George Slusser
French Science Fiction: The Occluded Genre
Jean-Marc Gouanvic. La
science-fiction française au XXe siècle (1900-1968): Essai de socio-poétique d'un genre
en émergence. Amsterdam: Editions Rodolpi B.V. (USA
orders: 800-225-3998), 1994. 292pp. $27.50.
Critical studies that deal exclusively with French sf are rare in French, and rarer yet
in English. An adequate critical overview has yet to appear in either language. The reason
for this, perhaps, is not only (as Gouanvic's subtitle suggests) that French sf is an
"emerging genre," but a genre that has never emerged, a form of literature that,
unlike its Anglo-Saxon counterpart, has never sufficiently defined its own identity in
relation to French literary tradition and its dominant canon. Symptomatic here may be the
fact that the French sf critics capable of producing this critical overview, have chosen
instead to write of American sf: Pascal Thomas and Pierre K. Rey's La nou velle
science-fiction américaine (1981), then Gérard Cordesse's work of the same title
(Aubier, 1984). Possibly the best general study on sf in French to date, Roger Bozzetto's L'obscur
objet d'un savoir: Fantastique et science-fiction: deux littératures de l'imaginaire
(Aix-en-Provence: PUP, 1992), seems to have in mind, as a point of contrast, the
Anglo-Saxon model, when he seeks to define the relationship of sf in France to the high
literary culture in that country:
Nous présenterons trois états marquants des relations entretenues entre la
science-fiction et l'ensemble du système littéraire. Avant 1950, où elle est
à la fois
dans le domaine de la littérature et dans l'infralittéraire de 1950
à
1954, et de cette date ý 1965 où elle s'est constituée en paralittérature.
(185) [I will present three phases that define the relationship between science fiction
and the literary establishment: before 1950, when it was viewed as littérature
and from 1950 to 1954, as infralittérature, and then from the latter date to
1965 when it came to be known as paralittérature.]
What seems enviable in American sf is that it parted ways with "literature,"
and henceforth did not need to define itself by such a relationship: it was neither
"below" nor was it "parallel to" literature; it was something else
altogether. To Bozzetto, a literature of scientific extrapolation, as promised by Verne,
failed to develop and to achieve generic identity during the period that encompassed the
two world wars. Pierre Astier however speaks of a general "crise du roman
français" during this period. Writers were trying diverse forms of fiction, among
them the utopian novel, even the novel of anticipation. There was no consensus or
direction until the New Novel emerged after World War II. In relation to this mainstream,
French sf (as clearly distinct from American imports of this period) remained a
"paraliterary" form. As such, it merely shadows the central process of French
literary culture at this time, which was to develop (in revolt against the old
"realist" hegemony Robbe-Grillet imputed to Balzac) new forms of otherwise
recognizable fantastic or surrealist narrative. Bozzetto sees French sf as never achieving
more than a virtual existence: "la sf française pourrait en effet se
proposer comme un exemple pour hybrider la culture sf et la littérature
d'avant-garde." [French sf could in fact offer itself as a model for the
hybridization of sf and avant-garde littérature.] (my italics).1 In post-Vernian France
however, it seems there was no "sf culture" per se. Even the themes and
forms of American sf, which after World War II could have brought about a hybridization,
were filtered through a critical and reviewing apparatus that sought to turn them too into
avatars of surrealism. Indeed, the reason a specifically French sf cannot emerge is
because it was there all along, the shadowy twin of the dominant forms of French literary
culture. But what French critics do not see, the Anglo-Saxon reader fortunate enough to
read French sees clearly.
This long preamble is necessary to put Gouanvic's book in perspective. This book is
clearly a recycled thesis, one whose titular parameters, 1900 to 1968, alert us in its terminus
post quem to its year of redaction. Or to the fact that he, like many intellectuals
of that period, saw the aborted "revolution" of May 68 as a culminating moment,
beyond which all was anticlimax. Whatever the reason, in 1994 Gouanvic is again telling
the reader that French sf as genre has still not emerged. His short postscript on
post-1968 writing in this area shows him aware of the highly significant and prolific work
of writers such as Jean-Pierre Andrevon, Michel Jeury, Serge Brussolo, as well as the bandes
dessinées of Moebius (Jean Giraud) and Philippe Druillet. Whereas the pre-1968 works
Gouanvic discusses rarely bear the publishing designation "SF" (for Fleuve
noir the term is "anticipation"), these works do in profusion. He is
unwilling to take these works at face value, to believe that their authors believed they
were writing sf, and a French sf at that. His unwillingness suggests he felt he had, from
his pre-1968 examples, all the evidence he needed to conclude that a distinctively French
sf had not, hence would never, come to light. But this is true only if one keeps, as point
of comparison and contrast, the Anglo-Saxon model (or its aborted Vernian form). This is,
implicitly if not openly, Gouanvic's touchstone. Its presence, ironically, blinds him to
the import of the very material he presents in his analyses.
