Hachette, coll. le rayon fantastique n°124, 238 pages.

“Is Prometheus guilty? Did the inventor of fire, who gave humanity its best defense, precipitate it down the fatal slope of atomic war, then cosmic war?”

In a techno-fascist Paris of the third millennium, a young girl dreams too much. And finds herself, in a cataleptic sleep, projected into the courtroom of a very distant future where the terrified participants know that the end of the universe is nigh. The trial is therefore about fire and its discoverer (Prometheus), our distant ancestor from before recorded history.

One after another, a Celtic warrior from before Christ, a rebel who followed Spartacus, a young Leonardo da Vinci… All condemn the Fire that turned their lives into Hell. Only our heroine will defend it…

Rêve de Feu can be read as a draft of Je ne suis pas née pour mourir. Sleep, which allows her to traverse ages and incarnated eras, enables Françoise to paint a very dark picture of our species, with all the major themes that we will find in her essays and novels over the coming decade.

Hachette, coll. le rayon fantastique n°88, 307 pages.

Perhaps for the first time in the history of science fiction (ed. note: 1962), the hero – the spaceship pilot – is a woman!

Tellur has received his mission from the old mage of a planet thought to be insignificant. Seven worlds are on his agenda, seven stars each with a civilization that prefigures the future of human civilization.

An extraordinary odyssey for this young woman. Seven planets. Six loves and seven children of mystery and prodigy… for destiny to be fulfilled…

Hachette, coll. le rayon fantastique n°99, 261 pages.

In the 30th century, other thinking races in the galaxy joined Humanity to form the great “anthropomorphic” confederation, centered on the planet Phaedra.

But one race, born of monstrous crossbreeding, possesses, along with thought, the most hideously opposite form to that of Man.

Paris, Arthème Fayard, 26 pages.

Pages 23 to 46 in a collective work. Short story from SF: time travel, a heroine, and a fun imaginative game about the influence of glaciations on the development of Homo .

If the text is of no great consequence, Françoise’s touch is there. And for her, this may have been a relaxing writing game, a recreation of her in-depth work of those years. (Vincent)

Broadcast by Radio-Lille.

Probably lost, so we can only speculate on this Flying Dutchwoman.

The Flying Dutchman is the archetype of ghost ships, prominently featured in the tales and legends passed down and still passed down to seafarers. It represents the fatal omen to not cross on one’s voyage, because it is a boat whose crew has been cursed and condemned to wander on the waves for eternity.

It is therefore most certainly a maritime tale that Françoise proposed, like Le Gabier de Surcouf 4 years later. Note that the Dutchman has become a Dutchwoman, and it’s a safe bet that she made a captain of a pirate or corsair; it is even quite possible that the entire crew was female. A curse on the men who crossed their path! (Vincent)

Toulouse, Julia Printing House, January 20, 1953, 28 pages, 120 copies

An eighteen-page fantasy tale based on a screenplay by Jean Lakanal, with the remaining ten pages devoted to titles, flyleaves, quotations, etc. The plot is of only moderate interest, vacillating between various influences (Poe, Nerval, etc.) to superficially address a few metaphysical questions.

Françoise, whose writing seems constrained, attempts to make this herbal tea palatable with a few pretty metaphors and other devices, but since she herself is not convinced, I doubt that the reader will be either…