The World in 2000 Years Read online

  The World

  in 2000 Years

  by

  Georges Pellerin

  translated, annotated and introduced by

  Brian Stableford

  A Black Coat Press Book

  Introduction

  Le Monde dans deux mille ans, which bears the signature Georges Pellerin, here translated as The World in 2000 Years, was originally published in Paris by E. Dentu in 1878. It attracted little attention in its own day, although it was cited as an example in an essay on futuristic speculation by Charles Richet, Dans cent ans [In a Hundred Years] (1892) and that citation—noted by Pierre Versins in his Encyclopédie de l’utopie et de la science-fiction (1972)—has been copied by other historians of speculative fiction without any further detail being added. It is also mentioned briefly in P.-M. Brin’s Histoire de la philosophie contemporaine [History of Contemporary Philosophy] (1886), where the author is discussed as a “Fourierist,” although the text only adopts one specific idea from the voluminous Utopian writings of Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and is at odds to some extent with Fourier’s fundamental political philosophy.

  The novel is open to the criticism of being a futurological tract lightly disguised with the aid of a tokenistic fictional frame, but the frame does add an extra dimension to the work that distinguishes it from other works in the same subgenre—whose august prototype is Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’an deux mille quatre cent quarante (1771; tr. as Memoirs of the Year 2500). Although all such works make explicit comparisons between the present day in which the author is working and the imaginary future he is constructing, Le Monde dans deux mille ans places a heavy emphasis on the “double vision” of its mesmerized protagonist, and the fictional frame allows the comparisons to be further developed in dialogue and interrogation. That facet of the work is one of the features recommending it for reading now, when it has—arguably, at least—become a more interesting text than it was at the time of its writing, by virtue of the inevitable tripling of that vision. Whereas readers in 1878 could only make a simple comparison between their own world and the world of 3878 murkily glimpsed by the savant Monsieur Landet, contemporary readers can make a third comparison with the world of 2011, which adds an additional perspective of considerable significance to anyone interested in the science on which the story is based.

  The last qualification is perhaps an important one. Although Le Monde dans deux mille ans is a work of “science fiction” in the purest sense, the science in which its speculations are firmly and cleverly based is economics, which is very rarely used as a basis for fiction published under that label, partly because its reputation as “the dismal science” is not entirely unjustified, at least in terms of its potential as a source of action, adventure and melodrama. Even some modern readers interested in economics might consider that the science has made so much progress since 1878 that one would require an esoteric interest in the archeology of ideas to find much fascination in it. There is, however, one significant argument that can be deployed in answer to that view.

  Because the natural sciences are purely descriptive, they contain no ready-made basis for futuristic speculation, except insofar as physical and chemical theory open up scope for imaginable new technologies. Although our understanding of biological evolution has made vast strides over the past two centuries, the relevant analysis provides no basis for anticipating the future course of that evolution, and all speculative fiction of that sort is, in essence, pure fantasy. Economics, however, is not merely a descriptive science but a prescriptive one, not in the sense that it provides vulgar prophesies, but in the sense that it attempts to map out strategies of individual and political action by means of which certain particular goals might be efficiently attained. It is a deeply frustrating science because, as we know from the bitter experience of hundreds of years of economic history, such plans, no matter how well-laid they are, usually go awry, sometimes because the actions in question have unintended consequences that were simply not anticipated, but mostly because individual economic interests are routinely—perhaps inevitably—in conflict, and whatever plans are made, individually or socially, one can be certain that active attempts will be made to exploit, pervert and subvert them. As its analyses become more sophisticated, economic theory gives further scope to such perversion and subversion, thus continually undermining itself.

  The economic theory on which Le Monde dans deux mille ans is based is not the economic theory nowadays taught in universities; there is a sense in which it is definitely obsolete. It is, however, not obvious that it is merely incorrect, because its obsolescence lies not so much in terms of its notion of cause and effect as its specification of fundamental objectives. Economics as currently taught and practiced is basically the science of making a profit; it takes it for granted that the ultimate objective of any economic enterprise, individual or collective, is not only to make money, but to make as much money as possible, and its advisory strategies are geared to that objective. In the future described in Le Monde dans deux mille ans, by contrast, the primary objective of economic policy is the prevention of the accumulation of money in the hands of relatively few individuals or institutions. While making money remains an objective, it is subsidiary to the determination to steer it in the “right” direction—which is to say, to redistribute it in such a way as give every member of society the opportunity to earn a living free of hardship and strife.

  The question of which of these two applications of economic theory is “right” is a political one, although it is worth noting that the author of Le Monde dans deux mille ans does not think that it is a matter of mere opinion, or even a matter of pure self-interest, because he believes that human beings have a literally God-given mission to fulfill, which takes precedence over any private judgment of purpose. The chief interest of the text, however, does not lie in that political choice, but in its analysis of how, once the choice has been made, the goal might be effectively pursued and achieved. Unlike many Utopian writers, the author of Le Monde dans deux mille ans is not primarily concerned with designing an “ideal society”—a notion that he considers to be essentially relative—and is certainly not foolish enough to believe that, if ever such a plan were agreed, such a society could simply be legislated into existence at a stroke. His concern is not so much with the goal as the possible route, the mapping out of a process of politically-guided social evolution that might at least get us out of the mess we are currently in (whether “currently” means 1878 or 2011) and move us in a direction that is, at least arguably, that of improvement.

