THE NEW ADAM (6)
By:
August 25, 2025
The New Adam is a 1926 proto-sf novel by the Swiss author Hélène Dufour Pittard (writing as “Noëlle Roger”). The book concerns, one reads in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, “a wholly logical and unpleasant Superman created by gland transplants.” HILOBROW is pleased to serialize Book IV from The New Adam in Josh Glenn’s translation, from the original serialized in the 23 February 1924 issue of the journal La Petite Illustration.
FRENCH PROTO-SF TRANSLATIONS BY JOSH GLENN: Raymond Roussel’s LOCUS SOLUS [excerpt] | Noëlle Roger’s THE NEW ADAM [excerpt] | Alfred Jarry’s THE SUPERMALE [excerpt] | Jean de La Hire’s THE MYSTERY OF THE XV [excerpt].
THE NEW ADAM: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10.
He remained motionless, listening, and gradually saw the rooms, which communicated with each other through doorless openings [portes sans battant], take shape. Objects emerged from the gloom; the enamel of the bathtub, the nickel of the handles, the showerhead caught uncertain reflections. In the second room, adjoining the garden, he finally saw Silenrieux lying motionless on a couch. Fléchère took a few steps. Hervé seemed to be asleep, his eyes wide open.
— Hervé! Fléchère said softly, Hervé!
Silenrieux’s body gave a brief shudder. His face swayed, his eyes fixed on Fléchère’s.
— Hervé! the latter repeated, unable to utter another word.
Silenrieux did not move, did not reply. He continued to look at his Master. Faced with this face that appeared more pale, as if diminished, stripped of all ardor and all expression, Fléchère thought he heard the silent reproach of these motionless eyes. It seemed to him that the room was filling with accusations, that voices were rising from the heavy furniture fixed to the walls, from these fences, from this garden enclosed by such high walls; and words, always the same, assailed him and hurt him…
“You… my Master… my friend… my guest! You have delivered me, betrayed me… you have set an ambush [guet-aopens] for me. Measure my humiliation… this prison, these locks… these bars… these jailers… You have thrown me among the worst of the fallen… me… me…”
— Hervé! Fléchère murmured again.
Voices buzzed around him in the intolerable silence. Therefore, to silence them, he found the strength to speak.
— Don’t you know that a complaint has been filed against you? Your papers, your laboratory, the Puybronde tower are under seal. An investigation has begun. If we hadn’t had the inspiration to shelter you here… you would be arrested, perhaps…
Silenrieux gave an imperceptible shrug and didn’t answer.
— Your assistant Mirbel is wanted, Fléchère continued. Here… at least…
He broke off, frozen by the ironic look darted at him.
— Listen to me, Hervé! In a while, when the fuss surrounding the Puybronde affair has died down… when the investigation has resulted in a dismissal, which will inevitably happen, since there is no evidence, you will resume your work… submitting to the laws of your country. And this period of rest will have had the effect of balancing your nervous system, which you are overworking, which cannot keep up with the incessant work of your devouring brain.
He fell silent and waited. Hervé caught a single word: “A dismissal!”
And he burst out laughing.
— Excuse me, Master! I can picture the faces of all these imbeciles in the presence of my tomes, my notes, my special shorthand [ma sténographie spéciale]… Will they find any explanations? Besides… rest assured. Everything that matters is safe…
The tone of that voice lightened the atmosphere, and that old-fashioned appellation… The doctor stood, head bowed, awaiting the onslaught of reproaches. But the only complaint that broke the silence was this:
— Oh! Master, all this wasted time!
Hervé seemed to have just emerged from a nightmare. He stood up, looked at Doctor Fléchère as if he had just discovered his presence. And, jumping up, he cried:
— Excuse me, Master! You are so kind as to come to see me, and I don’t even offer you a seat! Here, on this couch… We’re not too bad, are we? And I must speak to you… I must speak to you…
He began to pace around the room, his staccato steps [son pas saccadé] punctuating his sentences.
— Master… naturally… you can’t imagine yourself… But you’ll understand… In Puybronde, I didn’t tell you everything… Listen!
