially how it contrasted and compared Superman to Batman, one a son of light, the other a servant of the dark.