  Although he does concede the inevitability of future Revolutions and one exceedingly bloody World War, the author of Le Monde dans deux mille ans sees Revolutions as rapid discharges of accumulated social tensions and wars as disasters worsening over time by virtue of technological sophistication; he would prefer to see a pattern of change in which gradual evolution eventually takes the place of periodic revolution, thus minimizing the price to be paid for social change in bloodshed. He believes that sage economic policy might and must do that, even if it will inevitably take time. He does not imagine that it will be easy, nor that the process is likely to be uninterrupted, but he does believe that, by proceeding one step at a time, the eventual sum of those steps can, will and must be “forwards.” Unlike most Utopians, he is prepared to go into detail about the steps themselves as well as the philosophy behind them. Like most intellectuals of his day and nation, he subscribes to the philosophy of progress, but not in any simple linear fashion, and certainly not without a deep sense of anxiety—an anxiety that impregnates his text and helps to modernize its flavor.

  The reader does not have to agree with the specific notion of improvement fundamental
to Le Monde dans deux mille ans to find some interest in the reminder that the “technology” of economics—whether on an individual level or that of political planning—can and inevitably will be applied in different ways, according to the objective in view. Perhaps there is nothing specific to be learned from the text about possible solutions the world’s current financial crisis, in spite of the fact that some passages will seem strikingly modern to readers used to hearing exactly the same complaints, and the novel’s discussion of the politics of public debt in relation to the imagined financial crisis of 1959 certainly has some echoes of current debates; even if the relevance is slight, however, it is nevertheless interesting to see the financial crises and challenges of the fictitious world analyzed and tackled, if only to gain a better appreciation of the fact that the issues involved are far from new and by no means narrow. It is interesting, too, to see such issues placed in a much broader historical context—which, within the text, extends into the distant past as well as the not-so-distant future. (The figure of two thousand years is, of course, entirely arbitrary; there are inevitably some aspects, unpredictable in 1878, in which the world of 2011 has already seen far greater changes than the world of 3878 glimpsed in the story, although there are other aspects in which it has not changed at all.)

  For these reasons, this translation of Le Monde dans deux mille ans, although devoid of action, melodrama and even of satire, is by no means lacking in interest to contemporary readers. Although it is basically a fictionalized tract, the fictionalization process adds a valuable extra dimension to it. The use of hypnotic “animal magnetism” as a technology of time travel is a mere literary device, but it is not used entirely casually, and the author takes care firmly to distance his notion of the potential range of soul-travel from the notion, broached by Louis-Sébastien Mercier in “Nouvelles de la Lune” (1788)1 and popularized by Camille Flammarion, that disembodied souls would be capable of interplanetary travel. Although his central focus is on economic policy, the author is sufficiently conscientious to pay attention to the wider corollaries of his narrative device, going so far as to include an account of the inevitable end of the world within a general cosmological frame.

  The text also presents, if only indirectly, a puzzle regarding its authorship. Ordinarily, it is possible in introducing a book to say something about its author, but in this particular instance that is awkwardly difficult.

  A search through the references preserved in Google Books readily reveals three Georges Pellerins who were active at the time the book was published. It is highly unlikely, however, that the book was written by Georges Pellerin (1851-1935) the margarine manufacturer of Malaunay, and just as unlikely that it was written by the Georges Pellerin (1856-1918) who worked in and eventually took over the last active imagerie in Épinal. In addition to their alien professional affiliations, both those individuals were surely too young to have written a book in the 1870s that gives every evidence of being the work of a mature individual. The third Georges Pellerin manifest in that record, a lawyer who represented both the Societé des auteurs dramatiques and the Societé des gens de lettres, in association with one Gustave Roger, seems at first glance to be a likelier candidate, but the timespan of his mentions imply that he too was probably too young in the 1870s to be the author of a book like Le Monde dans deux mille ans. Furthermore, one of the most conspicuous absences from the text, in spite of the inclusion of almost every other field of human thought and endeavor, is any mention of contemporary literature; that appears to be a subject of utter and total uninterest to the author of the text.

  That uninterest is also odd when one considers that the signature “Georges Pellerin” can be found on two other near-contemporary volumes of fiction: Le Roman d’un blasé [The Romance of an Unfeeling Man] (1879) and Le Comtesse rouge [The Red Countess] (1883), the latter of which was issued by the same publisher as Le Monde dans deux mille ans. Neither of those texts is available on gallica, but reviews of both of them can be found there in a periodical called Le Livre. The reviews—both scornfully dismissive—do not go into great detail about the contents of the books, but what they do say implies that the works in question are so very different in kind and attitude from Le Monde dans deux mille ans as to make it hard to believe that they are the work of the same author. Le Roman d’un blasé is the story of a bored socialite who adopts a daughter with a view to making her his mistress, but ends up marrying her instead—not at all the kind of book of which the author of Le Monde dans deux mille ans could be expected to approve. Le Comtesse rouge actually contains two stories, and bears two authors’ names, the other being Charles DesLys, a fairly well-known writer best known as a dramatist; the review does not speculate as to whether each story might be by a different author rather than either or both being collaborative, or which author might be responsible for which story if they are not collaborations, but is content to write both off as crude exercises in stereotyped popular fiction.

