Maurice G. Dantec, French science fiction writer and musician, Died at 57

Maurice Georges Dantec was born on June 13, 1959, in Grenoble, France and died on June 25, 2016.

He was a French naturalised Canadian science fiction writer and musician.

Dantec grew up in Ivry-sur-Seine near Paris.

During his time at high school, he met Jean-Bernard Pouy, future author of noir novels such as Le Poulpe.

During the late 1970s, after graduating from college, he put together a band called “État d’urgence” (“State of Emergency”) one of the first French punk acts.

During 1977 the band changed its name to “Artefact”, but kept the punk ideology.

Artefact was a concept-band, mostly influenced by Suicide, Devo, Kraftwerk, Talking Heads and Public Image Limited.

Dantec started writing seriously in the 1990s. His first novel, La Sirène rouge (“The Red Siren”), was published in 1993 as a part of the Série noire collection.

Himself and his family moved to Québec in 1998, where he wrote his third novel Babylon Babies, which further explores the themes of decadence and apocalypse initially developed in Là où tombent les anges.

Babylon Babies was influenced partly by Dantec’s interests in twentieth century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and shamanism.

Dantec’s novel Babylon Babies was to be translated into English by Semio-text(e) in September 2005

His third volume of journal, following Laboratoire de catastrophe générale, was published by Éditions Albin Michel, in 2007.

He served as a writer for the Canadian magazine Égards, a French-speaking and conservative magazine.

His novel Cosmos Inc, was published in August 2005 by his new publishing house Albin Michel and is the first volume of a trilogy.

Maurice G. Dantec passed away at 57 yrs old.