In A Thousand Years Read online

  In a Thousand Years

  by

  Emile Calvet

  translated, annotated and introduced by

  Brian Stableford

  A Black Coat Press Book

  Introduction

  Dans Mille Ans, signed E. Calvet, here translated as In a Thousand Years, was published in a handsome illustrated edition in Paris by Librairie Ch. Delagrave in 1884, having been serialized the previous year in the venerable Musée des Familles, where the author’s name was given in full as Émile Calvet. That seems to be the sum of what is known of the author, who is highly unlikely, on chronological grounds, to have been responsible for any of the handful of other works signed “E. Calvet” or “Émile Calvet” listed in the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale or recorded in Google Books. It is entirely possible that the signature is a pseudonym, but whether it was the author’s real name or not, it seems not unlikely that Dans mille ans was his one and only publication, as the text exhibits numerous indications of inexperience.

  Anything deduced about the author from the contents of the novel must, of course, remain purely conjectural, but the evidence strongly suggests that he was a Parisian schoolmaster specializing in the teaching of the physical sciences. Although Dans mille ans is set solidly in the tradition of “euchronian” fiction founded more than a hundred years earlier by Louis Sébastien Mercier’s L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante (1771; tr. as Memoirs of the Year Two Thousand Five Hundred) it stands at the opposite end of a utopian spectrum that extends from works whose primary consideration is political reform to those whose primary concern is technological advancement. Like Mercier, Calvet agrees with the late 18th century philosophers of progress Ann-Robert-Jacques Turgot and the Marquis de Condorcet that the two kinds of progress go hand in hand—a supposition that had been treated with increasing skepticism during the long interim separating the works of the two novelists—but Calvet takes the view that if the technological problems restricting the adequate supply of human needs can be solved, then political problems of distribution and social order will simply sort themselves out, through the medium of efficient universal education.

  The latter view probably seemed a trifle naïve even in 1883, and is bound to seem much more so now that so many of the technological advances anticipated by Calvet have been made without any conspicuous social development in the direction of consensual liberty, equality and fraternity, but that does not detract from the fact that Calvet’s work provides the clearest and most extreme example of a particular train of thought, developed with as much conscience as determination. Indeed, seen from the viewpoint of the early 21st century, Calvet’s text is a truly remarkable combination of innocence and ingenuity, unparalleled at the time and perhaps since.

  It is important to remember, in reading the text today, how closely the novel followed on the heels of the key inventions that it extrapolates. The telephone had been patented in 1876, the phonograph in 1877 and Joseph Swan’s electric incandescent lamp—the first genuinely practical one—in 1880. The first electric power network, producing 110 volts of direct current, had been developed in 1882 to supply a mere 59 clients. The steam-turbine that would provide the basis for efficient electric power generation had not yet been invented. Hydrogen had not yet been liquefied, and experimentally useful quantities of liquid oxygen were only produced for the first time in 1883, the year of the novel’s publication. The problem of steering aerostats was still painfully unsolved, in spite of long effort, as was the problem of heavier-than-air flight. Heinrich Hertz had not yet demonstrated the existence of the electromagnetic waves that would eventually give birth to wireless telegraphy, and it would have been exceedingly remarkable had any such notion been on Calvet’s “intellectual radar.”

  Given that timetable, Calvet’s notion of a world transformed by prolifically-distributed electric power and aerial transportation is quite remarkable. His tongue-in-cheek representation of the widespread uses of gold and platinum have little technological basis, but his notion of the potential utility of aluminum—which was still more expensive than gold and platinum when a bar was exhibited as “the new precious metal” at the Paris Exhibition of 1855—proved much more prescient, although he could not have anticipated that significant new methods of production would make it available for widespread industrial use in the late 1880s. Although his slightly awestruck descriptions of an electric kettle and an electric grill with a rear reflector might seem a trifle quaint to readers perfectly familiar with such devices, whose actual design eventually followed exactly the same logic as his extrapolations, their envisioning really was a daring imaginative venture on his part, and exhibits an attention to utilitarian detail rare among constructors of utopias—and not, alas, reflected in others aspects of Calvet’s somewhat tunnel-visioned description of life in the future.

  Calvet was perhaps unfortunate in writing his futuristic vision only a few years before several crucial inventions were made that changed the technological prospectus dramatically. If his novel is compared with Albert Robida’s La Vie électrique, published a decade later in 1893,1 the difference in the anticipatable technological horizons in very striking—almost as striking, in fact, as the difference between Calvet’s rose-tinted optimism and Robida’s deep-seated cynicism. Calvet’s novel is exactly contemporary with Robida’s first satirical euchronia, Le Vingtième siècle (1883; tr. as The 20th century), which is considerably more similar in the spectrum of its anticipations, and not nearly as striking in the contrast of its attitude. If Calvet had written his serial as he went along, as most feuilletonists of the period did, he might have had a chance to read and react to Robida’s work, but the evidence of the text suggests that Dans mille ans was written all of a piece, and was probably completed before its serialization began (perhaps as much as two years previously, given that the contemporary action is so specifically set in 1880), so the two novels were almost certainly produced entirely independently, and are all the more interesting in juxtaposition by virtue of that fact.