Gouanvic offers rich descriptions of the works of several interesting French authors of
"anticipatory" fiction from 1900 to 1968. He presents the reader with raw data.
He never however asks why he chose these writers to represent the trajectory of
his ever- emerging genre. Clearly, in relation to Vernian beginnings, they trace an
obviously contrasting path to the Anglo-Saxon model which, in a sense, later assimilated
Verne. Here, it is the turning away from Verne that is evident. Gouanvic does not
emphasize or analyze it; yet if we read between his lines, we see a unique form of French
sf, affirming its shape, as it goes, in relation to traditional French literature.
The first question the reader asks is why Gouanvic chooses to begin his study with the
date 1900? This effectively locates the origins of sf in France, not as one might expect
with Verne and 19th century "positivism," but rather with J.H. Rosny aîné, and
the Wellsian elegaic pessimism of a work like La Mort de la terre (1910; The
Death of the Earth, 1972). Gouanvic however makes nothing of this choice. The next
writer he discusses in detail is Maurice Renard. Though he claims to see Renard as a
critic both of Wells/Rosny and Verne, it is clear from his descriptions alone
that the "anti-Vernian" strain wins out. The "serious" side of Le
péril bleu (1912) for example leans toward the Wells of War of the Worlds
and the Rosny of La Force mystérieuse; its clownish "sub-plot" is a
chase lifted from Le Tour du monde en 80 jours, complete with British policemen
and Turkish villains. Gouanvic's third major author, Jacques Spitz, who represents the entre
deux guerres and specifically the 1930s, is chosen again for anti-Vernian reasons.
Gouanvic tells us he chose Spitz because "ces romans possèdent certains caractères
qui les inscrivent dans le grand courant de la littérature satirique
à la suite des
Cyrano et des Voltaire" (135) [These novels possess certain traits which identify
them as part of the great tradition of satirical literature stemming from Cyrano and
Voltaire.] From the plot summaries we are given however, the "satire" in Spitz's
novels, correcting the alien invasion scenarios of Wells and Rosny, is that of the late
Voltaire's Candide or the poem on the disaster of Lisbon. Gouanvic classifies Spitz's
novels in the following manner: cataclysmic narratives; tales of mutation (like the
well-known La Guerre des mouches (1938) [The War of the Flies] where reasoning
flies defeat and exterminate humanity); and what he calls tales of
"anticipation," which, he says, serve to "foretell" a series of
disastrous and unavoidable futures. But what is called "satire" here takes
Renard's travesty of Vernian positivism to a different level. The model here is the
"philosophical" tale in the strong sense of the 18th century philosophes.
Spitz however carries this off in heavy handed manner. Wanting to replay Voltaire's assault
on Leibnizian optimism, Spitz's approach does not take us through an implacable series of
ironic deflations, but leads to open affirmation of cosmic pessimism. Gouanvic's
description of L'Oeil du purgatoire (1945) for example, presents the voyage of a
modern Candide, this time to the end of Wellsian spacetime. But here, the search is not to
find impressions to fill a blank sheet, but rather (as with a character in a Lem novel) a
staged alien encounter that leads to revelation of the universe as mirror. Not only is
what the protagonist has been pursuing nothing more than the image of himself, but now it
is the nature of that image to remain forever a blank sheet.
Finally, Gouanvic's choice of Fleuve noir anticipation writers B.R. Bruss and Stefan
Wul (Pierre Pairault) to represent post-World-War II French sf is highly significant.
