Maurice Georges Dantec

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Maurice Georges Dantec, or Maurice G. Dantec, (born 1959) is a French science fiction author.

Contents

[edit] Biography

He was born in Grenoble, France, the son child 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 his youth, he was a devoted reader of Nietzsche who became an important influence on his work.

[edit] Conceptual Rock artist

In the late 1970s, having graduated from college, he began university studies in the humanities but quickly dropped out to put together a rock band called État d'urgence ("State of Emergency") one of the first French-punk act. After the end of 1977, and the end of the Punk-Rock movement, the band's name merges into "Artefact" [1], keeping the Punk Ideology, it is a concept-band, influenced by Suicide, Devo, Kraftwerk, Talking Heads. Maurice Georges Dantec inventes the concept of "Hard-Muzak" to define the sound of the band, a mix of Industrial and weird disco. He pursued a career in Artefact (until the band splits in 1981) while working as a copywriter in the advertising industry.

[edit] Cyperpunk

He only began writing seriously at the beginning of the 1990s. His first novel, La sirène rouge ("Red Siren"), was published in 1993 as a part of the Série noire collection. The novel won the 813 award for best crime novel. Dantec's second novel, Les racines du mal ("The Root of Evil"), appeared in 1995 and borders on cyberpunk fiction. The novel was quite 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 works with Richard Pinhas and Norman Spinrad for the group Heldon, under the project "Schizotrope" for 3 albums, including a North American Tour in 1999.[2][3].

Dantec and his family relocated to Québec in 1998, where he wrote his third novel Babylon Babies, which further explores themes of decadence and apocalypse from Là où tombent les anges."Babylon Babies" showed an exacerbate fascination for Deleuze, and as well for shamanism. The structure of the novel is built according to 2 narrative spirals interweaving together. [4]

[edit] 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"). He is influenced by Leon Bloy's diary, and especially "Belluaires et porchers (1905) ("Gladiators and swineherds") ". These books are an inventory of the nihilisms of the 20th century. Inspired by Leon Bloy, he draws a very accurate and cruel portrait of the vanities in the French literary milieu. The diary is also mixing poetry, rock critics, essays on literature, technology, genetic, philosophy and politic. Most of all these two diaries are the testimony of the author's blooming faith and fascination for Christianity.

The events around 9/11 are the starting point for casual polemical interventions on the web. Dantec strongly stated his position as a conservative writer with many texts published in avant-garde websites: "la Spirale".[5] "Subersiv.com" [6] Cancer! [7] [8] "!No Pasaran!" [9] and until 2006 on the website "Sur le Ring"[10].

[edit] Warzone strategies

Many of Dantec's readers are disappointed by his fascination with and use of drugs, which was already apparent in La sirène rouge. This disappointment has grown in some cases into rejection by his fans, especially since he was repudiated in the leftists media for his open debate with the nationalists from a web-site (le bloc identitaire). By opening a debate about his zionist and Pro-Nato, but anti-Islamist position, which is not shared by the French Far Right, Dantec has put himself into a political frame often misunderstood by the French intelligentsia. Indeed he openly favors and promotes a new iconoclastic vision as 'Christian-Futurism', in war with the nihilism of the 21st Century, including the French leftists, the French-conservative Right of Jacques Chirac and above all, Islamism.

These positions have to be put in the perspective of Dantec's fascination for rock legends, early christianity and his commitment to his art. He sometimes sees himself as a rock-writer, free from the boundaries of his public. Secondly his faith has put him in an odd position in the very secular France of the 20th century. Thirdly he has stated several time the need for him to make literature a hard initiation, a 'mountain climbing lesson in literature' [11]. Some cynical would say he is just crafting his work with provocations and strategical moves, an attitude to be related with his previous commitment as a conceptual rock artist.

[edit] Fathers and Allied

Most of all it is the cross boundaries of his influences that are frightening his readers, spanning from Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor of the Church, Günther Anders, Friedrich Nietzsche, Theodor W. Adorno, Gilles Deleuze, Léon Bloy, Joseph de Maistre, James Ellroy, William S. Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Philip K. Dick, Wilhelm Reich, Grant Morrison, Victor Pelevin and many others. Indirect links would be with Paul Virilio for the Christian and warefare fascination and Philip Rieff as a Christian critic on contemporary nihilism My Life Among The Deathworks.

[edit] The Christian-Futurism

Villa Vortex - Liber Mundi, I in 2003 opens a trilogy of novels, interconnecting metaphysical research (Esotericism), 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 9/11 in a narrative.

The third volume of his polemical 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 following the polemical events of the 'Bloc Identitaire'. The book would be published nevertheless by another publishing house Éditions Albin Michel (same as Michel Houellebecq his close friend) in 2006.

Dantec, in Canada writes in the 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.

[edit] Film

The first film adaptation based on the works of Dantec, La sirène rouge directed by Olivier Megaton, was released in August 2002. A film adaptation of Babylon Babies, the most cyberpunk of Dantec's novels, is currently in production under the direction of Mathieu Kassovitz under the name of "Babylon AD", featuring Vin Diesel in the role of Thoorop. [12]

[edit] The North American assault

The 13th of July 2005, he is interviewed by Serge Lukasiewicz from the Jerusalem Post (French edition) [13]. One of his quote becomes famous on the blogosphere "Dantec speaking about leftist journalists "... who think that every suicide bomber who blows himself up in a Tel-Aviv disco is a pop icon, while serving up K-rations of their pacifism with every line they force feed us."

His first novel to be translated in English is Babylon Babies by Semio-text(e) (source : [14]) in September 1, 2005.

In May 2006 at the Franco/Irish Literary Festival [15] he made a bilingual conference "ICH BIN EIN DUBLINER", under the theme "Modern technology, its impact on the way we Live Together" stressing out his metaphysical and political positions. [16]

The 23rd of August 2006 Grande Jonction the second part of his "Christian-Futurism (Christian eschatology)" trilogy is published by Albin Michel.

[edit] Work

[edit] Music

  • Ex-member of the group Artefact
  • lyrics and sing in the album Utopia from the group No One Is Innocent.
  • co-creates with Richard Pinhas the musical concept Schizotrope
  • Collaboration with the group Dead Sexy Inc

[edit] External links

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