“Normand Baillargeon, the novelist, offers us some answers to the questions that we ask ourselves too little. Through the imaginary, he shakes up the real. Through fiction, he reminds us of some of the most uncomfortable truths,” announces David Goudreault in the preface to the first collection of short stories, of which only three of the eight are unpublished, from the chronicler of the To have to. Nice program in perspective, right? Just know that if you are expecting apocalyptic stories, you may be left hungry.
Admittedly, the author easily flirts, although he does not escape the tunes of déjà vu, with science fiction, and sends us into dystopian universes to tell us about the imminent climatic catastrophes (“A smile”) and the limits of artificial intelligence (“Crispr-Cas9”). He also cruelly mocks our addiction to technology: “His watch gave this mania a new springboard from which to soar towards better health. He consulted her constantly, obsessed with reaching his ten thousand paces. ” (” The watch “)
The ends of the worlds promised by the philosopher, and this is where we can better appreciate his talents as a storyteller and his originality, refer us to historical moments, known, unknown or fantasized, where it is a question of death, the end of an era, of a movement.
Thus we are witnessing the last breath of the philosopher Blaise Pascal: “Blaise looked at his hand, in which he thinks he holds his precious document. His hand is empty. The letter remained in his bed. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t know, but it’s for the very last time. » (« Hunger for life ») Or we accompany the anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre in a pivotal moment of his eventful existence: « I imagine another monument, in addition to the first. I see people from all over coming to meditate there. I see millions of workers marching in May in the streets of the whole world, continuing our fight and remembering ours and who knows, of me, had little…” (“The menacing whisper of fate”)
Despite the different genres and eras that the author explores, Ends of worlds turns out to be a fascinating philosophy course with a solid coherence, broken down into short lessons as singular as they are puzzling.