Again however, the reader must read between the lines to understand why this choice might
offer clues as to the nature of a French sf genre. Gouanvic has left the between-wars
period of the "crise du roman français," and is finally dealing with an
sf-specific publishing line. Despite the venue however, the works of the two writers, when
Gouanvic describes the manner in which they treat apparently stock sf themes, reveal a
sophistication, indeed a "philosophical" intent in the best French sense of the
word, that marks them as something very different from what the Anglo-Saxon reader would
think of as "popular" or mass fiction. In effect, there is no hiatus between the
works of Rosny or Spitz, and these novels, which seem to be their natural continuation.
Gouanvic however, perhaps because he has little faith in the continuity of the
anti-Vernian, "mainstream" tradition he himself has traced from Rosny, or
perhaps, falling back on the Anglo-Saxon model he evokes elsewhere, insists at this point
in making a distinction between "serious" sf and "science-fiction de
série" (by which he means mass market sf). The question is however, in such a
homogeneous and monolithic culture like that of France, that turns juvenile literature
into Tintin and mystery fiction into San Antonio, and where the only
recognizable "pulp" sf by our standards is a sub-Vernian feuilleton
called Les Aventuriers du ciel, is there really a mass market literature, or a
mass market sf? Once we eliminate this mass literature habitus, either as dumping ground
for the tasteless and "non-literary," or as place of gestation (in the
Anglo-Saxon myth) whence a brand-new hence "vital" genre is born, then we must
look elsewhere to find a French sf. Gouanvic's series of texts offers evidence of a
coherent form of sf, operating within, not outside of, the French literary tradition.
French critics seem to wish it were otherwise.
The real problem, in discussing Fleuve noir writers, is to read their novels in light
of the criteria set, during the same period from 1955-1965, by the more
"literary" theoreticians associated with the journal Fiction. This
publication, originally intended to be the French-language version of The Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction, gradually evolved, in the hands of Gérard Klein and
others, into a forum for defining a uniquely "French" form of sf. The Fiction
editors looked down on Fleuve noir as hacks, slavishly imitating the worst of an
Anglo-Saxon sf they wished to eschew. Ironically however, it is this popular or
"mass" sf production, not the more "literary" writers, that remained
the most "French." First of all, Fleuve noir used predominantly French
authors, thus was all but closed to Anglo-Saxon influence. The critics of Fiction
were perhaps beguiled by the American-looking covers, and the "American"
pseudonyms of writers like Bruss and Wul. But it is doubtful they read much farther.
Klein, under the name of Gilles d'Argyre (the joke is "argent"--money) wrote what
he thought were meta-fictional parodies of Fleuve noir novels. The irony is that these,
sharing a same cultural fascination for poetic symbolism that runs from Baudelaire to
surrealism, merely read like more ornate and self-conscious versions of the typical Fleuve
noir narrative. The Fiction critics sifted through US imports until they came up
with a definition of sf based on selectively kindred "surrealists" like Van Vogt
and Dick. At the same time however, Stefan Wul, drawing sources of inspiration primarily
from French culture, produced organically the sort of sf these critics were trying to
define. Gouanvic, at the end of his study, still asserts that a true "science fiction
française" has not yet come to be. His reader, all the while, has witnessed, in the
historical description and plot summaries given, the clear sense of a developing, and
uniquely French, form of French sf.
Gouanvic has a couple of intriguing formulas to describe the literature he presents,
but fails to define their descriptive potential for French sf as opposed to the
Anglo-Saxon forms (fictional and critical) he assumes are dominant, or even the East-
European (in his words "satiric") model expressed in Darko Suvin's
"cognitive estrangement." Gouanvic's first formula is "la poétique de
l'altérité," and it is precisely this he sees lacking in the work of a B.R. Bruss.
"Altérité" is not "alien encounter," which implies an
active, expansive quest, a reaching-out to the other, both physically and cognitively, in
order to communicate with it, assimilate or conquer it. Nor is there any sense of a
dialectic process: the cognitive de-centering of Suvin's sf novum. Rather
Gouanvic describes the relation between his set of binaries "poétique" and
"altérité" in terms of the following process: "penser ensemble cognition
et sublimation." [to think at once cognitively and spiritually]. This echoes the
program of Pascal in his use of the word "pensée." Pascal hoped to subsume two
irreducibly contrary modes of thought the "contrariétés" of rational (or
"scientific") reason and that higher form of thought he locates in the
"heart" ("le coeur a ses raisons...") in an inverse relationship he
called "renversement." Pascal sums up the condition of thinking mankind in
relation to this universal dynamic (the "I" speaking here is God) in Pensée
420: "If he raise himself up, I lower him; if he lower himself, I raise him up; and I
always contradict him, till he understands he is an incomprehensible
monster." Indeed, it is just such a condition that marks the protagonists of the sf
literature Gouanvic describes. These, enacting this "poétique de l'altérité,"
are seen both seeking to escape their social situation, and to embrace and accept it.
