- Posts: 1540
- Thank you received: 234
- Forum
- Superwomen on screen and in print
- Superwomen in comics and books
- A French superhuman jungle woman
A French superhuman jungle woman
fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Râni,_reine_des_jungles
Chances are he got the idea from Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, which had debuted nine years earlier.
--J.J,
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- brantley
- Topic Author
- Offline
- Platinum Member
brantley wrote: Just came across this in a list of works be René Thévinin (1877-1967), a major sf writer..
fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Râni,_reine_des_jungles
Chances are he got the idea from Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, which had debuted nine years earlier.
--J.J,
My French isn’t very good. Have his books been translated to English?
Shadar
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- shadar
- Offline
- Uberposter par Excellence
- Posts: 3927
- Thank you received: 3609
I know about some of his novels from secondary sources; his best known (out of dozens) is Hunters of Men'.
From my sf history update in progress:
<<René Thévenin (1877-1967), an official of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, seems to have been influenced by J.H,.Rosny ainé. In The Iron Idol’s Necklace (1911), descendants of lncas in the Amazon have created monsters of living metal to guard their city of iron and gold – an alternate life similar in concept Rosny’s Xipéhuz. The Haunted Castle of Owlesfear (1912) has to do with a race of amphibious people living along the shores of the Sunda Islands of Malaysia – almost exactly the same idea Rosny had used in “Nymphaeum.”In Thévenin’s Hunters of Men (1930), Europeans come up against something terrorizing the natives in Africa, something like vampires – though reducing the victims to powder. The beings, called "Hunters of Men," turn out to be something seemingly human, but possibly an evolutionary step beyond us. They have high foreheads and long, even skeletal fingers ending in claws, and leave tracks with only four digits. There are two of them, a male and female, who communicate by subtle means and hunt human beings in order to steal their blood by means of a strange process of mental vampirism.The Hunters are so different from humans that there is no real communication with them; they are predators who regard us as prey, and don't seem to have any culture or civilization of their own but inhabit the jungle like other animals. The female appears to be the dominant one of the pair, the male apparently smaller and weaker; he is killed in the latter part of the novel, which ends with the female still at large. Thévenin evokes an eerie sense of confrontation, akin to that with the super-wolves of Michael Wadleigh’s film Wolfen (1982), that is central to his novel.>>
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- brantley
- Topic Author
- Offline
- Platinum Member
- Posts: 1540
- Thank you received: 234
brantley wrote: No, they're still under copyright, which means that Black Coat Press (which has marketed translations of hundreds of French sf novels that are in the public domain) can't touch them.
I know about some of his novels from secondary sources; his best known (out of dozens) is Hunters of Men'.
From my sf history update in progress:
<<René Thévenin (1877-1967), an official of the Museum of Natural History in Paris, seems to have been influenced by J.H,.Rosny ainé. In The Iron Idol’s Necklace (1911), descendants of lncas in the Amazon have created monsters of living metal to guard their city of iron and gold – an alternate life similar in concept Rosny’s Xipéhuz. The Haunted Castle of Owlesfear (1912) has to do with a race of amphibious people living along the shores of the Sunda Islands of Malaysia – almost exactly the same idea Rosny had used in “Nymphaeum.”In Thévenin’s Hunters of Men (1930), Europeans come up against something terrorizing the natives in Africa, something like vampires – though reducing the victims to powder. The beings, called "Hunters of Men," turn out to be something seemingly human, but possibly an evolutionary step beyond us. They have high foreheads and long, even skeletal fingers ending in claws, and leave tracks with only four digits. There are two of them, a male and female, who communicate by subtle means and hunt human beings in order to steal their blood by means of a strange process of mental vampirism.The Hunters are so different from humans that there is no real communication with them; they are predators who regard us as prey, and don't seem to have any culture or civilization of their own but inhabit the jungle like other animals. The female appears to be the dominant one of the pair, the male apparently smaller and weaker; he is killed in the latter part of the novel, which ends with the female still at large. Thévenin evokes an eerie sense of confrontation, akin to that with the super-wolves of Michael Wadleigh’s film Wolfen (1982), that is central to his novel.>>
Sound like some good tales. The idea of humanoid hunters of humans who have superhuman abilities, with the female of the species the most powerful and dangerous, would work in both SF and Horror genres, not not to mention our local subset of both.
Shame I won't be able to read them. Learning to read French at a level sufficient to enjoy literature is not on my Bucket List.
Shadar
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- shadar
- Offline
- Uberposter par Excellence
- Posts: 3927
- Thank you received: 3609
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
This image is hidden for guests.
Please log in or register to see it.
Three books have been drawn by the french artist René Pellos in 1949 ...
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
- jyache
- Offline
- New Member
- Posts: 27
- Thank you received: 81
- Forum
- Superwomen on screen and in print
- Superwomen in comics and books
- A French superhuman jungle woman