THE NEW ADAM (9)
By:
September 17, 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.
THE NEW ADAM: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10.
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].
Jacqueline would retain only a confused memory of that interminable night with just a few very clear images emerging from a background of terror. That manhunt [chasse à l’homme], through the smoke, those raised arms, those bodies confronting each other… and always those screams that no longer had anything human about them… The return to the village in the car, between Fléchère and de Javerne, silent, the black countryside crossed by red lights. And the face of her Master as he examined one after the other half-charred corpses. An orderly held a lantern and the disfigured masks emerged from the shadows. She saw again the dead face of a little nurse her age whose two stiff arms were wrapped around a charred old woman… And always the attentive and pale face of Fléchère. She followed him step by step with the fear of losing him in that darkness. And the question she asked herself, and which she hated to ask herself: “Would it not be better, for the peace and life of my Master, if he found the remains of Silenrieux among this line-up of corpses?” She rejected this impious wish with terror and abandoned herself to her pity.
A gray dawn broke, illuminating the masses of rubble on Douceville’s hill, from which the glow fading. The surrounding peasants began to bring back survivors they had found shivering with fear at the bottom of ditches or holed up in barns. Their hands had been tied behind their backs, and they were gnashing their teeth. Some threw themselves on their improvised guards, trying to bite them. The entire village seemed to have lost its mind. And these placid peasants were so beside themselves, with such disordered gestures, that Michel de Javerne, upon meeting them, stared at them, thinking he recognized some of his boarders [pensionnaires]…
Jacqueline watched Fléchère examining all these fugitives as they were brought back. She heard him suggest to Doctor de Javerne that they conduct an investigation in the surrounding villages. The three of them set off. The car drove between hedges of wild rose. She couldn’t understand why this summer morning was so cool and calm. The villages seemed like islands of green in the radiant sea of wheat. They left the car in front of the first house and Javerne questioned its inhabitants. The information was vague and contradictory. Already, atrocious stories were circulating. Madmen had attacked women, had pounced on children, and no one could say where these attacks had been committed. Everyone had seen lunatics pass by. But the peasants didn’t want to compromise themselves, nor admit that they had watched them flee while barricading their doors. They trembled at the thought of finding them at the bottom of their cellar [cave]…
Doctor de Javerne was growing discouraged. But Jacqueline sensed her master’s persistent hope.
They stopped in a large village near the railway line.
— It’s pointless, de Javerne asserted. It’s too far, here…
But a passerby, when questioned, declared that he had seen, at sunrise, two men entering the first farmhouse.
— Let’s go see! Fléchère said feverishly.
A young woman received them in her kitchen.
— Yes, gentlemen, she replied. “wo who were dying of hunger. They asked me for lunch… But these ones, they weren’t crazy, on the contrary…
Fléchère looked at her anxiously. The round, pleasant face stopped smiling, became expressionless, as if walled up in a will for silence.
— Speak, madame, Fléchère said gently. Have confidence in us! The slightest clue might help us in a delicate task!
— I meant… sir… that they weren’t like everyone else. The taller one especially, the one who was so pale and spoke so quickly…
Pale, with green eyes? Fléchère murmured.
She shook her head.
— I didn’t dare look at him too closely…
— Admit that you think he’s a bit of a sorcerer, her jovial husband interrupted.
But she looked at the old man with the trembling hands and thought,
“Perhaps he’s looking for his son.”
So, suddenly making up her mind, she cried out:
— My goodness, gentlemen, judge for yourselves! He said to me, “I’m going to give you a small piece of coal to thank you for your kind hospitality. You won’t need any other fuel for your whole winter!” Naturally, at first, I thought he was making fun of me. But he seemed so sure of what he was saying that I thought he was one of the Douceville madmen who roam the country… Then I began to get scared…
— And then? asked Fléchère, squeezing Jacqueline’s fingers until she cried ou.
— And then he said, “Empty your stove.” So I obeyed. Because they recommend not upsetting them! When the stove was completely empty, he took a small piece of coal from a kind of case the other had in his bag. He held it on the end of a pair of tongs, as if he were afraid of burning himself. I saw that the coal was already red hot… He put it in the stove… And then, a pot full of water… And look! the water started to boil…
She stopped, still moved by this miracle [prodige], and she glanced at them surreptitiously, waiting for some protest. But all three were silent. Then she continued:
— Look, gentlemen!
She pushed them in front of her stove, lifted the bubbling pot. And they saw, sitting alone in the middle of the hearth, a glowing coal.
— My entire dinner cooked on this, she affirmed, triumphant and amazed. And look, it doesn’t seem to be going out at all. It hasn’t shrunk in size…
She lowered her voice, adding:
— Only, we mustn’t talk about it… I’d rather the neighbors didn’t know, you understand… I trusted you… because you…
Jacqueline made a childlike gesture, bringing her fingers closer and withdrawing them immediately. And all three of them, leaning over, looked at this piece of coke which was burning without appearing to be consumed.
— Silenrieux… murmured Fléchere.
He wasn’t listening to the peasant who said, shrugging his shoulders:
— It’s not coal, of course! It’s one of their laboratory tricks… something like that radium they use in hospitals to burn away illnesses!
— What time did he leave here? asked Fléchère abruptly.
It was the woman who answered:
— He asked me if a car could take him to the station, and what time the train from Strasbourg to Châlons leaves. He looked very tired. So we harnessed the horse…
Jacqueline didn’t hear the words that followed. She didn’t take her eyes off her master’s tense face. As she helped him put on his coat, she bumped into his icy hand. As she leaned over to close the car door, she saw the peasant woman place a finger to her lips.
— Isn’t that right, gentlemen? Tell no one!
The car started. Michel de Javerne turned to Fléchère.
— You are reassured, my dear friend! Your Silenrieux is saved! He will have to explain to you the mystery of the lump of coal!
— Didn’t he say in front of you that he dreamed of discovering the intra-atomic decomposition of bodies?… And Silenrieux’s dreams…
He broke off. He murmured with an accent of despair:
— Strasbourg! He’s left for Germany!
— Well, you’re rid of him! replied Doctor de Javerne, without understanding.
Fléchère didn’t reply. Jacqueline’s thoughts followed those of her Master.
The calm of a late summer afternoon. The fading light. The violet shadows across the expanses of wheat. The golden covering of sunrays on the hedges. And the outstretched branches all blooming with light. Michel de Javerne’s eyes are obsessed by the image of Douceville: It floats around him and populates this serene countryside with spectacles of terror. Mechanically, for the hundredth time since the night, he searches for the cause and the culprit. His gaze fixes, without seeing it, the red orb of the sun resting on the hill. And now the entire horizon seems to him strewn with small pieces of incandescent coal. They mingle in a bizarre way with his nightmare. They mark the foreheads of the corpses that he constantly sees lined up in the middle of the wheat. They shine in this twilight where the dance of the escaped madmen continues with frenzy. But why does the memory of Puybronde intervene at this precise spot? Puybronde, the mysterious deaths along the road, and Saint-Blaise, which swayed and fell apart, became a pile of rubble… Yes, the ultra-short waves… the explosives that fit in the palm of your hand… the incandescent coal that does not burn… the dreams of Silenrieux…
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.