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In this episode of French Weird, host Russell Williams explores the fascinating, myth-laden life and fiction of Franco-British author George Langelaan (1908–1972). Best known as the author of "La Mouche"/"The Fly" (1957), the  short story adapted into David Cronenberg’s iconic 1986 body-horror film, Langelaan lived a life that rivalled his most eccentric fiction.

We unpack his World War Two career as a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent, the bizarre claim that he underwent facial reconstruction surgery as a undercover disguise, his decades spent as an unsuccessful ghost hunter and a legendary anecdote involving occultist Alistair Crowley performing bathroom rituals during a Paris chess tournament. 

Beyond "The Fly", we explore Langelaan's 1962 collection Nouvelles de l'Anti-Monde (Out of Time), examining forgotten masterpieces of "time horror", reincarnation, cold war television anxieties, and autonomous chess-playing automata.

Suggested reading

The images I mention of Langelaan - and a telling of the Crowley anecdote, can be found here: "Les Chesseurs Britanniques de Paris: Part 4 The Beast." The Streatham & Brixton Chess Blog, 26 Feb. 2016, streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com/2016/02/les-chesseurs-britanniques-de-paris_26.html

Works by George Langelaan

"La Mouche" ("The Fly") — First published in French in Paris-Match (1957) and translated in Playboy (1957).

Nouvelles de l'Antimonde — Short story collection published by Éditions Robert Laffont (1962, reissued 1966 & 2018 by L'Arbre Vengeur). Translated into English as Out of Time (1964). Featured stories include "Récession" ("Recession"), "La Dame d'outre-nulle-part" ("The Woman from Nowhere"), "Le Miracle" ("The Miracle"), "L'autre main" ("The Other Hand"), "Robots pensants" ("Thinking Robots"), and "Temps mort" ("Dead Time").

Un nommé Langdon / Le Masque d'un agent secret — Two-volume war memoirs published by Club des Amis du Livre (1963). Published in English under the titles Memoirs of a Secret Agent, The Masks of War, and Knights of the Floating Silk.

Treize Fantômes — Collection of ghost-hunting anecdotes and folklore (1971).

Other Books, Anthologies & Publications 

Planète magazine, edited by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (with Jacques Mousseau et al)  (1961–1969).

Le Matin des Magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier (1960).

Promethean Horrors: Classic Stories of Mad Science, ed. Xavier Aldana Reyes (British Library Tales of the Weird, 2019).

Danse Macabre: Strange Stories from France, ed. Mike Ashley (British Library Tales of the Weird, 2026).

Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère (2020).

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890).

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886).

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818).

"Special operations: a hidden chapter in the histories of facial surgery and human enhancement" by Roderick Bailey (Medical Humanities, 2020).

"The secret scalpel: plastic surgery for wartime disguise" by Roderick Bailey (The Lancet, 384, 1421-1422)

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In this episode host Russell Williams thinks about Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier's book Le Matin des magiciens (1960), translated into English as The Morning of the Magicians or The Dawn of Magic. This is a book that Colin Wilson described as "a curious hodgepodge", "a series of wild speculations on magic; alchemy, telepathy, prophecy, strange cults, the Great Pyramid, Hitler's astrologers, the Cabala, flying saucers and a thousand other topics". He's not wrong.

For more information, visit www.frenchweird.com 

Reading list

Pauvels, Louis & Berger, Jacques, Le Matin des magiciens, Gallimard, 1960

Purdom, Clayton, "Weird Nonfiction", Los Angeles Review of Books, September 27, 2024, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/weird-nonfiction/

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In our first deep exploration, French Weird discovers the unexpected Weird in the work of notorious novelist Michel Houellebecq. Our starting point is his devotion to the work of a certain H. P. Lovecraft.

For more information, visit www.frenchweird.com 

Reading list

Houellebecq, Michel. Whatever. Translated by Paul Hammond, Serpent’s Tail, 1998.

Houellebecq, Michel. H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Translated by Dorna Khazeni, Believer Books, 2005.

Houellebecq, Michel. Atomised. Translated by Frank Wynne, William Heinemann, 2000.

Houellebecq, Michel. The Map and the Territory. Translated by Gavin Bowd, Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.

Houellebecq, Michel. Submission. Translated by Lorin Stein, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.

Houellebecq, Michel. Annihilation. Translated by Shaun Whiteside, Picador, 2024.

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This is where it all begins. Your host, Russell Williams, gives an overview of the sort of things you might expect from French Weird.

For more information, visit www.frenchweird.com 

Forget the accordion music, the cafés and the immaculate boulevards. There is a dark, uncanny and deeply strange texture pervading modern France—and it’s time to investigate.

Welcome to French Weird, a podcast dedicated to exploring the counterculture, obscure art and bizarre anomalies of contemporary France. Channeling cultural theory, esoterica and the love of a good book this shows investigates what falls through the cracks of mainstream French culture. We are tracking the liminal spaces, the bizarre subcultures and the beautiful freak-outs from the mid-twentieth century to the present day.

What exactly is the French Weird? It is the territory where high philosophy meets the profoundly bizarre. In each episode, we trace the threads of a proudly rational nation simultaneously digesting global weirdness and exporting its own brand of the mysterious.

French Weird explores how France's hidden eccentricities reveal the truths about its politics, literature, culture and - maybe even - identity.

Subscribe now, download, and join us. When the going gets weird, the pros turn French.

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