The Exploits of Professor Tornada (Vol. 1)

  André Couvreur

  The Exploits of Professor Tornada

  Volume 1:

  An Invasion of Macrobes

  The Androgyne

  translated, annotated and introduced by

  Brian Stableford

  A Black Coat Press Book

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction 4

  AN INVASION OF MACROBES 10

  THE ANDROGYNE 205

  FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION 333

  Introduction

  Une Invasion de Macrobes by André Couvreur, here translated as “An Invasion of Macrobes,” was originally published in four parts in November 1909 in the weekly literary supplement of the newspaper L’Illustration, and reprinted in book form, in a revised version, the following year by Pierre Lafitte. The serial version was reprinted twice, firstly in a cheap edition in 1940, and then in an undated small press edition in the early years of the present century; the book version was reprinted in paperback in 1998.

  L’Androgyne, here translated as “The Androgyne,” was originally published in Oeuvres Libres no. 7 (January 1922), and was reprinted in book form the following year by Albin Michel, the book version being dedicated to J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Couvreur went on to publish four more novellas featuring Professor Tornada in that periodical, plus two other long stories, none of which were ever reprinted in book form, even though the author had apparently signed a four-book contract with Albin Michel for a series featuring Tornada.

  It is unclear why Albin Michel did not publish the further items in the series that he had commissioned. Given the he had published L’Androgyne and was apparently sufficiently enthused by it to request more work of a similar nature it is unlikely that he was put off by the flagrant and perverse erotic content of the next item in the series, “Le Valseur phosphorescent” (1923)1, which is no more explicit or perverse than that in L’Androgyne or Couvreur’s earlier mad scientist story Caresco, surhomme (1904)2. It is possible that public or official reaction to L’Androgyne deterred the publication of a similar work, although it is hard to believe that there could have been any threat of prosecution on the grounds of obscenity at such a late date. It is, however, notable that none of the subsequent stories in the Tornada sequence reproduce the erotic fascinations of L’Androgyne and “Le Valseur phosphorescent,” seeming distinctly prim by comparison.

  It might also be worth noting that there appears to have been something of a marketplace backlash against speculative fiction in the early 1920s. Maurice Renard, who tried to return to the production of such work once his military service in the war was over ran into similarly rapid difficulties marketing his work, and ultimately had to switch to the writing to anodyne detective stories, while J.-H. Rosny’s endeavors in the genre, having similarly flattered only to deceive, soon began to flounder. Like Couvreur, Rosny sold one ambitious item of roman scientifique to Oeuvres Libres in “Les Navigateurs de l’infini” (1925)3 but aborted its advertised sequel and never produced anything as imaginatively ambitious again—and Oeuvres Libres never published anything else in the genre thereafter, except for the later Professor Tornada stories.

  The Tornada stories constitute a sequence rather than a series because they present the rather unusual feature of seemingly reinventing their central character from scratch every time. Although certain aspects of his physical appearance—the short legs, the long beard, the pointed ears and the multiple tics—are faithfully reproduced every time, there is no sense in which the six stories can add up to a biography; none of the stories make any substantial reference to any events in the earlier ones, and two of them feature large-scale world-shaking events that cannot possibly have occurred in the back-stories of the scenarios featured within the subsequent texts. The last story in the series contains a sentence referring to the plots of three of the earlier adventures, with footnoted references, but the events of at least one of those stories could not possibly have occurred in the world forming the backcloth to the current story, and the sentence is probably included as an advertisement, thought necessary because of a twelve-year gap between the story and its predecessor in the series. Tornada is, therefore, not so much a person as an idea, perhaps even a symbol.

  It is noticeable too that, although he is not the same character as Armand Caresco, similarly reinvented by the author in Caresco, surhomme—which is also unusually disconnected from the earlier novel in which he is the protagonist, Le Mal nécessaire (1899)4—Tornada does take on some of Caresco’s key attributes. Although he is not a surgeon when first introduced, in Une Invasion de Macrobes, he is most definitely a surgeon in L’Androgyne, when he undertakes an experiment credited to Caresco in in Caresco, surhomme, and that becomes his primary specialty again in the fifth story of the series, “Le Biocole” (1927)5, in which he goes so far in emulation of Caresco as to found his own heavily-defended utopian enclave and to begin styling himself “le Surhomme,” just as his predecessor had done. It is probably safe to say, therefore, that not only is Tornada an idea, and perhaps a symbol, but that he is much the same idea, carrying a similar symbolic value, as Armand Caresco.

  At any rate, there is a sense in which all five of the volumes in the present set are connected, albeit in a rather peculiar, and perhaps unique, fashion. The fact that the stories they contain extend over a period of forty years, from 1899 to 1939, also adds interest to the endeavor in terms of the possibility of deriving some insight therefrom into the evolution in the author’s mind of the idea that Caresco and Tornada represent. At its simplest, the idea in question is that of the “mad scientist”—which, of course, implies that the correlations between the two terms is somehow intrinsic, in that genius is inherently close to madness and that scientific genius is not only uniquely close but uniquely dangerous, especially in the contexts of biological and medical science, where the discoveries of genius might have social and personal implications that are not merely sweeping but intimate. Put crudely, whereas physics and chemistry can dramatically increase the ways in which people can travel, communicate and kill one another, biology has the potential to transform us in ways that are both much more radical and much more insidious.

