Overview
Jacques Sternberg straddled the line between the fantastique and science fiction, which he stated was only a subset of the former in a notorious essay, Une Succursale du Fantastique nommée Science-Fiction, published in 1958.
In Sternberg's works, the causes of terror are not ghosts or vampires but the modern-day city, often depicted as a giant, evil entity, ready to crush the hapless humans who dare live within its body. This theme reappears in novels such as L'Employé (1958), L'Architecte (1960) and La Banlieue (1976).
Sternberg’s short stories, collected in La Géométrie dans l'Impossible (1953), La Géométrie dans la Terreur (1958), Contes Glacés (1974) and Contes Griffus (1993), to name but a few, successfully mix several diverse elements: a very dark sense of Surreal humor, a kafkaesque notion of the absurd, a taste for the macabre, and finally, a somber, pessimistic vision of the world and the future. In Sternberg’s fiction, love is never a source of redemption, but something impossible, almost alien, as in Sophie, la Mer, la Nuit (1976) and Le Navigateur (1977).
Sternberg’s science fiction stories followed the same absurdist tradition and were gathered in various collections such as Entre Deux Mondes Incertains (1957), Univers Zéro (1970) and Futurs sans Avenir (1971). Themes included aliens misguidedly posing as African-Americans to invade America, the 533rd crucifixion of Jesus, the casual destruction of Earth by aliens who cannot understand humanity, etc. Sternberg’s stories anticipate the experimental texts of the New Wave and the humor of Douglas Adams.
Sternberg's novels exhibit the same dark, misanthropic characteristics, minus the humor. Attention, Planète Habitée (1969) follows the same, merciless logic.
Sternberg also wrote for film director Alain Resnais, penning the script of his 1968 surreal time travel feature, Je t'aime, Je t'aime.
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