  The fact that Calvet avoids any direct discussion of politically controversial issues, and makes no mention whatsoever of organized religion (although his characters are prone make to the occasional exclamation taking the Lord’s name in vain), is presumably the result of rigorous self-censorship, but it must have helped considerably to obtain serialization in a self-declared “family magazine.” Although the Musée des Familles had been a ground-breaking literary publication when it was founded by Émile de Girardin in 1833, playing a significant role in the popularization of Romanticism and the development of popular fiction, it had came to seem distinctly staid and conservative by the 1880s, and was far from being the kind of publication to court any kind of controversy. The particular complexion of the novel’s optimism might be more accountable in terms of marketing strategy than the author’s own interests and limitations, and it would be unfair to hold the author entirely accountable for his omissions. It is worth noting that the magazine had a long-running regular feature entitled Science en famille [Science in the Home] and frequently published articles glorifying the exploits of explorers in Africa.

  Dans mille ans was written at a time when Mercier’s method of “time travel”—the prophetic dream—was still standard, and it does not mark much of an advance in that regard, at least in comparison with Robida, who grasped the nettle of presenting an account of the future as if it had been written in the future, simply ignoring the question of how the account could possibly be made available in the present. It is, however, significant that Calvet’s characters do not experience the vision of the future as if it were a vision, but have the subjective impression that they have been physically displaced by suspended animation. This has some odd effects on the plot
of the novel, especially when one of the characters discovers his ashes and a record of his genealogy in the Necropolis of future Paris, without being able to jump to the conclusion that he must, therefore, be able somehow to return to his own time. Given the fact that dreamers are generally not aware of the fact that they are dreaming, however—and usually wake up fairly rapidly if they acquire that awareness—the narrative move is not unjustifiable, and might help to explain certain other eccentricities and curious instances of neglect regarding the characters’ actions and thoughts a thousand years hence and subsequent to their return.

  It has to be admitted that Calvet is no great literary stylist; his prose is often stilted, routinely prolix and annoyingly repetitive, but it is not devoid of a certain liveliness and quirky humor, and it is by no means merely insulting to say that he writes very much as a high school science teacher might be expected to write. It is true that his novel is now of primarily historical interest, but it is worth re-emphasizing that the historical interest in question is considerable, because rather than in spite of the fact that its anticipations went out of date in a matter of years. The “binocular vision” that allows 19th century utopias to be read now with one eye on the actual future that developed instead of the imagined future adds to the interest of the reading experience, and allows informed modern readers to appreciate fully what a narrow window of imaginative opportunity Calvet had available to him, and how ingenious he was in working around blind spots that confounded almost all his contemporaries.

  Only a handful of Calvet’s French contemporaries—among whom Robida far outshines the rest—had anything like his breadth of technological vision, and no one outside France could hold a candle to him in that regard; no one writing in English produced anything remotely similar to Dans mille ans in the early 1880s, and even the remarkable flood of euchronian fiction that followed the publication of Edward Bellamy’s best-selling Looking Backward, 2000-1887 in 1888, and the dramatic flowering of British scientific romance in the 1890s, failed to produce anything of similar breadth and detail with regard to the extrapolation of electrical technology. In spite of its limitations, Dans mille ans is a highly significant product of the scientific imagination, which ought not to be entirely overshadowed by Robida’s work, and makes a fascinating comparison with it.

  This translation has been taken from the version of the Delagrave edition reproduced on the Bibliothèque Nationale’s gallica website.

  Brian Stableford

  Part One:

  THE SECRET OF DOCTOR ANTIUS

  I. A Scientist in Difficulties

  On 13 June 1880, the physicist J. B. Terrier, whose works have cast so much light on the mechanical theory of heat, appeared to be prey to an agitation, betrayed by the disorder of his stride, which was normally calm, slow and measured.

  The scientist was walking around his vast laboratory, sometimes stopping abruptly and darting long glances at a piece if paper he was holding in his hand.

  “A singular message!” he said, suddenly, in a low voice. “It’s only three words long—Great discovery, come—but it nevertheless constitutes an enigma for which I can provide no rational hypothesis. The discovery must be important, for Antius, who is as severe on himself as he is on others, only uses such epithets discerningly.”

  And the professor lost himself in conjectures once again.

  “Rastoin,” he said to his assistant, “What time is it?”

  “Four-seventeen, Monsieur,” the young man replied, after taking out his silver pocket-watch, as large as a pie-dish, and observing with alarm that the first hour of his free time had already been considerably eroded.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the professor headed for the door, picked up his hat, which was perched on a galvanometer and pulled it down over his ears. Rejecting his walking stick, and in spite of a clear sky and a temperature of thirty degrees, he picked up a vast umbrella worthy of service in a phalanstery. He stopped again, raising his eyes toward the ceiling, and then went down into the street.

  He had not taken ten paces before Rastoin, the laboratory key in his pocket, launched himself briskly in the opposite direction, exclaiming: “Thank God, I still have time to have a dip at the Henri IV baths.”

