The Orphan of Perdide

the Orphan of Perdide is a Romance of Science-fiction of the French author Stefan Wul published in 1958.

Argument

Only on the dangerous Perdide planet, a father and his four year old son, Claude , try to escape a cloud from giant Frelons. With end of forces, the father succeeds in sending a distress message to his friend max, without succeeding in directly joining it, and known as with his son as fast as possible to gain the forest on the hill. Before dying, the father entrusts to the child his transmitter-receiver. The little boy then finds only in a strange forest with for only companion a small ovoid object.

Presentation of work

the Orphan of Perdide is the seventh novel of the French writer Stefan Wul to appear with the editions of the black Fleuve in the collection “Anticipation” in 1958. Composed of three parts divided into sixteen chapters, this novel was written by Stefan Wul in three weeks.

the Orphan of Perdide is the first novel of Stefan Wul to propose forward quotations of each one of its three parts. If the fictitious quotation of the second part returns to the account itself and its poetic context, the first part begin with a quotation on the temporal paradox of Arthur C. Clarke and the third part refers to work of Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington on time and the event. These two quotations replace thus the work of Stefan Wul in the large one running of the American science fiction.

Genesis of work

Stefan Wul always stated never not to work with precise plans when it approaches a new novel. In the case of the Orphan of Perdide , the author indicates being started from a simple tragic scene: a dying father threatening his son of a gun to incite it to flee a nondefinite imminent danger . Stefan Wul also affirms to have premeditated the final space-time dramatic turn of events of its novel, this one him having come only at the end from the drafting of its novel.

Summary

Aboard spacecraft Large the max , max the smuggler discovers the message of his friend of Perdide and immediately contacts the small Claude who speaks with his microphone as with a person. It then decides to divert its road towards Perdide to save the child. Its two passengers, Beautiful and her husband Martin , which paid a large sum to be taken along on the Sidoine planet, protest, in vain. Max maintains the communication with Claude and lavishes many councils necessary to him to its survival in a hostile environment.

Large the max is posed on the splendid planet Devil-Ball where max joined the old man Silbad . The Silbad old man carries a metal plate on the cranium since it was made attacked by the Frelons de Perdide in his childhood. Touched by the history of Claude, it embarks on board the Grand max and spends most clearly its time to tell stories with the child and to protect it from the dangers of the forest.

The four passengers take turns with the microphone to occupy the small Claude, until the day when Silbad surprises Martin encouraging Claude to penetrate in a dangerous cave. Silbad then strikes violently the passenger who tried to kill the child to return more quickly on the Sidoine planet. Max then locks up Martin in a cabin of his spacecraft. Beautiful is shocked by the attitude of his/her husband.

Whereas they make a stopover on the planet Gamma 10, Martin benefits from it to escape. Max launches out to its continuation, but finds the body of inert Martin in sand. It itself is soon encircled by a band of ex-prisoners of Sidoine failed on planet and is taken along in a village troglodyte. Silbad which leaves the spacecraft to find max is also made prisoner. The two men are introduced to the Maître which intends them for its monster domesticates famished. But max and Silbad succeed in escaping, gives the Master in grazing ground to his monster and promise to the prisoners blocked on planet to return to help them.

With its approach of the Perdide planet, Large the max is taken in an interstellar traffic intense and contacted by the interplanetary police force. Max and Silbad question the authorities and learn with their great astonishment that Perdide is a developed planet, urbanized and largely colonized since its “Development”, nearly sixty years earlier. Max and Silbad include/understand whereas their space voyage to 99% speed of light created a temporal shift of a hundred years between them and the Perdide planet. Learning the news, Silbad has an heart attack.

Large the max is posed on the planet Perdide and max leaves to research a local historian to earlier include/understand how to it tragic history of the small Claude finished, hundred years. Max then meets the Bader old man who saved the small Claude of an attack of giant Frelons and adopted it then. The child was called then Sylvain Bader, but everyone called it “Silbad”. Max then turns over to the hospital to see the Silbad old man who dies in horrible sufferings without knowing the truth. Max flies away then with Belle to base a new world on the planet Devil-Ball.

Main characters

The characters are introduced in an alphabetical order:

Mister Bader , adoptive father of Silbad;
Beautiful Bôz , momentary on board the vessel Large the max , wife of Martin;
Martin Bôz , passenger on board of the vessel Large the max , husband of Beautiful;
Claude , last colonist of the Perdide planet;
Claude or Claudi , wire of the last colonist of the Perdide planet;
the Main , chief of the rebellious ex-prisionniers of Sidoine;
max , known as large the max , idealistic interstellar smuggler;
Silbad or Sylvain Bader , friend of max, old guard of the planet Devil-Ball ;
Vano , ex-prisionnier installed on Sidoine;

Comments

Space-time paradox

In the Orphan of Perdide , Stefan Wul exploits celebrates it Paradoxe of the twins stated in 1911 by Paul Langevin on the basis of theory of the restricted Relativité of Albert Einstein. In the account, max and Silbad travel in space at a speed close to that of the light and undergo a form of temporal dilation which produces a shift of a hundred years at the end of their voyage.

Autoreference

The short vision of human beings turning in a squirrel-cage, in the Orphan of Perdide, is developed in Noô, II-114 & suiv.

Adaptation to the cinema

the Orphan of Perdide was adapted to the cinema under the title the Masters of time , a feature film animated by Rene Laloux with drawings of Moebius. Rene Laloux was already familiar of the work of Stefan Wul to have adapted first once WHO in series in a feature film entitled the wild Planet (1973).

While preserving the basic screen of the novel of Stefan Wul, Rene Laloux proceeded to modifications, especially at the end of the history, which are undoubtedly related to the judgment that it carried itself on the novels of Stefan Wul: “ In all the novels of Wul, as a majority, there is a great starting idea. There are two thirds of the beginning which formidable, are well built, with a coherence in the dramaturgy, etc And the last third, they are a little filthy. Or it has more time, or it tires, or that starts to become lazy. ”.

Cinematographic wink

The character of the fat and obese Master to the head of a band of renegades which nourishes his domestic monster with its prisionniers is not without pointing out particularly the character of Jabba Hutt who appears in the first trilogy of Star Wars, in the Return of Jedi of Richard Marquand.

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