Writing the Anthropocene: J.-H. Rosny aîné, 1911-1912

Abstract

Two novels by J.-H. Rosny aîné published in quick succession (La Guerre du feu, 1911, and La Mort de la terre,  1912), form a diptych that suggests a history of life on earth, from its origins to the extinction of mankind in the distant future. Human beings appear to be responsible for their own demise, in a chronology in which the beginning of the 20th century assumes an importance that is at once indefinite, agonizing and decisive.