Gouanvic however, in faulting a Bruss for not achieving this poetics of
otherness, seems to shift to Suvin's model of the "novum," rather than following
the cultural logic of his phrase, from Pascal to Rimbaud.
In this light, one aspect of Gouanvic's analysis is highly significant. His final
argument for calling the sf of B.R. Bruss "regressive" (thus
"popular") in relation to the more literary forms of Rosny and Spitz is the
presence of "conservative" paradigms of courtly love and adventure in Bruss's
novels. Taken on a superficial level, the politics of Bruss (the pen name of Roger
Blondel) seem fair game for Gouanvic's 1960s leftism: his work is
"familocentric" (Gouanvic sees this as "Petainist," but also has to
admit it is stock and trade in American sf writers like Asimov), or sentimental, or
preaching jingoist "courage" in the face of the enemy. Beyond surface cultural
traits however, one identifies a deeper cultural continuity here, which links the binary
of courtly romance love and adventure to the centrally dominant binary relationship of mind
and matter formulated in the 17th century by Descartes and Pascal. Insofar as paradigms of
courtly romance seem to abound in post-Cartesian France, it is possible to see this
horizontal (or narrative) model of love and adventure coming to serve as analogue to
Pascal's vertical model of "renverse ment," by which man as thinking reed,
weakest thing in the universe and yet the only thinking thing in that universe, is
replaced again and again at the median point between infinitely large and infinitely
small. Gouanvic's comparison of Bruss's sf and Erec et Enide, the twelfth century
novel of Chrétien de Troyes, does not seem so far-fetched then, when we provide a
Cartesian or Pascalian link. Making this comparison, just as with the cogito an individual
comes to fix his rational existence by means of rational doubt, so "love," in
the courtly system, becomes the fixed point of the elliptical seeking called
"adventure," in which mind can also be said to inscribe the limits of
its reach in relation to res extensa. Chrétien's courtly adventures function in
this realm of the rational alien, never leaving it for the realm of the non- rational
other. "Supernatural" figures encountered by Yvain, for example, routinely speak
and reason with the protagonist, indicating possession of reason, instead of the status of
Cartesian machine entities.
Using a term taken from Jesse Pitts, Gouanvic describes the activity of Bruss's
protagonists, as they make their trajectory of adventure as "le culte de la
prouesse" (with the word "prowess" taken here in a Vernian sense of pure
technological wizardry). Instead however, a better descriptive word perhaps is Pascal's
"esprit de finesse." Indeed, this term indicates precisely what
protagonists in works from Rosny to Bruss do, which is an ability to negotiate the
boundary between reason and non-reason, allowing them to explore this boundary, then loop
back to the "contractual" realm of family and marriage. This comparison reveals
at the very least an astonishing continuity of French literature and culture. And if
writers as disparate and wide-flung as Chrétien and Bruss can be terms of comparison
here, then sf in France is clearly part of this continuity, hardly surprising when we
consider that this same French seventeenth century gave its culture (unique perhaps to
Western scientific cultures) both the Cartesian adventure of rational science, and its
Pascalian antidote. There are, in fact, further corrections of the romance paradigm of
adventure and love. I see developing in narratives that are obvious prototypes of the
French sf narrative, Candide for instance, a form of negative finesse.
Here the purpose of the displacements that are Candide's adventures is to test the
survival of the human center (the cogito or Pascal's "thinking reed")
at the same time as the human mind examines possible limits in relation to those infinite
spaces of res extensa. Such a paradigm is profoundly different from the Anglo-Saxon model
of the scientist or scientific mind as heroic explorer, sailing strange seas of
thought alone, or sailing beyond the sunset, seeking so as not to find. What this culture
calls alien "encounter," is little more than a turning of the Cartesian method
into a tool for conquering the other, a means of pushing the "envelope" farther
and farther. For the French however, it seems that if "otherness" or altérité
exists, it is in order that the rational mind may act to confirm (and continue to confirm)
its existence.
