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Mouton, Eugène

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

(1823-1902) French magistrate and author who usually wrote as by Mérinos [sheep in French], though his own name also appears on later title pages; he was of Creole birth, was raised in Guadeloupe, and in so far as he may be deemed West Indian may be the first West Indian sf author, preceding M P Shiel in this distinction. Of the stories assembled in Fantaisies (coll 1883), "L'historioscope" (trans Brian Stableford in News from the Moon, anth 2007, as "The Historioscope") is of most sf interest, as it is almost certainly the first story to explicitly describe a Time Viewer. His inspiration for this was probably the earliest version of Camille Flammarion's Lumen (1887; trans anon 1892) [for further publication details see Flammarion], which appeared in Recits de l'infini (coll 1872), where a disembodied spirit in space is able to view past events from Earth's history due to its travelling at beyond the speed of light. [JC]

Pierre Martin Désiré Eugène Mouton

born Marseilles, France: 12 April 1823

died Paris: 8 June 1902

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