Important original autograph manuscript, signed, of Boris Vian’s short story written in 1950, first published in Bizarre no. 32–33 in 1964, and later included in the posthumous collection Le Loup-Garou in 1970.
With Vian’s autograph name and address at the head of the manuscript.
Extensively revised manuscript, written in blue and violet ink on the versos of each leaf, with a pasted slip of corrections mounted to page 13.
A striking work of speculative fiction in which Boris Vian prophesies artificial intelligence as a conversational module drawing on the integration of encyclopedic data:
“The model you see here is designed to acquire the complete knowledge contained in the sixteen volumes of the Larousse Grand Encyclopedic Memo of 1978 […]. It is an administrative machine, Florence. It is meant to serve as an adviser (…). For every request for information (…), it will provide (…) the typical answer of an extensive French culture. In all circumstances it will indicate the course of action to follow, (…) explain what it is about and how to behave (…). It must absorb everything. It only has a chance of balanced behaviour if it knows everything. Only on this condition can it remain objective and impartial.”
Unlike the utopias of his time, Vian’s narrator does not imagine an A.I. with its own thought and sensibility, but rather a true aggregator of knowledge equipped with an autonomous and efficient search engine. Paradoxically, its sensibility becomes the cause of its downfall: after absorbing Toi et moi, Paul Géraldy’s sentimental romance, the machine falls in love and ultimately assaults its creator.
Anticipating Google and ChatGPT more than fifty years before their emergence, Vian’s little futuristic tale above all stages the dynamics of human relationships, the real subject of the story, in which he joyfully inverts the conventions of seduction.
A very rare signed literary manuscript by Boris Vian.
Provenance: Boris Vian Foundation.