The other very fruitful descriptive term Gouanvic presents, this time to describe the
relation of fiction to its scientific "content," is "la dérive imaginative
de la science." Just as, for Gouanvic, the "poetics of the other" was best
defined in Bruss's failure to achieve it, here this "imaginative swerve," taking
fiction out of the pedestrian realm of scientific extrapolation, is discussed at length in
relation to the work of another Fleuve noir anticipation writer Stefan Wul. Here again,
there seems surprise that a writer, again in a mass-market series is able to negotiate
between the "reactionary" needs of his medium and an expression of the poetic
imagination. This time it is not the theme of scientific investigation (the search for the
"other") that is in question, but the means by which, or medium through which,
such investigation takes place, in this case transmuting the banalities of Vernian
measurement into surreality. But as with the example of Bruss (whose work does bear
comparison with that of a Chrétien on the level of a "poetics of alterity"),
here the Rimbaldian "dérive imaginative" of Wul should not occur where it does,
but does. This Gouanvic calls "le paradoxe Wul." It is a paradox easy to
resolve. For not only is mass literature invariably propaganda from the right, but indeed,
the high degree of literary sophistication of this mass literature reveals a
continuity which, in this culture, challenges this distinction in the strongest manner.
Gouanvic's term (echoing Rosny's "merveilleux scientifique" yet making more
obvious the current that runs from symbolists to surrealists) places us squarely in the
broad French tradition. "Dérive" should not to be confused with Suvin's
"cognitive estrangement," because the motor here is not cognition but
"imagination." Closer perhaps is the Anglo-Saxon term "sense of
wonder." Gouanvic's term however is much more precise, describing the act of
imagination as it destablizes or "causes to veer off course" facts or
"laws" of science. "Imagination" here is neither practical reason nor
some esemplastic power. Rather it suggests, more in the Pascalian sense, the interworking
of two otherwise antithetical forms of "thought"the "esprit de
géometrie" (Pascal's version of our "hard" quantified scientific
knowledge), and the "esprit de finesse," directed by the "heart." The
paradox of this "dérive imaginative" in Wul is that of Rimbaud's
"déréglement raisonné des sens," and the surrealist's fusion of reason and
dreamwork. Gouanvic speaks of Wul's use of science giving the reader, along with solid
scientific hypotheses, a "plaisir de lecture fondé sur le scientifique." Again,
the purpose of such an activity is not, as with the neologism or metaphor of Anglo-Saxon
sf, to extend the episte mological field of the reader (quite literally with the
neologism, which offers a tenor whose vehicle must be summoned from the not-yet-known).
Rather it is to affirm, in this pleasure, the presence of the mind of the reader in
relation to the res extensa of the material world that science purports to
enumerate. The "sense of wonder" here comes not from proceeding from
investigation to discovery of a new hypothesis. It comes from an act of mind as it
de-centers known scientific "law." One could compare this affirmation of
imagination in the face of science's cold equations with the parity Pascal's reed
establishes with the laws of the universe that crushes it. For it knows it is crushed; the
universe does not know it crushes.
Let me reiterate. Gouanvic's book offers a richness of information about writers almost
never discussed, especially in the English-speaking world. And it offers some intriguing
formulations. But in the conceptual sense, it does little or nothing with this material.
The general categories Gouanvic applies, such as pro- and anti-science, or popular and
"literary" culture, prove less than useful in analyzing the data set forth.
Given the "altérité" to the Anglo-Saxon reader of French sf itself, as it
seeps through these descriptions and formulations, I would have hoped for an attempt to
define the uniqueness of this literature in relation to other strong sf traditions.
Certainly, French sf seems unique in the degree to which it has not diverged from the
French literary "mainstream," but rather has evolved as an analogue to the
symbolist, surrealist, or even "new" novel or narrative. In fact, it is so
enfolded in its tradition that most French readers do not know it is there. For these
readers, the only literature they know as sf is American sf, which since World War II has
stage by stage entered the French market. Bookstores are filled with novels by Heinlein,
Benford, Bradley, even L. Ron Hubbard, and they have numerous and devoted readers, notably
among members of the scientific and technocratic establishment. And, compared to the very
different, monist and materialist view of science espoused by many of these American
writers, the works described by Gouanvic, to the average French reader, would not seem to
be sf. The French critic however, trained in his dominant literary tradition, sees here
the ghost of Jules Verne returning through the American connection. Such a critic, if a
critic of sf, does not want his sf to be like American sf. At the same time however, and
here is the quandary at the heart of a study like Gouanvic's, he wants this French sf,
like American sf, to be different from the mainstream to be vital, new, exciting, emergent.
