Pulps Puppets / A Scene of the House of Beyond
Hélène Cruciani is a science fiction short story writer and novelist with a scientific background. Her stories range from near future on Earth to distant adventures on colourful exoplanets. In all her works, she pays special attention to her characters, both human and extraterrestrial. Her sources of inspiration are diverse, reflecting her varied experiences as an engineer, actress, stage director, and puppeteer, and include themes such as motherhood, brain manipulation, September 11, 2001, or encounters with other forms of life. Her latest novel, Dissonances on Gaïta, was released at the end of 2022 by Rivière Blanche (Francophone collection of the American publishing house Black Coat Press).
For more information, see Hélène’s Facebook page.
Her exhibition “Pulps Puppets / A Scene of the House of Beyond” is her first one as a puppeteer. It pays a double tribute to the pulps and other science fiction magazines whose vitality and success enriched the golden age and the years that followed it. Firstly, about a hundred issues, faithfully reproduced, line up in the puppets’ mini library, copies of the most famous titles such as Astounding Stories, Galaxy, Amazing Stories* and Weird Tales. Secondly, nine effigy puppets are standing on the stage, dressed with dozens of authentic pages from these magazines. Neither portraits nor caricatures but simple evocative figures, these puppets rove between flesh and paper, bodies and passions, history and imagination. They also, of course, pay homage to missing science fiction writers, such as Theodore Sturgeon or Ursula K. Le Guin. Will you recognize them ?
(*) Amazing Stories is a registered trademark of the Experimenter Publishing Company
