Giant Fear

the giant Fear is a Romance of Science-fiction of the French author Stefan Wul published in 1957.

Argument

On the planet Ground, in 2157, Bruno Daix, an engineer ex-champion of swimming, takes to a few days of holidays with In Salah, in Afrance, when its owner, the director of the factories of cold “Nivôse”, contacts it in urgency: the company threatens to go bankrupt, because water does not freeze any more. In order to find explanations scientific to the mysterious phenomenon, Bruno Daix is requested to embark as quickly as possible for Paris and to join professor Jean Leguen, of the Institute.

Presentation of work

the giant Fear is the fourth novel of the French author Stefan Wul, and the third to appear with the Editions “Black River” in 1957. The account, divided into twenty chapters, is distinguished from the remainder of the production of the author by locating his action on the planet Ground in a future in perfect continuity with the world of 1957. In the giant Fear , not of remote planets, not of extraterrestrial worlds, not of apocalypse, it is of the terrestrial man and his survival that it is question.

Summary

On the planet Ground, in 2157, Bruno Daix , an engineer ex-champion of swimming, takes to a few days of holidays with In Salah, in Afrance, when Driss Bouira , the director of the factories of cold “Nivôse”, contacts it in urgency: the company threatens to go bankrupt, because water does not freeze any more. In order to find explanations scientific to the mysterious phenomenon, Bruno Daix is requested to embark as quickly as possible for Paris and to join professor Jean Leguen, of the Institute.

Arrived late at the stratoport, it must await the next rocket making stopover in Algiers, then in Marseilles, and meets another momentary in transit, Kou-His Tchéi , a young journalist Chinese originating in Nankin. Suddenly, all the passengers of the stratoport are requested to go immediately in the closest héli-taxis and to put themselves in hovering at 500 stads above the city. The authorities learn soon with the population that the instantaneous cast iron of the ices of the north pole and the south pole created two gigantic tidal waves which already devastated part of planet. Bruno Daix and Kou-His Tchéi go up aboard héli-taxi old controlled by Ahmed Benmomed and attend impotent the catastrophe. The engineer then decides to return to In Salah before the authorities do not requisition all the air means of transport and there finds his owner Driss Bouira and his friend and journalist pol. Nazaire .

Some time later, Bruno Daix was enlisted by the army for his sporting capacities and his technical skills. Soon, a new catastrophe falls down on humanity: the clouds disappear from the atmosphere, because water does not evaporate any more. The cultures are desiccated in the moderated countries, only the artificially irrigated fields of Afrance remain. Flying saucers also make their appearance in the sky of the médusées nations. When the UFO attack massively In Salah, Bruno Daix hides Jou-His Tchéi in the secret undergrounds of the city and reveals with the young Chinese that he is member of the secret army charged to fight their new enemy: Torpèdes, of the advanced intelligent marine beings of the family of the electric rays.

Afrançais, only with being able to nourish the remainder of the continent thanks to their system of irrigation completely independent of pluviometry, prepare underwater missions with behaviors of camouflage thermo-moulded in forms of Poulpe S or Cœlacanthe S which makes it possible the plungers to pass unperceived: the secret army considers a bacteriological response with the attack of Torpèdes. At the time of a visit in an aquarium of detention of Torpèdes, Kou-His Tchéi discovers by chance the key of the language with magnetic impulse of Torpèdes.

Once the finished preparations, Bruno Daix, pol. Nazaire and the other plungers of the secret army leave on mission to diffuse the virus of in-depth Djoliba, a nonmortal virus intended to destroy the cerebral centers of Torpèdes. During the mission, Bruno Daix loses itself in the depths of the ocean and finds with the right in the middle of an underwater city torpède. He suffers from the magnetic impulses of Torpèdes, but success to cut through a path until in a large building which reveals all its horror of “Museum of the man” torpède. When Bruno Daix is recovered on the surface by the American navy, it is in state of shock and its psychism is strongly reached. After a long convalescence under psychic tutor, Bruno Daix finds his friends and his great love, Kou-His Tchéi.

Main characters

The characters are classified in the alphabetical order:

Commander Afalet , chief of the mission against Torpèdes;
Driss Bouira , director of the factories “Nivôse”, owner of Bruno Daix, colonel of the secret army;
Ahmed Benmomed , driver of hélitaxi which saves Bruno Daix;
Bruno Daix , engineer of the factories “Nivôse”, ex-champion of swimming, member of the secret army;
Mister Legrand , eminent naturalist;
pol. Nazaire , friend of Bruno Daix, excel swimmer, member of the secret army;
Kou-His Tchéi , journalist Chinese originating in Nankin;

Universe of the giant fear

In the future of XXIIe century describes by Stefan Wul, the French colonies of North Africa form a new nation conquered on the desert dependant on France: Afrance (contraction of Africa and France). The desert is green thanks to sophisticated systems of irrigation connected to factories of desalinisation of sea water. The Mediterranean east with half drained because of a hydraulic stopping built between the Tunisia and the Sicily and overhung by an immense viaduct which connects Marseilles to Algiers.

With the daily newspaper, people use videophones for their communications and of the héli-taxis or the rockets for their displacements. In the coffees and the restaurants, the customers are generally been useful by automated shelves. The population of Afrance does not work any more but three hours per week, thanks to technological advance. The Moon has a terrestrial observation station.

Comments

War and civilization

As in WHO in series or Niourk , Stefan Wul lends to its characters remarks without ambiguity on the causes of the decline of civilizations: the weakening of the Men due to a too great technological comfort. The attack of Torpèdes is consequently presented like the occasion to awake the lifeblood of humanity forced to show pugnacity and to leave the relative torpor induced by a technically assisted world.

Marine ecology?

The matter of Stefan Wul in this novel is not at any ecological time. If the causes of the revolt of the marine people of Torpèdes are clearly stated by the characters of the account (overexploitation of the seas and reduction of the vital space of the marine species by successive drainings of the oceans), the solution considered is defensive and without reflection on the ecological balance of planet, a topic which will make its appearance later only a few decades.

To regulate the problem arising from dangerous Torpèdes, the author undoubtedly remembered the bacteriological solution suggested by H.G. Wells in the War of the worlds .

Future of colonization

The work of Science-fiction of Stefan Wul very often treats topic of colonization. In the giant Fear , the historical context of the French colonization of the the Maghreb widened is integrated into the novel and is speculatively developed in a great unified and autonomous nation, “Afrance”. This vision of unified and largely developed colonial France is opposed to a historical reality which sees, for example in Algérie as of 1954, of the movements guerillas to assert independence.

The romantic vision of a fictitious territory named “Afrance” had already been anticipated, but in a very allusive way, in the novel of Stefan Wul published right front, this same year 1957: Rays for Sidar . Indeed, the hero of this other novel, Lorraine 1613 A.C., is introduced without more explanations like a “Afrançais”.

Posterity of work

The topic of an intelligent, but unknown underwater species hitherto, which decides to be avenged for the human being which pollutes or overexploits sea-beds was taken again in 2005 by the German author Frank Schätzing in a novel of Science-fiction entitled Der Schwarm which follows a scenario very close to the novel of Stefan Wul. Beyond the rhine, this novel was classified a long time among the best sales in bookstore in 2005.

James Cameron imagined in his film Abyss a subaqueous extraterrestrial race controlling the various states of water, like Torpèdes in the novel of Stefan Wul.

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