Maurice Georges Dantec
Encyclopedia
Maurice Georges Dantec, or Maurice G. Dantec, (born 1959 in Grenoble
, France
) is a French-born Canadian
science fiction
author and musician.
, France, the son of a journalist
and a seamstress
. He grew up primarily in Ivry-sur-Seine
near Paris
. While still in high school he met Jean-Bernard Pouy, future author of noir
novels such as Le Poulpe, who inspired Dantec to take an interest in noir fiction. In the late 1970s, after graduating from college, Dantec put together a band called "État d'urgence" ("State of Emergency") one of the first French punk
acts. In 1977 the band changed its name to "Artefact" http://artefact.band.free.fr/band.html, but kept the punk ideology
. Artefact is a concept-band, influenced by Suicide
, Devo
, Kraftwerk
, Talking Heads
and Public Image Limited. Dantec invented the concept of "Hard-Muzak" to define the sound of his band, as a mix of Industrial music
and disco
making the band the French equivalent of No-Wave bands from New York, and English ones from the post-punk
. He pursued a career in Artefact (until the band's breakup in 1981) while working as a copywriter in the advertising
industry.
collection. The novel won the 813 award for best crime novel. His second novel, Les Racines du mal ("The Roots of Evil"), appeared in 1995 and borders on cyberpunk
fiction. The novel was successful commercially and was awarded the Prix de l'Imaginaire. His classically cyberpunk novella
Là où tombent les anges ("Where the Angels fall"), appeared the same year, in an extra edition of Le Monde
. He worked with Richard Pinhas and Norman Spinrad
for the group Heldon
, under the project "Schizotrope" for 3 albums, including a North American Tour in 1999.http://cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/pinhas.htmlhttp://www.forcedexposure.com/labels/emma.france.html.
Dantec and his family relocated to Québec
in 1998, where he wrote his third novel Babylon Babies, which further explores the themes of decadence and apocalypse initially developed in Là où tombent les anges. Babylon Babies is influenced partly by Dantec's interests in twentieth century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze
, and shamanism
.
's diary, and especially by Bloy's 1905 Belluaires et porchers ("Gladiators and swineherds"). In his works, Dantec attempts to inventory the nihilism
s of the 20th century. Inspired by Léon Bloy, he draws a cruel portrait of the vanities in the French literary milieu. The diary also mixes Dantec's poetry, criticisms on rock music, essays on literature, technology, genetics
, philosophy and politics. These diaries also explore the author's rising interest in Christianity.
), technology and the post-human, in a new formal approach. With this book Dantec is possibly the first French writer to acknowledge the new era opened by the events surrounding 9/11 in a narrative.
The third volume of his journal, following Laboratoire de catastrophe générale, was to be released in 2005 under the title American Black Box, but his publishing house Flammarion withdrew from the project. The book was published by another publishing house, Éditions Albin Michel
, in 2007.
Dantec writes for the Canadian magazine Égards, a French-speaking and conservative magazine.
The novel Cosmos Inc, was published in August 2005 by his new publishing house Albin Michel and is the first volume of a trilogy.
directed by Olivier Megaton
, was released in August 2002.
A film adaptation of Babylon Babies, the most cyberpunk
of Dantec's novels, has been produced under the direction of Mathieu Kassovitz
as Babylon A.D.
, featuring Vin Diesel
in the role of Thoorop. http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/723/723801p1.html
In May 2006 at the Franco/Irish Literary Festival http://www.francoirishliteraryfestival.com/2006/ he made a bilingual conference "ICH BIN EIN DUBLINER", under the theme "Modern technology, its impact on the way we Live Together" discussing metaphysical and political positions.http://www.surlering.com/article.php/id/5055
In August 2006 Grande Jonction, the second part of his "Christian-Futurism (Christian eschatology)
" trilogy was published by Albin Michel.
Del Rey Books
released an English version of Cosmos Incorporated translated by Tina Kover
in 2008 and an English version of Grande Jonction (Grand Junction) by the same translator in 2009.
Grenoble
Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) is a French-born Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author and musician.
Biography
Dantec was born in GrenobleGrenoble
Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...
, France, the son of a journalist
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
and a seamstress
Sewing
Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era...
