Le Drimeur, Alain
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of the unidentified French author (? -? ) whose Utopia, La Cité Future (1890; trans Brian Stableford as The Future City 2012), responds positively to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888). The frame story, though inherently implausible, does vigorously demonstrate the author's conviction that nothing as transparently sensible as a world cognate with Bellamy's vision could possibly occur in this world without some radical transformation of history. Modern sf writers create Alternate Histories; Le Drimeur instead has the entire conservative establishment of France emigrate to the island of Réunion, cutting itself off from the world for a century, and leaving France free to develop properly. When two representatives from this enclave – one rational, one doggedly reactionary – return to the homeland after a century, they find that it has turned into a socialist, secular paradise. There is no Religion; women have gained rights (see Feminism); peaceful Technologies have made life better. As in many of the works of Albert Robida, Le Drimeur is very conscious of advertising, and much of the Satire that fills his tale is directed at the Media Landscape that has developed in the course of the twentieth century. [JC]
"Alain le Drimeur"
born
works
- La Cité Future (Paris: Albert Savine, 1890) [binding unknown/]
- The Future City (Encino, California: Hollywood Comics/Black Coat Press, 2012) [trans by Brian Stableford of the above: introduction by Stableford: pb/Vincent Laik]
links
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