ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: UN AUTRE MONDE (1895)

UN AUTRE MONDE (Another World) – This 1895 story was written by Belgium’s revered pioneer in science fiction – J.H. Rosny, real name Joseph Henri Boex. I went with the French title because a while back I reviewed another work of ancient science fiction that also bore the title Another World. 

The author set the story in Swartzendam in the Netherlands. The entire tale is told from the point of view of a mutant humanoid. The mutant – named Karel Ondereet – has violet skin and very fine violet hair. He is very thin and his eyes become more and more opaque as he matures, but he can see through solid objects and far beyond the clouds.

Despite this, his mother is very affectionate toward him as is a “normal” younger sister who comes along years later. His father is wary of the purple-skinned child and always remains aloof.

Karel has amazing reflexes and can move at incredible speeds. Though his arms are much less strong than normal human children, his leg muscles let him easily leap to the upper branches of trees or the roofs of barns and houses.

In addition to running so swiftly he can outrace the fastest horses; Karel speaks so swiftly that nobody can understand him. It takes him most of his childhood years to learn how to slow down his speech enough for others to understand what he is saying.

He can also see fifteen colors as well as other-dimensional life forms that no one else can see. Karel rejects most food because alcoholic beverages nourish him. His mother does force him to consume raw eggs and other supplements with the beer and wine.  

 He is considered very odd in his family’s community but aside from some minor bullying and ostracism he lives unharmed with his family. And that to me REALLY broke my suspension of disbelief.

On one hand it was refreshing that this story avoided what is now a trope of violent hatred toward the mutant offspring. On the other, people’s reactions – in the 1800s – to A VIOLET SKINNED BOY WHO MOVES AT SUPER SPEED AND CAN LEAP BUILDINGS IN ONE BOUND are so mild it’s almost too hard to lose oneself in the story.

Superstition and fear of the unknown couldn’t help but make some people aggressively hostile toward the unnatural child. Some would consider it unholy, others, especially the father, might wonder if the mother mated with something unspeakable.

As Karel reaches his teen years, he can tell his intelligence is far beyond that of other children, but because he still finds difficulty making himself properly understood to his teachers and classmates he is dismissed as “slow”. The school gives up on the lad and his father consigns him to shepherding some of the livestock.

Karel suffers depression and sometimes sulks entire seasons away in his room, like he’s Bella Swann. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) After a few more years our narrator wearies of life on the farm and informs his parents he is going to travel to Amsterdam in hopes of finding people he can make recognize his intellect and appreciate the multitude of extradimensional organisms that only he can see.

The young man’s incredible speed lets him reach Amsterdam in a short time, and he even showed off his speed for astonished onlookers during the journey. Again, I like being spared the usual “Kill the freak!” tropes, but the calm way the Dutch react to Karel Ondereet is distracting. 

Once in Amsterdam our main character takes in the canals and finally attracts enough attention for people to ask him some questions. In what I’m assuming was a bit of intentional humor, the onlookers eventually come to the conclusion that Karel must be from … Borneo.

They’re still inordinately accepting of the violet-skinned, superfast young man whose eyes are opaque. When he makes it clear to the crowd that he wants taken to a hospital they assume the poor little guy from Borneo must be ill.

The Dutch throng obligingly walks Ondereet to the nearest hospital, then apparently forgets about him. There are no news stories, nobody ever drops by wanting to see the violet-skinned curiosity, nothing.

At any rate, the hospital staff display some interest in Karel and after he explains himself as best he can, the doctors and nurses eventually introduce him to university scientist Dr. van den Heuvel. This man happily devotes his life to studying Ondereet from that point onward. 

The doctor uses specially designed phonographs for Karel to talk into at his normal speed, then plays them back at a slower rate that normal human beings can understand. This greatly lessens the frustration that Ondereet feels when trying to communicate with others. 

Van den Heuvel gains a lot of scientific knowledge from studying and running tests on Karel. As the years go by, the scientist has educated the younger man enough that Ondereet can use his enhanced vision and other senses to conduct experiments with the doctor.

Karel’s perceptions provide more detailed data than any other instruments possibly could. Things get a bit dry at times as we get detailed explanations of what the mutant and the scientist discover.

A few years later, Ondereet finally trusts Dr. van den Heuvel enough to disclose the existence of those other-dimensional beings that only the mutant can see. Step by step our narrator describes the life forms to van den Heuvel.

The beings are various sizes but are exceptionally long and much of the sections covering these entities read like excerpts from Edwin Abbott’s Flatland from 1884. The way the beings are able to pass through the world around them – and through human beings – put me in mind of the H.P. Lovecraft story From Beyond.

Karel calls the ground entities Moedigen and the airborne entities Vuren. More scientific breakthroughs are made by studying the extradimensional beings, and eventually van den Heuvel’s son joins him and Ondereet in their research.

For an author as praised as Boex is, he next gives us an awkwardly abrupt and clumsy bit in which a woman who suffers from psychiatric problems is cured by Karel’s electromagnetic touch. This ability comes out of nowhere, and just as quickly and awkwardly we readers are told that Ondereet and this unnamed woman get married.

For the final few lines, Karel mentions that his wife has given birth to a baby which has all of his mutant characteristics and he looks forward to raising a family with her.

Despite the reams of information that the author provides regarding the long, flat extradimensional life forms, not one word in the entire story ever addresses what might have caused Karel’s mutant nature. 

Definitely a mixed bag of a story, but it’s a superior work of speculative sci-fi for its period. In fact, one of the things that seems to have robbed Boex of greater renown is his often dry scientific exposition.