  The Georges Pellerin credited on Le Roman d’un blasé and Le Comtesse rouge might well have been the Georges Pellerin who represented the principal Parisian literary societies in rights disputes; that author obviously knew Charles DesLys and must also have been a friend of the well-known journalist and popular historian Eugène d’Auriac, who contributed an introduction to Le Roman d’un blasé. Whether those two Georges Pellerins are the same person or not, however, it does not make it any likelier that they or he wrote Le Monde dans deux mille ans, which seems to be very obviously the work of an academic economist, probably a specialist in political economy. Perhaps the choice of “Georges Pellerin” as a by-line on Le Monde dans deux mille ans was merely a coincidence, or perhaps the lawyer and/or novelist actually lent his name to someone who wanted to take extra precautions to hide his identity, but the internal evidence of the text certainly suggests that it is unlikely to have been written by any of the Georges Pellerins who were otherwise manifest at the time.

  If so, who did write it? In all probability, we will never know—but there is one tiny anomaly in the text that might be construed as a clue. The novel’s protagonist is fond of quoting from sources other than contemporary literature, his favorites being Virgil, Blaise Pascal and Aesop, and the author is conscientious in including references for almost all the quotations (although the three from the Bible are all puzzlingly incorrect). There is, however one exception: a quotation from Gustave Dupuynode’s Études d’économie politique sur la proprieté territoriale [Studies in Political Economy in relation to Property in Land] (1843). Dupuynode’s surname is mentioned en passant, but there is no footnote giving a specific reference to the book. Gustave Dupuynode was born in 1817, and would therefore have been much the same age as Monsieur Landet, the protagonist of the story, in 1874—which is the date when the story is notionally set and when the author presumably began to write it. Dupuynode did not die until 1898, and was therefore easily capable of writing a book in the mid-1870s, at which time he probably retired from teaching, and he was an academic economist specializing in political economy. Insofar as can be judged by the references of which snippet views are offered in Google Books, his ideas were fully in agreement with those expressed in Le Monde dans deux mille ans.

  All of that might be pure coincidence. Then again, it might not. Gustave Dupuynode is, at least, a likelier author for Le Monde dans deux mille ans than any of the four (or possibly only three) Georges Pellerins cited above.

  This translation was made from the version of the Dentu text reproduced electronically on the Bibliothèque Nationale’s gallica website. The only difficulty it posed was in relation to the specialist terminology of economic science, which varies markedly between French and English (in that parallel terms cannot be translated as they would be if they were common nouns) as well as over time. I have tried to clarify the meanings in such a way as to make them comprehensible to modern English-language readers without distorting their idiosyncrasy excessively.

  Brian Stableford

  THE WO
RLD IN 2000 YEARS

  Chapter One

  ANIMAL ELECTRICITY

  On Monday, February 12, 1874, the Marquise de Roche-Houdion was receiving visitors at her town house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. A long file of carriages was stationed by the sidewalks from the Place Beauveau to the doors of the house, level with the Rue de Berri. A flood of guests turned up on the steps of the perron as the minutes went by. In the vestibule, two gilt-edged Swiss Guards presented their halberds to the newcomers.

  The Marquise, like all superior women who have doubled the cape of 50, fatigued by the frivolous pleasures of social life, had opened her salon to illustrious figures in politics and literature. When a woman can no longer reign by charm, she reigns by intelligence.

  Did she want to resuscitate the shade of Madame Récamier2 and like her, guide ministerial movements from the depths of her drawing room? That was an indiscretion that the Marquise did not disdain to repeat. People even went so far as too affirm that it was in her house that the fall of the last minister had been decided. Extreme in everything—in love, it was said, as in distractions—after having been crazy about dancing, she could no longer tolerate it on the part of others. The worthy Marquise was a trifle egotistical. In her salon, people talked.

  It was the rendezvous of famous people. Her guests called her house the Hôtel de Rambouillet,3 and by a flattering comparison, nicknamed her the Duchesse de Montausier. It was there that the orators of the future were formed. It was there that the destiny of young authors was in play, and it was necessary that they had proved themselves there before any claim to ability could be admitted.

  The sentences of that court could not be appealed; its infallibility was based on two formidable powers: money and wit. It was, moreover, very difficult to obtain entry into that choice milieu, where the gravest social questions were debated in the guise of jovial conversation. An invitation to the Marquise’s Mondays drew one into the High Life, like a ticket to a première at the Théâtre Français. The postulants were many and the elect few.