de Pawlowski, Gaston
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1874-1933) French publisher and author active from 1894, much of his early work being humorous, and many of his early short pieces being spoof descriptions of impossible or unlikely Inventions. Of greater sf interest is Voyage au pays de la quatrième dimension (1912; exp 1923; trans Brian Stableford as Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension 2009), a complex, episodic Future History, on lines that anticipate Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930); the disjunctive narrative touches upon a range of eras, including one known as Leviathan, when humanity has been absorbed into something resembling a Hive Mind, climaxing in the Age of the Golden Eagle, when the fourth Dimension is accessible both aesthetically and as a usable understanding of the physical world. Supermen, sometimes short-lived, are frequently found throughout, as are miracles of science. The first edition tends to the exorbitant, aerates the depicted future; the second edition, which Stableford translates, darkens that vision, almost certainly because World War One intervened. [JC]
Gaston William Adam Pawlowski
born Joigny, France: 14 June 1874
died Paris: 2 February 1933
works
- Voyage au pays de la quatrième dimension (Paris: Fasquelle, 1912) [hb/]
- Voyage au pays de la quatrième dimension (Paris: Fasquelle, 1923) [exp of the above: illus/Léonard Sarluis: hb/]
- Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension (Encino, California: Hollywood Comics/Black Coat Press, 2009) [trans by Brian Stableford of the above: pb/Bruno B Bordier]
- Voyage au pays de la quatrième dimension (Paris: Fasquelle, 1923) [exp of the above: illus/Léonard Sarluis: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry