Rays for Sidar

Rayons for Sidar is a Romance of Science-fiction of the French author Stefan Wul published in 1957.

Argument

In XXIe century, on the Sidar planet, Land called Lorrain furrows the thick and hostile jungle of the Sidar planet in the search of its Lionel robot. Accompanied by its Xaog guide, it arrives soon in an indigenous village and goes to the “Resident”, Land who occupies of the territorial administrative offices. Lorraine must find its robot as fast as possible, because the evacuation of Land is imminent. The Earth indeed signed a treaty which definitively entrusts the future of Sidar to Xressiens, people of intelligent, but very aggressive rats.

Presentation of work

Rayons for Sidar is the third novel of Science-fiction of Stefan Wul and the second with being published with Black the Fleuve editions in 1957, after Niourk . The account, composed of three parts divided into twenty-nine chapters, belongs to the kind of the Planet operated, with for decoration dominating a landscape of thick jungle.

Stefan Wul introduces its main character, Lorrain 1613 A.C., like a “Afrançais”, without another explanation. The topic of Afrance on the other hand will be exploited and largely developed in a later novel, the giant Fear .

Summary

In XXIe century, on the Sidar planet, Land called a Lorrain 1613 A.C. furrows the thick and hostile jungle of the Sidar planet in the search of its robot Lionel 1613 A.C. . Accompanied by its guide Xaog , it arrives soon in an indigenous village and goes to the “ Résident ”, Land which occupies of the territorial administrative offices. Lorraine must find its robot as fast as possible, because the evacuation of Land is imminent. The Earth indeed signed a treaty which definitively entrusts the future of Sidar to Xressiens, people of intelligent, but very aggressive rats.

After having benefitted from the hospitality of the Resident and having survived the attack of famished Krôtang, Lorrain sets out again in the jungle with its Xaog guide, but must cross only the limit which separates it from the country of Horbs, wild and dangerous people. Beyond the flammable gas river crossed, Lorrain is made prisoner by Horbs. During one of the ritual nights of Horbs, when the sky of the Sidar planet is very irradiated of red because of the one of its natural satellites, Lorrain succeeds in escaping. Into its race éfreinée to escape Horbs, it falls on dead Krôtang whose emerges a very damaged robot, without legs, which is not other than its double mechanics: Lionel.

Lorraine carries Lionel on its back until their “foreign post”, a factory of mirror manufacture located in full jungle of the Horb country. Lorraine soon is killed by out of Horbs unchained, but Lionel recovers its body and stores it in a cold room which it transforms into operating room. The androïde proceeds then to a delicate operation: to graft its electronic bust with the basin and the legs of Lorraine. It sets out again then for a dangerous tour in the jungle sidarienne, using a topographic chart given by the Resident and transporting the mortal remains of his Master in a cooled bag. After having escaped with many dangerous animals, Lionel arrives in a village sidarien which venerates a strange idol: a head of robot disfigured, planted at the end of a long spade, pertaining to Martial 6738 A.B. , the robot disappeared from the Resident. Lionel succeeds in subtilizing the head of the idol, recovers some parts on the dismembered body of Martial and sets out again for the village of the resident. During this time, the vessels xressiens invade the sky of Sidar, loans to colonize planet.

Once at the village, Lionel reveals with the Resident that Lorrain and are to him in secret mission on behalf of the land government and that they must quickly act in order to save Sidar of the colonization xressienne which is announced disastrous for the natives. The Resident succeeds in delaying the catch to be able of Xressiens at the village and hiding all Sidariens in undergrounds. He operates then Lorrain and succeeds in bringing back it to the life. Lionel and Lorrain explain their stratagem then: to transform, thanks to ionized cosmic rays, deuterium whose is composed the light hydrogen planet in order to propel Sidar out of its current orbit in direction of the solar system. As Xressiens do not control the space flights, they will be obliged to give up it. Lorraine, Lionel and Martial go to the town of Gayam and put their plan at execution and the trajectory of planet is deviated. The land authorities promote later some time Lorrain with the rank of “Engineer Suprême” and the Resident with the rank of “General governor of Sidar”.

Main characters

The main characters are classified in the alphabetical order.

Daniel 3795 A.A. , scientist and land astronomer of Gayam;
Lionel 1613 A.C. , robot with the image of Lorraine;
Lorraine 1613 A.C. , Afrançais which built a foreign post on the Sidar planet;
Martial 6738 A.B. , robot of the Resident;
the Resident or Marco , territorial civil servant land posts some on Sidar;
Xaog , Sidarien, guide of Lorraine in the jungle;

Comments

The Man and his double robotics

Although the topic of the Man and his double cybernetics as intensely is not exploited and is not developed as in an author like Philip K. Dick, the robots androïdes of Rayons for Sidar offer the premises of a deep reflection on the human identity.

The androïdes of the novel of Stefan Wul are presented like double robotics of their human owners. Whereas the Man undergoes the attacks of time, its double robotics incarnates in an alive way vitality of its old youth and preserves all the memories of the life of its Master in his electronic memory. The double androïde of the characters of the novel becomes a kind of other me, of permanent incarnation of a past of youth and beauty. The shift which grows between the owner and his double eternally young armature a kind of attachment narcissistic of the Master to the image of alive of itself which is its robot. In the account, the character of the Résident saw the loss of his robot like a true traumatism and no other more recent robot could replace that which accompanied it all its life with the features by its twenty years. The robots affectivement are thus affectivement regarded as people by their owners.

Stefan Wul avoids in its narration all the ambiguous developments to which could lead such a set of themes by imagining a strict human law which forces to destroy the doubles with the death of their owner. The metal copy cannot legally survive its original of flesh and blood.

Topic of colonization

If Stefan Wul always stated not to make of policy in its novels, it does not remain about it less than the topic of the Colonisation is one of the recurrent themes of its accounts of Science-fiction. If Rayons for Sidar describes the keen efforts of Land to preserve their colony sidarienne in order to avoid with the autochtones the horrible fate which awaits them in the event of colonization xressienne, the concept even of colonization is never really questioned. Stefan Wul plays the topic of the “good colonization” against that of the “bad colonization” which involves Génocide S.

The choice of the topic of colonization, at one time when the French Algérie is already ensanglantée by independence movements and anti-colonial, is undoubtedly not arbitrary. It intervenes in Fear giant (with a politically unified vision of the colonies Frenchwoman under the name of “Afrance”), in WHO in series (with the colonization of an uninhabited territory which gives rise to a new civilization), in the Temple of last the (with the transmission of the torch of land civilization to a species of lizard intelligent living on another planet) and in the Orphan of Perdide (with the purchase by the hero of a very whole planet and the dream of a colonization which would give rise to a better world).

To be able of the Man on the universe

In the work of Stefan Wul, the topic of deviated or modified planets appears on several occasions with some alternatives. If Rayons for Sidar describes a planet artificially leaving its orbit to join the solar system, Niourk proposed the opposite solution: the planet Ground leaving the solar system to place itself in the center of the universe. In both cases, the planetary deviations are carried out by human beings equipped with very advanced scientific knowledge which enables him to reorganize the universe, ultimate stage of the exorbitant capacity that the Man succeeds in exerting on nature.

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