(...) [in 1966, I'd been] writing science fiction in my closet for a
year, ever since the Big Meaningful Dream from which had sprung,
almost fully-dressed, a galoping, multi-generational science fiction
saga which would become the five books of my series Tyranaël more
than thirty years later. It was a very simple dream. In the daily
diary I kept that last year at home and dropped after a few months at
the university, utterly bored and depressed by my so-called real
life, I wrote only two lines about this dream, and to this day I have
no recollection of its images : words are all that are left of it. "A
huge planet, entirely covered twice a year by a universal tide,
during a universal eclipse, but nobody dies."
Though my journal says nothing of that dream afterwards and I don't
remember exactly how things evolved from there, I very soon had a
canvas of stand-alone but interlinked stories all contributing to an
overarching storyline - from the very beginning, I thought big. I
began to draw maps and invent various languages, creatures,
societies, and two whole planets. The entire story was there from the
beginning. Details changed over time, of course, as I came to
understand more and more about it, myself and the craft of writing.
Of the two thousand pages I wrote and rewrote obsessively for ten
years, only two hundred have passed without modifications from one
draft to the next. But the basic impulse never changed, the original
design, the original need. And in some way, everything I have written
since (and will ever write, I am beginning to suspect), is inscribed
in that ur-story. (...)
The long-awaited English translation, by Élisabeth Vonarburg and
Howard Scott, of Les Rêves de la Mer, the first book of five in
the Tyranaël series, which received the Grand Prix de la
science-fiction et du fantastique québécois
(Canada), and the
Babet d'Or of the Saint-Étienne Book Fair (France) in 1997.
As the twin planets of Altaïr eclipse each other, a dangerous and
mysterious blue Sea rises, killing most of the explorers from Earth.
The survivors must make a new life amid the abandoned cities of the
long-vanished native population, curiouslyintact. Or are the
colonists just a nightmare of the aïlmâdzi, the native Dreamers ?
So begins the epic of the planet Tyranaël : an adventure, a lyric
journey through time, and a search for answers, each of which is more
strange and wonderful than the last.
Although the Terrans have been settled on
Virginia for two centuries, the indigenous
animals still flee from them as if they had the
plague. So how come Eric and his friends, in
their small travelling circus, are able to put on
extraordinary shows with kitdogs, scent-birds and
even unicorns ? What is their secret ?
Old Simon Rossem does know : he's been protecting
these children of the mutation he has himself
undergone with his family — a long time ago. For
Simon is living his second life, and soon his
third. Each time he dies, he seems to come back,
a young man in an apparently old body. Was he
really dead ? Or is he indeed ressuscitated, and
if so, by who ?
As the "new ones" try to take hold of their
future by proclaiming Virginia's independence,
Simon turns to the past : the reason for his
puzzling longevity, and for all the other
mutations that keep on developing on Virginia,
might be found in the memory plates of the
Ancients, the mysteriously disappeared natives of
the planet.
But at the Ancient game of Perfection, who wins, and who loses ?
The inhabitants of Virginia have not had contact with Earth for centuries. In the cities and the villages of the main continent, a new order reigns, along with a seeming peace.
This does not in any way preclude the existence of ghettos for "stone-heads", descendants of the Earthmen who came to try and reconquer the planet a long time ago.
Mathieu, believing himself to be one of them, escaped from a school where he was kept imprisoned and drugged. Pretending to be amnesiac, he successfully finds his place in this Virginian society where he hopes to understand why he was treated thus.
His obstinate quest will bring him to take sides in the secret war that has been opposing two mutant factions for centuries: the "Greys" and the "Rebbims", and, more importantly, to discover the bridge leading the world of the Ancients...
Since Mathieu crossed into the world of the Ancients two centuries ago, many Virginians have followed him. But, if the two races of humans and Ancients have been able
to cross-breed, their descendants have lost their psychic abilities as time passed.
This is the case for young Lian--which drives his mother to despair: for a Rani, there is no worse fate than to be excluded forever from the Sea.
For Lian himself, though, the misfortune isn't that--but rather to feel himself utterly excluded from a society he loves above all else. Would he find his place on the other side, on Virginia?
But the passage between both worlds, until now, has only happened in one direction...
After centuries of strife, peace has at last come to Virgina, and, thanks to the Sea, it now possible to communicate with Atyrkelsaõ and the Ancients.
Granddaughter of a ferryman come from the Other Side, Taïriel has never shown any psychic power, and plans to go in exile on the Lagrange space station. A brief dalliance with Samuel, a telepath with a mysterious past,
will, however, shatter her plans for the future.
Who is Samuel? What is the relationship between him and Ktulhudar, the legendary Ancient demi-god? And why does Taïriel have those "absences", those lucid dreams that leave her drained of strength, and horrified by her wild visions?
"The Sea Gone with the Sun": the ultimate answer to all the enigma, and the surprising conclusion to the grandiose saga of Tyranaël.