  In spite of the preoccupations agitating his mind, the physicist had adopted the calm and measured stride that is the most apparent indication of professorial dignity. Sagaciously, he walked on the side of the street that was not exposed to the ardent rays of the sun and emerged without hesitation from the labyrinth of bizarrely winding side-streets that furrow the area between the Quai des Grand-Augustins and the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

  He went slowly up the Boulevard Saint-Michel and into the Jardin du Luxembourg, which he was proceeding to traverse in a straight line when, surprised by the outburst of a military band that was in the most direct path, he made an abrupt right-angled turn. That maneuver, provoked by the instinctive horror that the scientist had for any kind of noise, took him into the Allée de l’Observatoire, which he cut across obliquely in order to go through the deserted paths that, in that era, overlooked the pot-holes of the old botanical garden.

  Five minutes later he went at a deliberate pace into the Rue Carnot. Having arrived at the end of that street, which has the deceptive appearance of a dead end, he turned right and followed the little used sidewalk of the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs for some distance. Finally, he stopped in front of a door that symmetrically divided an old wall, which was covered in moss and overhung by two vigorous poplars, planted behind it like sentinels.

  The professor tugged energetically at a rusty copper bell-pull, which only quit its sheath with an angry grating sound.

  Two minutes later, heavy and hasty footsteps caused the sand of the garden path to squeak, and the door opened slowly.

  Terrier saw an old woman in front of him, who greeted him with a nod of the head and put her index finger over her mouth—a familiar sign that always announces a mystery. In addition, contrary to the convention practiced on the five continents of the world of letting a visitor in, the woman who was holding the door ajar slipped between the batten and the wall and came out into the street.

  The old lady who had just performed that singular maneuver was known by the name of Madame Boquet; for twenty years she had been Dr. Antius’ housekeeper, the glory and providence of the quarter. Within a radius of three hundred meters it was universally admitted as an undisputable verity that she possessed, to the highest degree, the knowledge, intelligence and organizational ability necessary for the provision of superior cuisine—qualities which, as all bachelors admit, constitute the three theological virtues of housekeeping.

  On the day on which this story begins, the physicist was able to observe at the first glance that grave perturbations must have compromised the calm and tranquility of the doctor’s house.

  Indeed Madame Boquet, who seemed very animated, immediately launched into the following speech: “Thank heaven you’re here, Monsieur le Professeur. Personally, I feel as if I’m losing my mind. I’m convinced, you see, that the devil is haunting the house. Can you imagine that Monsieur is no longer recognizable. For some time, he’s been shutting himself away all day, and doesn’t want to see anyone. At night, he gets up and goes down into the garden, where he wanders around slowly for two or three hours, talking out loud. He scarcely eats anything, and only distractedly. There’s some great misfortune behind it, which is a threat to us, I can assure you...”

  This exordium on the part of the housekeeper caused the physicist some anxiety.

  “When, Madame Bosquet, did this trouble begin—which, in regard to the chronometric existence of my old friend, is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you?” he asked.

  “It began last week, on Thursday evening. At two o’clock, Monsieur left for the Académie. At six o’clock, he still hadn’t come back. For the first time in his life, he was late. I was beginning to get angry when Monsieur opened the door and came solely along the path, his eyes fixe
d on the ground. He went up to his room without saying a word and came back in an overcoat, with no cravat. He stated walking around the garden.

  “I went to tell him that dinner was ready. ‘Dinner doesn’t matter,’ he said, abruptly, and kept on walking. I never heard anything like it. I stopped stood in front of him and shouted that it was seven o’clock. He followed me, grumpily, and came to sit down at the table, but like someone whose mind is elsewhere.

  “On Monday, his nephew, Monsieur Gédéon, came to see him. He tried to go into the study, but Monsieur flew into a temper and sent him away.

  “I’ve tried everything to combat the mysterious illness. I’ve prepared the rarest dishes—a waste of effort. I’ve made all sorts of infusions; Monsieur hasn’t touched them. Finally, the day before yesterday, I went to consult the old somnambulist in the Rue Stanislas, who’s capable of divining anything.”

  “Well?” asked the scientist, curiously.

  “She assured me that Monsieur was bewitched, and that as soon as the spell is lifted, he’ll be much better.”

  “The diagnosis is more remarkable for its logic than its lucidity,” said the professor.

  “This morning,” the housekeeper went on, “I had a ray of hope. As Monsieur got up from the table, he said: ‘Madeleine, didn’t Gédéon come here the other day?’

  “‘Yes, Monsieur,’ I said, ‘but you sent him away—the young man was furious.’

  “‘Good. Go to his house today and tell him to come to dinner. At the same time, take this telegram to the telegraph office—it’s for my friend Monsieur Terrier; I have something important to tell him. The three of us will dine together. Put on a magnificent feast!’

  “Imagine my astonishment—Monsieur was talking just like you and me. But it didn’t last, alas. Scarcely had Monsieur finished giving his instructions than he went back into his laboratory, and hasn’t come out again since.”