These factors should not detract, however, from a proper rational appreciation of the effort involved in writing a futuristic novel in 1927, or from a proper esthetic appreciation of the devices that Daudet “invented” in his imagination. Most of those devices never actually came to be, but they are interesting nevertheless. His notion that there would be a fusion of cinema and text, so that in the world of Le Napus, which has no television, people can read “cinébouquins” (cinebooks) with moving illustrations complementary to the text, is particularly intriguing. Such ideas, which have been sidestepped by actual history, have recently begun to acquire a certain literary charm as the substance of “steampunk” fiction dealing with obsolete versions of yesterday’s tomorrows, and of all the antique novels to have been retrospectively reclad in a steampunkish gloss, Le Napus is one of the quirkiest. If it is not as steamy, or as punkish, as the author’s subsequent novel Les Bacchantes, it makes up for that deficit by virtue of its much greater extravagance, which is a far more important aspect of steampunk style and ambition.
Le Napus could not have been written in America in 1927, and if, by some freak of chance it had, it could not have been published or appreciated there; it is not surprising that it has had to wait nearly a century to be translated, and if political correctness were an excluding factor, that time would never have arrived at all. It would, therefore, be entirely inappropriate to look at Le Napus as if it were a “science fiction” novel and to try to wedge it belatedly into the historical canon of science fiction. It has much closer affinities with the tradition of British scientific romance, but the French tradition of the roman scientifique, although vaguer, was far more prolific, sophisticated and robust than either of the parallel English-language traditions, and it would be more reasonable to view the English works in the composite genre as eccentric offshoots of the French canon rather than the other way around. To be properly appreciated, Le Napus needs to be seen not as something faintly reminiscent of works with which English readers are already familiar, but as an example of something truly and intriguingly alien.
This translation should not, therefore, be viewed as a belated and eccentric contribution to the genre of science fiction, or even that of scientific romance, but rather as a twisted classic, of sorts, of the gloriously exotic roman scientifique: a book that, although carrying forward an evident tradition, and extending many of the fibers of thought holding that tradition together, is nevertheless a book like no other, a unique entity. It is, in consequence, potentially precious to all those pataphysically-inclined readers who prefer to study exceptions rather than rules, and delight in the unfamiliar rather than the familiar, especially when it is provocatively uncomfortable rather than soothingly soporific.
* * * * * * *
This translation has been taken from a copy of the original Flammarion edition. It poses the usual problem of translation applicable to antique futuristic fiction, in that the terminology subsequently developed in the real world to describe the technologies anticipated in the book is markedly different from the terminology that the author was compelled to invent, but I have resisted the temptation to substitute the real-world terminology even when it would seem appropriate to a modern reader, thus avoiding such terms as “radio,” even though its omission might now appear odd, in the interests of attempting to preserve the eccentric flavor of the original.
PROLOGUE
THE APPEARANCE OF A NEW DISEASE
First, I shall tell you what happened to me on the third of May 2227, in the thirtieth year of my terrestrial existence. Afterwards, I shall tell you who I am and why I am writing these memoirs. Don’t be impatient. Don’t skip a single page—nor a line, nor a word. Everything is connected, in such a way that, after having read me attentively, you will be in possession of a whole host of new and refreshing conceptions, useful for the guidance of life. Afterwards, you can do with them as you wish.
So, on the third of May 2227, which marked the debut in France of the terrible disease, I was going up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées on my own, heading toward the former location of the Arc de Triomphe, which had disappeared in the earthquake of 2150 after being badly damaged by the aerial bombardment of the Franco-German and European-Asian wars of the year 2000. The sky was blue; the air exquisite; life, so far as I was concerned, was good.
As I arrived at the crossroads where avionnettes used to be stationed in the days of non-magnetic aerial transport, I perceived, coming toward me, a tall, handsome old man with a white beard, who was holding a little girl by the hand, flanked by her Chinese governess. The child appeared to be about two or two-and-a-half years old, like a pink porcelain angel under her blonde hair. She was laughing and pulling obliquely ahead of her grandfather’s stride, with a graceful gait.
Suddenly, I heard a dry click, and the old man disappeared completely, as if snatched away by a supernatural force.
“N’a pus,”1 said the girl, spreading her dainty arms wide.
The face of the Chinese woman had become immobile and grave, like that of a conjuror’s assistant witnessing an unknown trick. Numerous passers-by, witnesses to the event, began to tremble, like me, in all their limbs, recognizing, in that adventure, the first coup of the mysterious disease that the press had been reporting for a month, which had first become manifest in Chicago. Half a dozen cases had been cited, followed by three more in Berlin.
“N’a pus, a grand pé a pati, n’a pus,” repeated the child, elated by the annihilation of her grandfather and the accumulation of fear and stupor that had formed around that redoubtable absence.
A policeman arrived as we were getting a grip on our emotions. I gave him my name, number and occupation—Professor of Cellular Energy at the Aristotle Foundation—and was asked to write “Polyplast” myself in his notebook. He was as astonished by my name and the number attached to it as by the unusual phenomenon. Gripped by an abrupt need for mystification that is one of the axiomatic reflexes, I added that the old pedestrian had succumbed to a new disease, the “n’a pus” or Napus, which was beginning to be discussed among scientists.
“Is it catching?” the representative of public order asked me, with an anxious expression.
I assured him that it was not—that the symptom-free disease, which was exceptionally rare, was episodic and not contagious. Then the worthy fellow signaled to a vehicle and had the Chinese woman and the little girl climb into it with him: “a matter of informing the family and the commissariat.”
It was agreed that I would be called as a witness, the case being extraordinary, unusual and, all things considered, bewildering. What was no less bizarre was the difficulty we found, as co-spectators of the event, in going our separate ways and leaving the location of the tragic miracle of sorts. It had created a bond of solidarity between us comparable to a sympathy that did not entail any amity—a necessary of community. Our feet were stuck to the ground.
We exchanged visiting cards, and vague considerations regarding the unknown quantity surrounding us and the future of humankind, henceforth very hazardous. Some thought that the new thunderbolt would remain in a state of rarity, in view of the excellence of our temperate climate; others believed, on the contrary, that it was the beginning of a plague.
The latter, of which I was one, were correct. The worst is virtually certain.
With the general system of waves, the event quickly became known. Half an hour later, the entire world knew of the arrival in France, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, of the new disease of the total and abrupt disappearance or acute aphanasia popularly known as the Napus. The little girl had thus baptized the annihilation of her grandfather.
And now, before continuing, it’s necessary that I tell you who I am.
I belong to the group of international “witnesses,” the outcome of the international interbreeding of the year 2007, which succeeded the six year war in which thirty million people of all nations were killed. It was then thought that universal peace might be obtained by numerous Franco-German, Franco-English, Franco-Italian, Italo-German etc. marriages, and the forenames of the semi-artificial products