Léon Groc
Léon Groc was a French journalist and author born in 1882, known for his contributions to the genre of science fiction as well as romantic and historical fiction. Throughout his career, he worked for several notable publications, including L'Intransigent, La Journée industrielle, Le Petit Parisien, and Figaro. Groc began his literary journey by writing popular thrillers that drew inspiration from contemporaries like Gaston Leroux, yet he distinguished himself by incorporating science-fiction elements, influenced by Maurice Renard. His works often featured exotic themes and parapsychological concepts, with one of his significant contributions being the serial "La révolte des pierres" (1930), which explored life on the moon through a radioactive lens.
Groc's most prominent science-fiction novel, "Le Planète de cristal" (1944), introduces a second, nearly invisible moon inhabited by two-dimensional beings. He also addressed contemporary issues in his writings, such as the atomic age, exemplified in his 1947 journalistic work "La Course a la bombe atomique." Later in his life, he collaborated with his wife, Jacqueline Zorn, on works like "L'Univers vagabond," which focused on a generation starship journeying to Alpha Centauri. Groc passed away in 1956, just as French science fiction was starting to gain literary recognition, leaving behind a legacy as a pioneering figure in the genre.
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Léon Groc
Writer
- Born: 1882
- Died: 1956
Biography
Léon Groc was born in 1882. He was a career journalist who worked for L’Intransigent, La Journée industrielle, and Le Petit parisien between the wars, and for Figaro after Word War II. He also wrote popular thrillers, initially in a vein similar to that of the very popular Gaston Leroux. Like Leroux’s works, the most interesting of Groc’s pieces are embellished by highly exotic themes, but where Leroux preferred supernatural devices, Groc followed Maurice Renard’s example in developing science-fiction ideas in a blithely flamboyant spirit. He also dabbled in romantic fiction and historical fiction, but it is his science fiction that entitles him to consideration as a literary pioneer.
Groc was a significant early developer of parapsychological themes that had a science-fictional sensibility. His fascination with these themes was carried forward in the serial “La révolte des pierres” (1930; reprinted as Une Invasion des Sélénites), which features radioactive mineral life on the moon. He wrote other feuilleton serials that were not reprinted or, like “On a volé la Tour Eiffel”—first published in 1920—only reached book publication at a much later date. “On a voleé la Tour Eiffel” involves a plot in which a modern alchemist attempts to transform the famous monument into gold, and so the delay in publication was immaterial, but in instances that dealt with newly fashionable ideas, the delay could make the book versions seem a trifle belated.
Groc’s most notable science-fiction novel, Le Planète de cristal (1944), features a second moon, usually invisible to Earthly observers because of its transparency, which proves to be home to two-dimensional beings. In the wake of Hiroshima he celebrated the prescience of his early atomic fantasies with a journalistic account of La Course a la bombe atomique in 1947. Two of his later novels were written in collaboration with his wife, Jacqueline Zorn, including L’Univers vagabond. This book is about a generation starship’s pioneering expedition to Alpha Centauri and is one of his most-notable efforts in this line, perhaps because it was composed with slightly less haste than many of his earlier pieces. Groc died in 1956, before native French science fiction began its slow progress towards literary respectability.