  There is, however, far more to Caresco and Tornada than madness and genius, at least once the volumes that introduce the characters are out of the way. The madness and the genius alike place them outside the ranks of commonplace humankind, able to pass scathing judgment on its faults, but also able to explore ways of ameliorating these faults. Tornada’s claim that the surgical sex-changes affected in L’Androgyne are carried out with a view to enhancing human choice rather than simply out of curiosity to see what will happen might ring false, and the experiment he carries out in “Le Valseur phosphorescent” also looks suspiciously like curiosity for curiosity’s sake, but the humanitarian excuses offered for such further quests as the development of technologies of suspended animation, the resurrection of the dead, and the photographing of thought do seem to have some authentic weight.

  Be that as it may, the two short novels combined in the present volume definitely show the mercurial professor in his most unflattering light, and the first of them also does the same for humankind. Une Invasion de macrobes is the nearest thing to a conventional thriller that Couvreur ever wrote, and for much of the horrific climax—especially the scenes in the sewer—it is easy to forget the story is actually a comedy; its graphic action is very effective, because rather than in spite of its garishness. Although it is not a thriller or a horror story, the same is true of the second story, in that the author becomes genuinely wrapped up in his thought-experiment, fascination frequently taking precedence over satire.

&nb
sp; Like many of Couvreur’s works, L’Androgyne was genuinely ground-breaking in its depiction of a sex-swap—it appeared nine years in advance of Thorne Smith’s Turnabout, a much broader farce—and the author had every reason to become fascinated by the extrapolation of the notion, which still has the potential to intrigue modern readers who have had the opportunity to read or view other adaptations of the same idea. The title might seem odd, but the central character is indeed a genuine androgyne, combining an exceedingly masculine mind with a completely female physique; although the extrapolation of that notion embodies all the sexist assumptions of the day (Couvreur was certainly no feminist) it is by no means lacking in acuity, or in eccentricity and peculiar perversity, all of which combine to make it a remarkable work.

  The second volume of the present set contains translations of “Le Valseur phosphorescent” (1923), as “The Phosphorescent Waltzer,” and “Les Mémoires d’un immortel” (1924), as “The Memoirs of an Immortal.” The third volume completes the Tornada sequence with translations of “Le Biocole” (1927), as “The Biocole,” and “Les Cas de la baronne Sasoitsu” (1939), as “The Case of Baronne Sasoitsu,” and also includes, by way of a bonus, a translation of the unrelated novella “En Au-delà” (1937), as “In the Afterlife.” All of those stories appeared in Oeuvres Libres, and none has previously been reprinted in book form.

  The following translation of Une Invasion de Macrobes was made from a copy of the 1998 paperback edition published in Toulouse by Éditions Ombres, which reproduces the revised Lafitte text rather than the serial version. The translation of “L’Androgyne” was made from the London Library’s copy of Oeuvres Libres no. 7.

  Brian Stableford

  AN INVASION OF MACROBES

  I

  I shall never forget the evening of May the eleventh. It marked the beginning of an event so extraordinary that our posterity, when it remembers it, will have the right to wonder whether an entire people might not have been carried away by madness at a particular moment of its social history. However, what I am going to consign to this memoir, I lived through, suffering frightful emotions, and if I was mad, along with everyone else, at least I am sincere in writing.

  I was then in charge of a laboratory at the Institut Pasteur, and I had just become engaged to Mademoiselle Suzanne Vernet, the daughter of the celebrated biologist Vernet, a member of the Académie des Sciences. Suzanne was a young woman of the elite, nobly raised by a father who had been widowed for a long time. Her ash-blonde hair would have been sufficient to render her remarkable even if the regularity of her features, the limpid flame of her blue eyes and all the harmonious grace of her person had not added a surplus of beauty that everyone admired. We had adored one another since adolescence—which explains how delightful that initial familiarity was, in which propriety permitted us to hold hands, when she ceased to address me ceremoniously as “Monsieur Gérard” in order to call me Jean, while I responded by calling her Suzanne.

  Oh, that exquisite spring evening! I remember that, in order to escape the compliments of the habitués of the house, we had gone into the garden and sat down on a bench. A pale moonlight inundated us; the lilacs, asleep in the warmth, sent us their perfumes; and there was a universal caress. Although the open window allowed us to overhear the conversation of Monsieur Vernet’s guests, we were only listening to one another.

  There were, however, many interesting people among those who had come to my future father-in-law’s weekly gathering: scientists, artists and political men. They included Commandant Junisseau, the pilot of the dirigible France; the chemist Serviat, a member of the Institut and the inventor of fracassite, an incomparable explosive; General Gramont of the artillery; Dardant, the editor of the Parisien, the great twice-daily paper; Vigueur, the Undersecretary of State for Posts and Telegraphs; and others equally notorious. But what did those celebrities matter, compared with our simple love? Was all of human glory worth as much as one of Suzanne’s smiles? Was all that enlightenment as dazzling as her soft gaze—touched, at that moment, one might have thought, by a celestial tint? And what eloquence could match that of our future projects?

