In his history of the genre, Brian Aldiss suggests that most SF is what he calls 'prodromic': we must read it less as a prophecy of the future than as symptomatic of the present. By this rule 1984 will be 36 years out of date when we get there. A commoner view (on which Aldiss is naturally not so keen) holds that SF, like the Western, is an exclusively American line of fiction in which dabbling Europeans can easily make fools of themselves. Both generalisations survive a reading of Brave Old World. Curval, it would seem, is the leader of French SF. This novel, entitled Cette Chère Humanité, won the Prix Apollo in 1976. In France, 'Curval's name is as well-known as Frank Herbert's in America or Michael Moorcock's in Britain.'

LRB 21 January 1982 | PDF Download