Natacha Vas-Deyres Patrick Bergeron Patrick GuayC'était demain: anticiper la science-fiction en France et au Québec (1880-1950) [It Was Tomorrow: Anticipating Science Fiction in France and Québec, 1880-1950

Abstract

657 BOOKS IN REVIEW sciences, Rhee’s exploration of the future of human labor produces valuable insights into the human epoch, refreshingly without ever pronouncing the word anthropos. Those engaged with feminist science and technology studies, Marxist feminism, labor history, contemporary art criticism, and posthumanism will find this book a useful one to peruse. Sf scholars interested in a genre history of robot stories will want to supplement Rhee’s book with other studies, which makes sense because Rhee does not frame the book as a genre history. Sf scholars should pick up this book to aid discussions of the human, the alien, and the future of labor at conferences, in seminar rooms, and across publications.—Brent Ryan Bellamy, Trent University New Scholarship on Early SF in France and Québec. Natacha Vas-Deyres, Patrick Bergeron, and Patrick Guay, eds. C’était demain: anticiper la sciencefiction en France et au Québec (1880-1950) [It Was Tomorrow: Anticipating Science Fiction in France and Québec, 1880-1950]. Bordeaux, France: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, Coll. EIDÔLON #123, 2018. 428 pp. €26 pbk. First, it might be helpful to have some historical context about this book. In the July 2015 issue of SFS, I reviewed and recommended a similar 2014 collection of critical articles on French and Québécois science fiction called Les Dieux cachés de la science-fiction française et francophone (1950-2010) [The Hidden Gods of French and Francophone SF, 1950-2010]. It was edited by the same team of Vas-Deyres, Bergeron, and Guay (and two more scholars, Florence Plet-Nocolas and Danièle André), and it too was published by the same French university press in Bordeaux. I concluded my review with the following observation: Les Dieux cachés de la science-fiction française et francophone (1950-2010) is a fine collection of stimulating and intelligent essays on modern French and Francophone science fiction. The quality of the scholarship is high; the price of the volume is low; and the material covered includes not only sf literature but also sf cinema, television, comics, and museum exhibits. I strongly recommend it for all university libraries. And I look forward to the publication of its sister volume, C’était demain: anticiper la science-fiction en France et au Québec (1890-1950), with much anticipation. (398) Much of what I said then about Les Dieux cachés can be said today about its “sister volume” C’était demain. Although the latter was published in 2018 rather than 2016 (as advertised), and although its title and supposed coverage has been expanded from 1890-1950 to 1880-1950 (despite the fact that some essays discuss texts from earlier in the nineteenth century), the quality of the scholarship in this chronological “prequel” does not disappoint. The book is divided into four major sections. Part I, “Initialiser la sciencefiction au Québec” [Initializing Science Fiction in Québec], is devoted to early sf in Francophone Canada, and the essays included are uniformly interesting. Sophie Beaulé analyzes a number of utopias and alternate histories published in Québec during the period 1916-1944. Renald Bérubé focuses on the well-known Québécois writer Yves Thériault and especially his short story “Angoisse-de- 658 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) Dieu” [Anguish of God, 1944]. Claude Janelle, compiler of the reference tome Le DALIAF (Dictionnaire des auteurs des littératures de l’imaginaire en Amérique française) [Dictionary of Authors of Literatures of the Imaginary in French America, 2013], speaks about the usefulness—and limitations—of this work when searching for the origins of Québécois sf. Jean Levasseur discusses an early apocalyptic poem La Fin du monde par un témoin oculaire [The End of the World by an Eyewitness] published in 1889 by Pierre-Paul Paradis of Chicoutimi. Part I concludes with an excellent synoptic essay by Jean-Louis Trudel (whose own Petit guide de la science-fiction au Québec [Little Guide of Science Fiction in Québec] was published in 2017), who describes Francophone sf in Québec during the period of 1916-1953 as an “essor avorté” [abortive burgeoning] that did...