Louis Boussenard's two most memorable novels were The Secrets of
Monsieur Synthesis (1888) and its sequel, Ten Thousand Years in a Block
of Ice (1889). In the former, we are introduced to the title character,
the eponymous "Monsieur Synthesis," a mad scientist who seeks to control
the evolution of Man and modify the orbit of the Earth. In the second
volume, Monsieur Synthesis wakes up from ten thousand years of
hibernation in a future where Earth is now inhabited by the Cerebrals,
little men gifted with huge mental powers, descended from the Chinese
and the Africans. Monsieur Synthesis remains an intriguing transitional
link between the kind of exotic roman scientifique that Verne had just
created and the kind that was about to be pioneered by H. G. Wells --
the eponymous character's attempt to play god by employing a method of
accelerated evolution to produce a perfected human being being quite
close in its imaginative spirit to Wells. Boussenard's depiction of
future human evolution is more ambitious than anything that had
previously been attempted in French literature.