Le Docteur Lerne, sous-dieu

Inspiré par L’Île du docteur Moreau de H. G. Wells Maurice Renard introduit en particulier une variante forte : le narrateur lui-même se trouve l’objet d’une expérience de greffe par un chirurgien fou, le docteur Lerne.

Maurice Renard was born on February 28, 1875, in Ch lons-en-Champagne to parents whose names are not widely recorded in available biographical sources. Renard developed a reputation as a pioneering French writer of speculative and science-based fiction. His literary career gained momentum with the publication of Le Docteur Lerne, sous-dieu in 1908, a novel influenced by H.G. Wells that explored themes of transplant surgery, including grafts between humans, animals, and even machines. Renard s fascination with the philosophical boundaries of science continued in Le P ril Bleu (1910), which imagined invisible extraterrestrials studying humans like specimens. He went on to write Les Mains d'Orlac (1920), in which a pianist receives the hands of a murderer, blending horror with psychological tension. His works such as L'Homme Truqu and Le Singe explored artificial senses and synthetic life. Renard also tackled miniaturization in Un Homme chez les Microbes: Scherzo and toyed with temporal physics in Le Ma tre de la Lumi re. He often challenged popular scientific concepts with creative twists, offering early critiques of invisibility and cloning. His novels reflect a blend of imagination and inquiry into the ethics and consequences of science. He died in Rochefort-sur-Mer on November 18, 1939.