If you know what the title of this post refers to, then I congratulate you. There is in fact a link with weather modification, a topic that I am professionally interested in. But, to be fair, this blog post is somewhat of a digression, a détour so to speak, from my usual physics or maths topics; it is about bandes dessinées, an art-form that I have enjoyed for a long time. The French –always serious-minded!– call it the 9th art, le neuvième art.
I was recently re-reading S.O.S. Meteors from the Blake & Mortimer series by Edgar P. Jacobs. This series of books has been issued in English fairly recently (by Cinebook Ltd) and they are frankly marvellous. S.O.S. Meteors is about weather modification for nefarious ends.
This book is one of the most artfully drawn BDs that I know. It is gorgeously atmospheric, with many moody and muddy scenes (much rain and snow.)
About a third into the book, the protagonist, Prof. Mortimer, is exploring an area, notionally, near Paris. It turns out that the area, near Buc to the south of Versailles, actually exists. The book was originally published in 1959. Now, some sixty years later, is there anything left of those muddy scenes of S.O.S. Meteors?
Let us start with the map that Mortimer takes out on page 18:
Bizarrely, the map that Mortimer uses is not oriented with north at the top. In fact it is nearly exactly turned by 180 degrees with south at the top. Apart from that, the roads in the area around Buc and Haut Buc are mostly still there. The lakes (important in the story) are still there, although the story also has a large lake or pond in Chateau du Haut Buc (called Troussalet in the book). The modern map appears to only indicate a small pond in the grounds of the castle.
Mortimer’s exploration starts at the aqueduct of Buc, following the N838. (This route nationale is now downgraded to a route départementale, the D938.)
Several scenes of the aqueduct are drawn in the book and they can all be found on the modern maps with the “Look Around” feature.
Walking past the aqueduct, Mortimer finds himself at the entrance gate of the airfield. The airfield currently is further South (Aérodrome Toussus-le-Noble) but the old entrance gates have been preserved. It looks like there currently is a flying school (Ecole de pilotage L. Blériot) in that location.
One of the key moments in Mortimer’s exploration of the area is him finding the entrance to the Troussalet castle. All of the details of the present entrance gate (of Chateau du Haut Buc) are still present, including the detail in the glazing of the lodge building:
It was hard to get a better view of the present lodge building as there is a bus stop in the way. The castle itself, just about visible on the modern picture, goes up in flames towards the end of the book; evidence that the story in S.O.S. Meteors is not fully realistic…
When Mortimer discovers the entrance to the castle he turns around to speak to a woman looking out of the window of a dilapidated building. This building across the road of the castle gates still exists and looks rather better after sixty years. it looks like the neighbourhood gentrified in that time.
Although many new roads and houses have been built in the area and old roads have been given new numbers, most named roads in the book, such as the Chemin de la Geneste, still exist.
Instead of a muddy estate, there now appears to be some children’s activity centre with a Trojan horse in the garden. Perhaps a reference to the secretive and ominous business that went on in Troussalet sixty years before!
Reading physics 