This science fiction novel by Pierre Raufast has everything of a philosophical tale: the author questions our relationship to science and technology in a novel served by generous writing and a sense of the marvellous.
” There you go, Tom, we hold the record for furthest open beer from Earth. It is with this unexpected incipit that Pierre Raufast (Habemus Piratam) takes us to 2173, at the other end of the Universe, in search of antimatter. The latter has become the potential Holy Grail to find a way out of the progress of humanity, after a succession of climatic disasters on Earth. The tragedy of the orca is the first volume of a saga, the Baryonic Trilogy, published in March 2023 at the Forges de Vulcain. And it’s also the French author’s first excursion into a very specific genre: hard SF.
Everything is in the expression: by “hard”, we must understand a literary genre particularly anchored in the so-called “hard” sciences, with the reinforcement of solidly detailed explanations (realistic or extrapolated) on science and technology. This is where Pierre Raufast fits in, without however falling into the sometimes high-sounding or cold faults of the genre. Although The tragedy of the orca is not denied explanatory scenes where you have to cling a little, the author does not exhaust us unduly, not forgetting the essential: to make his characters exist humanly.
Rather, he plays with the codes of the genre to take us, in a completely fascinating way, into the throes of astrophysics, environmental sciences or even artificial intelligence. The tragedy of the orca adds a certain sense of the marvelous to descriptions and stakes. Reading is then transformed above all into the pleasure of exploration, alongside (among others) space-time miners who — traveling through wormholes — will face a catastrophe with unintended consequences.
Philosophy of science and technology… at the other end of the galaxy
With simple language, wildly endearing characters and plenty of humor, The tragedy of the orca paradoxically has the characteristics of a comedy. We would even imagine that the title of the book was chosen not without a certain art of malice (and the cover which seems to smile at us pareidolia does not deceive us either). Let us not content ourselves, however, with seeing only a humorous fable in The tragedy of the orca. Pierre Raufast delivers a deeply philosophical science fiction novel behind its apparent lightness. Isn’t that, after all, the definition of a tale?
“When you cross a wormhole, there at least, you are all alone. Cuddly. »
The tragedy of the killer whale, Pierre Raufast (excerpt)
The tragedy of the orca is a dialogue, a discussion. Between the characters, of course. Between the novel and its readers, even more. Because if the story has a well-paced plot, it is above all the common thread of questions about science and technology. The word “science” in “science fiction” takes on its full meaning here: here is a novel that constantly questions, and very frontally, our relationship to AI or natural resources, to the sociopolitical implications of a technoscientific humanity. And as this is only the first volume of a trilogy, we can reasonably think that this exploration will continue – the ecological aspects, perhaps also exobiological, could for example be deepened there.
Pierre Raufast often advances in the answers to the questions he asks; we feel that the author himself is advanced in his journey, where we would sometimes like the story to respond more naturally. Fortunately, our field of freedom as a reader remains vast, because if there is one thing that characterizes Pierre Raufast, it is that he does not hide his pleasure in writing – he has fun with We ! Pierre Raufast has, ultimately, a generous writing, and his characters are all the more alive.
From this generosity also stems a peaceful science fiction. The narrative itself is certainly not strictly speaking optimistic. It is full of narrative tensions, of course, and issues, issues. But this is not dark futuristic literature. There is no leaden screed, no defeatism, no desire to hit us with prefabricated worries about our common future. A simple curious desire to explore, through literature, what science and technology change for us. And if that means discussing it over a beer on the other side of the galaxy, why refuse this invitation?
The Orc Tragedy – The Baryonic Trilogy 1/3, Pierre Raufast, Les Forges de Vulcain, 368 p., March 3, 2023
Do you want to know everything about the mobility of tomorrow, from electric cars to pedelecs? Subscribe now to our Watt Else newsletter!
Some links in this article are affiliate. We’ll explaine everything here.