Perhaps it takes an Anglo-Saxon reader to see that French sf is there. Post-1968, it
has produced some extraordinary writers, like Michel Jeury, Jean-Pierre Andrevon, or Serge
Brussolo. But they seem so much like regular novels to the French reader that
they are not seen. If they wish to identify themselves, they end up being pushed aside by
the reader. Bernard Pivot for example, in his popular television book review show,
features all kinds of fiction even historicized romances of the "petite histoire"
variety and novels about sea-wolves and the proverbial lone Breton sailor who sails the
globe but never to my memory a science fiction novel. Were Jeury or Brussolo to take the
name "sf" off their covers, they would be reviewed, and their novels would be
seen as but another variation on the Cartesian cultural master-narrative I have described
above. Indeed, the French sf "establishment" critics writer-editors like Gérard
Klein have redefined the work of "kindred" American sf writers like Dick and Van
Vogt and Cordwainer Smith, to the point where more recent editors like Jacques Goimard
have produced editions packaged non-generically, as fiction. The other American
writers are identified as sf, and sell (unheralded, indeed unnoticed, by critics and other
cultural guardians). To the average French reader, this is sf; "tout le reste,"
as Verlaine put it, "est littérature."
Gouanvic's book should have delved into the cultural condition of sf in France.
Instead, he systematically obscures ties between sf and the "mainstream."
Perhaps he should not be blamed. For this very work of obfuscation was that carried on by
the Fiction editors and critics, who as keepers of the gate for American sf
systematically redefined French sf until it becomes quite indistinguishable from other
(canonical) forms such as the fantastique or merveilleux. Gérard
Klein's consummate model for defining sf is not Campbell or Heinlein, but Alice in
Wonderland, and we see little difference between the alternate worlds of Cocteau's Orphée,
those of Alice, and those of Wul or Jeury. Not even so-called "popular" sf in
France is free from this reshaping of American pulp icons and "themes" from
within. As Bradford Lyau's very significant work reveals, the Fleuve noir anticipation
novels across the board (he read and analyzed the first 200 of these novels,
regardless of the "status" of the authors, from Jimmy Guieu to the more
"literary" Stefan Wul) were, despite their "popular" venue and
audience, in fact latter day "romans philosophiques" in the manner of Cyrano and
Voltaire. Within pulp sf space-opera conventions, they develop a space of discussion and
commentary on contemporary social issues, operating within parameters of discourse that
are apparently shared by the culture at large. Because of his high culture/low culture
argument, Gouanvic is unable to see that, behind the space opera mask, what we have is simply
the expression of one single culture.
To conclude, there is much of real interest in this book. To date, little has been
written on Rosny aîné, and next to nothing on significant writers like Maurice Renard,
and especially Stefan Wul. This material needs to be conveyed to English-language scholars
of sf, and of French literature in general. I realize that, had Gouanvic attempted to sell
an English-language version of his book to a university press either in the US, Canada or
the UK, he would have run up against lists vastly overstocked with so- called gender and
culture studies. The book was surely pushed back to a French-speaking audience, and the
loss to the English language reader is great. Given this situation however, Gouanvic could
have expanded the 1900-1968 limits of this thesis, and added a chapter or two on the
marvelous production of the 1970s and 1980s. Even in French, there is little or no
substantial work on a writer like Michel Jeury, who in his own very French way is one of
the great writers to work in the sf field. I only wish Gouanvic had given us an overview
of Jeury, to close the loop he opened with Rosny aîné.
NOTE
1. "Intercultural Interplay: Science Fiction in France and the United States
(As Viewed from the French Shore)," SFS 17:124, #50, March 1990. This essay is a
revision and expansion of an article published in French in Science-fiction et fiction
spéculative, ed. G. Hottois (Bruxelles: Ed. Univ de Bruxelles, 1985), pp. 11-25.
Material from this French article, in turn, is incorporated into Bozzetto's later book
(1992). What is interesting is the comparison between sf and "fiction
spéculative": in this French context, it seems, sf must always seek definition in
relation to some other, more generically and culturally established form, and never in
relation to its own internal dynamics, at least where French sf is concerned.
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