His face seemed to rekindle its former ardor. He found his vibrant voice again, which accelerated his words. He stopped in front of Fléchère and smiled”
— Master, I have discovered a new substance, hyperuranium, number 93 in the periodic table. It is a very unstable substance, which decomposes by emitting waves much shorter and more penetrating than radium’s γ rays.”
[Fun fact: Neptunium, the atomic number of which is 93, would first be synthesized in 1940. Until the discovery of the final component of the atomic nucleus, the neutron in 1932, most scientists did not seriously consider the possibility of elements heavier than uranium (element 92). — ed.]
“— Ah! murmured Fléchère, bewildered, the waves…
— Master, hyperuranium has the property of causing the intra-atomic decomposition of other substances, lead, for example, and coal… Oh! I will surely find a way to decompose all substances. This decomposition can be very slow, like that of coal, imitating radium, which takes 2,000 years to decompose its atoms, or instantaneous, like that of lead. Can you imagine the formidable power I have acquired? A few grains of lead decomposing, even if precautions have been taken to bury them, is like the ground trembling, like a city disappearing.
The image of Saint-Blaise, tottering and collapsing, passed before the terrified eyes of Doctor Fléchère.
— But also, Master! the triumphant voice continued, “the face of the world will be changed… the dream of all physicists who wondered if centuries would be enough to realize it, I am realizing this dream today. Today, Master, today!
He repeated this word like a victory cry. And, sensing that the doctor hesitated to follow him, he leaned over him and attempted to persuade him of the scope of this victory.
— To annihilate an army with a handful [poignée] of explosives, that’s nothing any longer. You reproached me for a few dozen victims who died in a single blow without suffering. And I am going to free the world from this law of labor that weighs so heavily on it. These poor, outdated producers of energy, steam, electricity, gas, I will replace them with prodigious and inexhaustible forces that will require no labor from man. Master! With a kilo of coal, I can heat Paris for an entire winter. With a kilo of coal, I can power a train that goes around the world. A ton of coal will now be enough for unlimited work. Think of the hundreds of thousands of slaves who toil their entire miserable lives to deliver a poor fuel, three-quarters of which goes up in smoke… What wasted human labor! I free them… And, of course, I increase their speed a hundredfold too! Our poor current automobiles, with their 100 horsepower, will soon remind us of the omnibuses of yesteryear pulled by four nags… I eliminate distance… Master, you will spend your Sundays in Constantinople… Planes will no longer need to land when they go to the Antipodes…
Without taking a breath, he continued to unfold a prodigious picture before Fléchère: life multiplied, man freed from poverty and forced labor, all-powerful man, master of the elements… all riches within his grasp, economic conditions disrupted, the acceleration of the means of knowledge…
Silenrieux finally fell silent. He was trembling all over, lost in the contemplation of dizzying images. At that moment, he forgot Fléchère at his side and the insane asylum that imprisoned his genius.
— An interplanetary vessel [avion interplanétaire] Hervé murmured suddenly, as if in a dream. Why not?
Fléchère, overcome by such exaltation, dazzled by these perspectives thrown before him with ardent certainty, thought:
“Yes… this very thing… time abolished…. the future drawn into the present, the secrets of future centuries spread before our eyes…”
Suddenly, Hervé seemed to wake up. He looked around, recognized the living room with its immovable furniture, the walled garden, and he gave a brief start.
— Master, you see what an immense task awaits me… Change everything, redo everything, build a new world… I must start right away… right away… Let me out of here!
Fléchère never took his eyes off the feverish face, which appeared to him to be of an immaterial and almost superhuman [surhumaine] beauty. He felt a kind of veneration for this imperious genius. He was transported, following Hervé, beyond time and contingencies. The vision of the corpses of Saint-Blaise, lined up in a town hall, was as if swept from his memory.
— Soon, soon, Hervé, he promised. A little more patience. What do
a few days matter to you?
— Ah! cried the young man, every wasted day tears me apart… When one has so few days to live, and the world to comprehend, the world in which we still live like blind and deaf men… So few years, and then stupid death! Ah! Master, if you have any affection for me, don’t let me lose any more days…
And when Fléchère didn’t reply, Hervé cried out:
— You don’t understand.… You, no more than the others!
He continued, for a moment, in a satirical tone:
— The others who call me crazy! Yes, it’s perfectly logical to be locked up here! Don’t men hate all those who surpass them!
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.