Maurice Renard

Maurice Renard (28 February 1875, Châlons-en-Champagne – 18 November 1939, Rochefort-Sur-Mer) was a French writer.

Career

Renard authored the archetypal mad scientist novel Le Docteur Lerne, sous-dieu [Dr. Lerne - Undergod] (1908), which he dedicated to H. G. Wells. In it, a Doctor Moreau-like mad scientist performs organ transplants not only between men and animals, but also between plants and even machines.

Renard's novel, The Blue Peril (Le Péril Bleu, 1910) postulates the existence of unimaginable, invisible creatures who lived in the upper strata of the atmosphere and fish for men the way men captured fish. These aliens, dubbed "Sarvants" by the human scientists who discover them, feel threatened by our incursions into space the way men would be threatened by an invasion of crabs, and retaliate by capturing men, keeping them in a space zoo and studying them. Eventually, when the Sarvants come to the realization that men are intelligent, they release their captives. Le Péril Bleu predates Charles Fort's Book of the Damned (1919) and retains a humanistic and tolerant rather than fearful and xenophobic philosophy.

Renard wrote the novel Les Mains d'Orlac ("The Hands of Orlac", 1920), in which a virtuoso pianist receives the transplanted hands of a murderer and turns into a killer himself. The book has inspired four film versions as The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände, 1924) with Conrad Veidt, Mad Love (1935) with Colin Clive and Peter Lorre, The Hands of Orlac (1960) with Mel Ferrer and Christopher Lee, and Hands of a Stranger (1962) directed by Newt Arnold.