. He grew up primarily in Ivry-sur-Seine
Ivry-sur-Seine
Ivry-sur-Seine is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris....
near Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. While still in high school he met Jean-Bernard Pouy, future author of noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
novels such as Le Poulpe, who inspired Dantec to take an interest in noir fiction. In the late 1970s, after graduating from college, Dantec put together a band called "État d'urgence" ("State of Emergency") one of the first French punk
French punk
French punk is punk rock from France. Punk rock developed in France in the mid-1970s, strongly influenced by the scenes in the United States and United Kingdom, but also influencing the latter...
acts. In 1977 the band changed its name to "Artefact" http://artefact.band.free.fr/band.html, but kept the punk ideology
Punk ideology
Punk ideologies are a group of varied social and political beliefs associated with the punk subculture. In its original incarnation, the punk subculture was primarily concerned with concepts such as rebellion, anti-authoritarianism, individualism, free thought and discontent...
. Artefact is a concept-band, influenced by Suicide
Suicide (band)
Suicide is an American electronic protopunk musical duo, intermittently active since 1970 and composed of vocalist Alan Vega and Martin Rev on synthesizers and drum machines. They are an early synthesizer/vocal musical duo....
, Devo
Devo
Devo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...
, Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
, Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
and Public Image Limited. Dantec invented the concept of "Hard-Muzak" to define the sound of his band, as a mix of Industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
and disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
making the band the French equivalent of No-Wave bands from New York, and English ones from the post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
. He pursued a career in Artefact (until the band's breakup in 1981) while working as a copywriter in the advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
industry.
Cyberpunk
Dantec began writing seriously in the 1990s. His first novel, La Sirène rouge ("The Red Siren"), was published in 1993 as a part of the Série noireSérie noire
Série noire is a French publishing imprint, founded in 1945 by Marcel Duhamel. It has released a collection of crime fiction of the hardboiled detective thrillers variety published by Gallimard....
collection. The novel won the 813 award for best crime novel. His second novel, Les Racines du mal ("The Roots of Evil"), appeared in 1995 and borders on cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
fiction. The novel was successful commercially and was awarded the Prix de l'Imaginaire. His classically cyberpunk novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Là où tombent les anges ("Where the Angels fall"), appeared the same year, in an extra edition of Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
. He worked with Richard Pinhas and Norman Spinrad
Norman Spinrad
Norman Richard Spinrad is an American science fiction author.Born in New York City, Spinrad is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco,...
for the group Heldon
Heldon
Heldon is a French electronic rock band created in 1974. The name of the band was taken from the 1972 novel The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad....
, under the project "Schizotrope" for 3 albums, including a North American Tour in 1999.http://cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/pinhas.htmlhttp://www.forcedexposure.com/labels/emma.france.html.
Dantec and his family relocated to Québec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
in 1998, where he wrote his third novel Babylon Babies, which further explores the themes of decadence and apocalypse initially developed in Là où tombent les anges. Babylon Babies is influenced partly by Dantec's interests in twentieth century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
, and shamanism
Shamanism
Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...
.
The polemical writer
Le Théâtre des opérations, journal métaphysique et polémique ("The Operating Theatre, a Metaphysical and Polemical Journal") appeared in 2000, and is a polemical diary. Dantec followed this up in 2001 with Laboratoire de catastrophe générale ("Laboratory of General Catastrophes"). In both of these Dantec was influenced by French novelist and poet Léon BloyLéon Bloy
Léon Bloy , was a French novelist, essayist, pamphleteer and poet.-Biography:Bloy was born in Notre-Dame-de-Sanilhac, in the arondissement of Périgueux, Dordogne. He was the second of six sons of Voltairean freethinker and stern disciplinarian Jean Baptiste Bloy and his wife Anne-Marie Carreau,...
's diary, and especially by Bloy's 1905 Belluaires et porchers ("Gladiators and swineherds"). In his works, Dantec attempts to inventory the nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...
s of the 20th century. Inspired by Léon Bloy, he draws a cruel portrait of the vanities in the French literary milieu. The diary also mixes Dantec's poetry, criticisms on rock music, essays on literature, technology, genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
, philosophy and politics. These diaries also explore the author's rising interest in Christianity.
Christian-Futurism
Villa Vortex - Liber Mundi, I in 2003 opens a trilogy of novels, interconnecting metaphysical research (EsotericismEsotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...
), technology and the post-human, in a new formal approach. With this book Dantec is possibly the first French writer to acknowledge the new era opened by the events surrounding 9/11 in a narrative.
The third volume of his journal, following Laboratoire de catastrophe générale, was to be released in 2005 under the title American Black Box, but his publishing house Flammarion withdrew from the project. The book was published by another publishing house, Éditions Albin Michel
Éditions Albin Michel
Éditions Albin Michel is a French publisher. It was founded in 1911 by Albin Michel.-External links:*...
, in 2007.
Dantec writes for the Canadian magazine Égards, a French-speaking and conservative magazine.