  I must admit, however, that one name, suddenly pronounced by the others, extracted us from our delicious intimacy. I don’t know what frightful presentiment made us prick up our ears when it was pronounced. It even seemed to us that the evocation of Tornada, the individual who was mentioned, threw a malaise equal to ours into the salon, for silence fell abruptly as soon as the chemist Serviat, the inventor of fracassite, resumed speaking, in order to denigrate that man he had just named, violently.

  “Tornada—what a strange name!6 Do you know him?” my fiancée asked me then.

  “I do, indeed, know him, my dear Suzanne,” I replied. “This Tornada is a scientist who is as eccentric as he is rich: an unorthodox worker whose research, toward whatever branch of science he directs it, has always been marked by a hint of genius. He has occupied himself successively with telepathy, the problems of unknown forces, biology, astronomy and everything connected with the occult. Notably, we owe to him the discovery of a certain microbe living in alkaline environments, which he named Micrococcus aspirator—a discovery denied by Monsieur Serviat, who is speaking at present. But what has put his name in lights most of all is a paper on ‘The Abnormal Development of Organisms Favored by Culture Media,’ which generated a lot of discussion in the scientific world, and even in the newspapers when he presented it at the Académie des Science.”

  “Abnormal Development?” queried Suzanne.

  “That language is incomprehensible for you, isn’t it? What it means is that, according to Tornada, one can transform certain organisms, such as microbes, causing them to grow to extraordinary dimensions, simply by placing them in conditions of life and nutrition appropriate to their development...”

  “Making giants with microbes?”

  “I don’t think that’s Tornada’s ambition,” I replied, smiling, “but he seems to be promising that. In any case, the paper made the learned assembly to which it was submitted sit up. It was considered as the work of a maniac who had yielded himself to a Darwinist fantasy—and it’s precisely because of the kind of anxiety provoked by his very special intelligence that Tornada was denied a seat at the Académie when he offered himself as a candidate last year. Since then, he’s disappeared, swearing that he’ll have his revenge.”

  “Yes, I remember now,” Suzanne said. “Papa was very sorry about his failure. Unlike Monsieur Serviat, he appreciates Tornada’s inventive genius, and he had supported his candidature...”

  We would have liked to get back to our amorous conversation, but the suggestion of the individual haunted us, and we went back into the drawing room to listen to the discussion that had sprung up on his account. His bad temper was being assessed there without indulgence. Monsieur Vernet was the only one to defend him, and to protest against the jesting calumnies suggesting, on the part of some, that he has succumbed to an attack of furious madness and, on the part of others, that he had gone to China to stir up racial hatred.

  Suddenly, however, the voice of Commandant Junisseau rose up: “Permit me, Messieurs, to tell you what has become of Tornada.”

  He was surrounded, and in absolute silence, he continued: “Do you know the forest of Rosny, near Mantes? There exists therein, not far from the Seine, a region little known to holiday-makers. No road takes automobiles there, and an entire estate, hidden in the trees, attached to the Château de Chambure, is invisible—one might even say inaccessible. It’s there that, three days ago, passing over it in my dirigible, I was surprised to see a large building, occupying about ten thousand square meters, about a hundred meters high, which had risen up as if by enchantment. Extremely intrigued, I landed, and made a tour on foot of a kind of hangar. I observed that it was closed everywhere, except for one place where there was an enormous iron door. I then sought information from the local peasants, and bit by bit—for the people seemed to be afraid of saying too much—I g
ot it out of them that the edifice had been constructed in secret by an individual whose description fits that of Professor Tornada.”

  “Is it plausible that such an edifice can sprout from the ground without the press finding out about it?” protested Monsieur Dardant, the editor of the Parisien, shrugging his shoulders skeptically.

  “My dear Monsieur, that’s precisely what renders the thing interesting—that you haven’t even suspected it. It’s high time that you put the dirigible at the service of your reporters. Know, then, what I heard from a reliable source. The materials of the gigantic hall were ordered from abroad: the iron from America, the cement from Holland, the bricks from England, the wood from Norway—even the workmen, who were introduced in gangs, weren’t French. Having arrived by steamer, they went home the same way, without making contact with the indigenes, of whose language they were, in any case, completely ignorant. The proximity of the railways and the Seine facilitated these transportations.”

  “It’s very improbable....” someone else objected.

  “What is even more improbable,” Junisseau went on, turning toward his interlocutor, “is that unknown machines comparable to laboratory apparatus—giant laboratory apparatus, for Titans—have been brought piece by piece and assembled in place as soon as the construction was finished. Commentaries, naturally, have taken wing; the rumor has gone around that Tornada has installed a distillery; and the locals—who are, I repeat, terrorized—haven’t been able to learn any more, for the massive door, functioning by means of a electrical mechanism, is always closed to their curiosity.”

  “But Tornada isn’t living in his hangar on his own?” queried Monsieur Serviat, again.