Henri René Guieu

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Henri René Guieu (March 19, 1926 - January 2, 2000) was a French science fiction writer who wrote primarily under the pseudonym Jimmy Guieu He occasionally used other pseudonyms as well, including Claude Vauzière for a young adult imprint, Jimmy G. Quint for a number of espionage novels and Dominique Verseau for a trilogy of erotic novels.

[edit] Overview

Of all the authors published by Fleuve Noir’s Anticipation science fiction imprint, Jimmy Guieu was, without a doubt, the one who achieved the most surprising commercial success.

His first novel, Le Pionnier de l'Atome [The Pioneer Of The Atom] (1952), dealt with the classic theme of a journey into the microcosmos through psychic powers. With his second novel, Au-delà de l'Infini [Beyond Infinity] (1952), Guieu introduced the character of American biologist Jerry Barclay and reversed the theme. This time, it was our universe that was a microcosmos contained within the knee of a beautiful woman from a macrocosmos. Guieu continued the Jerry Barclay series for three more books.

With La Dimension X [Dimension X] (1953) and Nous les Martiens [We The Martians] (1954), Guieu introduced a new hero: archeologist Jean Kariven. In the Kariven series, Guieu began to explore his favorite themes such as UFOs, close encounters, Erich Von Daniken-like theories of ancient astronauts, secret societies, lost civilizations and occult conspiracies. Throughout, he sprinkled his novels with footnotes claiming that the various facts upon which he was basing his tales were indeed “authentic”. In Nous les Martiens [We The Martians], Kariven discovers that, in the far distant past, men had emigrated to Earth from Mars. Eight more Kariven novels followed, often pitting good aliens from Polaris versus evil aliens from Deneb with Earth secretly caught in the middle. Univers Parallèles [Parallel Universes] featured a crossover with Jerry Barclay.

Guieu continued to exploit his UFO and occult vein with increasing success. After the Kariven series, he penned a number of non-connected novels, except for two that featured a team of American investigative reporters, Ericksson and Wendell: Les Monstres du Néant [The Monsters From The Void] (1956) and Les Êtres de Feu [The Beings Of Fire] (1956).

He also wrote two successful non-fiction books about UFOs, Les Soucoupes Volantes viennent d’un Autre Monde [The Flying Saucers Come From Another World] and Black-Out sur les Soucoupes Volantes [Black-Out On The Flying Saucers], the latter prefaced by Jean Cocteau, and by the 1970s, had become a major French figure in French UFO circles.

Simultaneously, Guieu began to chronicle the exploits of two daring space traders, Blade and Baker. The series began with Les Forbans de l’Espace [The Space Pirates] (1963).

In 1967, with Le Retour des Dieux [The Return Of The Gods], Guieu revamped the Kariven character into that of journalist Gilles Novak who, with the help of his girl-friend Régine Véran, and various friends and allies, often real-life friends of Guieu or thinly-disguised real-life figures, fought against would-be tyrants, communists, terrorists, drug cartels and various alien menaces. Novak was helped in his battles by Michael Merkavim, the head of a new, powerful Order of Knights Templar, equipped with futuristic weapons and based in a parallel universe. Merkavim was introduced in Les Sept Sceaux du Cosmos [The Seven Seals Of The Cosmos] (1968) and L'Ordre Vert [The Green Order] (1969). It was later spun-off as the Les Chevaliers de Lumière [The Knights of Light] sub-series.

Due to the growth in popularity of his novels, Guieu was granted his own imprint in 1979. At first, it reprinted rewritten, updated versions of his original novels, then it began publishing a series of sharecropping novels, featuring Gilles Novak, Blade and Baker, Jean Kariven, etc., written by other writers, mostly Roland C. Wagner, but also Philippe Randa, Nicolas Gauthier and Laurent Genefort.