The novel Cosmos Inc, was published in August 2005 by his new publishing house Albin Michel and is the first volume of a trilogy.
Film
The first film adaptation based on the works of Dantec, The Red SirenThe Red Siren
The Red Siren is a 2002 French criminal thriller film based upon the novel by same name by Maurice G. Dantec film directed by Olivier Megaton from a script by Olivier Megaton, Alain Berliner, Norman Spinrad, and Robert Conrath.-Plot:...
directed by Olivier Megaton
Olivier Megaton
Olivier Megaton is a French film director, writer, and editor best known for directing The Red Siren, Transporter 3 and Colombiana.-Early life:...
, was released in August 2002.
A film adaptation of Babylon Babies, the most cyberpunk
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a postmodern and science fiction genre noted for its focus on "high tech and low life." The name is a portmanteau of cybernetics and punk, and was originally coined by Bruce Bethke as the title of his short story "Cyberpunk," published in 1983...
of Dantec's novels, has been produced under the direction of Mathieu Kassovitz
Mathieu Kassovitz
Mathieu Kassovitz is a French director, screenwriter, producer and actor, best known for his Cannes-winning drama La Haine. Kassovitz is also the founder of MNP Entreprise, a film production company....
as Babylon A.D.
Babylon A.D. (film)
Babylon A.D. is a 2008 science fiction action film based on the novel Babylon Babies by Maurice Georges Dantec. The film was directed by Mathieu Kassovitz and stars Vin Diesel, Mélanie Thierry, Michelle Yeoh and Lambert Wilson...
, featuring Vin Diesel
Vin Diesel
Vin Diesel is an American actor, writer, director and producer. He became known in the early 2000s, appearing in several successful Hollywood films, including The Fast and the Furious and xXx...
in the role of Thoorop. http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/723/723801p1.html
Dantec in English
His first novel to be translated into English is Babylon Babies by Semio-text(e) in September 2005.http://www.semiotexte.org/authors/dantec.htmlIn May 2006 at the Franco/Irish Literary Festival http://www.francoirishliteraryfestival.com/2006/ he made a bilingual conference "ICH BIN EIN DUBLINER", under the theme "Modern technology, its impact on the way we Live Together" discussing metaphysical and political positions.http://www.surlering.com/article.php/id/5055
In August 2006 Grande Jonction, the second part of his "Christian-Futurism (Christian eschatology)
Futurism (Christian eschatology)
Futurism is a Christian eschatological view that interprets the Book of Revelation, the Book of Daniel, the Olivet discourse and the parable of the Sheep and the Goats as future events in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context...
" trilogy was published by Albin Michel.
Del Rey Books
Del Rey Books
Del Rey Books is a branch of Ballantine Books, which is owned by Random House and, in turn since 1998, by Bertelsmann AG. It is a separate imprint established in 1977 under the editorship of author Lester del Rey and his wife Judy-Lynn del Rey. It specializes in science fiction and fantasy...
released an English version of Cosmos Incorporated translated by Tina Kover
Tina Kover
Tina Kover is a literary translator. She studied French at the University of Denver and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and attended the Next Level Language Institute in Prague, Czech Republic...
in 2008 and an English version of Grande Jonction (Grand Junction) by the same translator in 2009.
Novels
- La sirène rouge.
- Les racines du mal.
- Babylon BabiesBabylon BabiesBabylon Babies is the third novel by French-born naturalized Canadian writer Maurice G. Dantec, published in 1999. It follows Sirène Rouge and Roots of Evil .-Edition:...
). - Villa Vortex.
- Cosmos Incorporated
- Grande jonction
- Artefact: Machines à écrire 1.0.
- Comme le fantôme d'un jazzman dans la station Mir en deroute
- Metacortex
Collections
- Le théâtre des opérations.
- Dieu porte-t-il des lunettes noires ?.
Essays
- Le théâtre des opérations: journal métaphysique et polémique : 1999.
- Laboratoire de catastrophe générale : Journal métaphysique et polémique 2000-2001.
- American Black Box : Le théâtre des opérations 2002-2006
Short Stories
- Là où tombent les anges (Where Angels fall) published in a supplement of Le MondeLe MondeLe Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
the 21 September 1995 for the 50th anniversary of the collection Série noire.
Music
- Ex-member of the group Artefact
- lyrics and sing in the album UtopiaUtopiaUtopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
from the group No One Is Innocent. - co-creates with Richard Pinhas the musical concept Schizotrope
- Collaboration with the group Dead Sexy Inc
External links
- mauricedantec.com Official website of the author (French)
- English publishing house
- http://www.surlering.com/article.php/id/5055