Le Temple du passé by Stefan Wul

Le Temple du passé Reviews

• 
  Ed Erwin

  I enjoy reading contemporary French SF, and like to occasionally dip into earlier works to see what they were like. Stefan Wul is best known to me as the author of books that were made into the animated films "Fantastic Planet" and "Time Masters". There is good material in this book that could have served as the basis for a film just as weird and wonderful as those. But as a book, it is not as engaging.
  
  Some spacemen from earth find themselves in a badly crashed rocket and gradually figure out where they are and try to save themselves. To accept the way they try to take control of the situation, it is necessary to suspend disbelief a bit too much. It is almost as if they say: "If we reverse the polarity on this toaster oven we can create a nuclear reactor that we can attach to this goldfish and it can swim us through space." (That is parody. I don't want to give away what they really do.) Even though the book sets you up for a twist ending, the actual twist ending is even weirder than you'd expect, and causes you to re-contextualize everything that came before.
  
  I liked it well enough that I think I may try some of his other books later.