Niourk

Lore & Background

The novel's title, 'Niourk', derives from the pronunciation of New York City. The story is set in a future where Earth is deserted, and small hunter-gatherer tribes exist at a Paleolithic level. The protagonist, called 'The Black Child', lives with his tribe on the dry bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where the former Azores and other Atlantic ridges form mountain ranges. Considered a mutant because of his skin color, he is sentenced to death by the tribal shaman, but the execution is delayed until the shaman returns from a pilgrimage to the city of the gods. When the shaman does not return, the child defies a taboo, follows the shaman's route into an abandoned city, finds a laser rifle, and discovers the shaman's frozen body. He eats the shaman's brain and adds one of his vertebrae to a necklace, thereby becoming the new shaman. He later tames a bear with the laser weapon.

Reader's Guide

Niourk is significant as a French science fiction novel from the 1950s that explores themes of mutation, radiation, and the rise of a superhuman intelligence. The plot follows the Black Child's exponential transformation after eating the brain of a tentacled monster mutated by nuclear waste, which grants him enhanced strength, speed, and intelligence, but also heavy irradiation. After all his tribesmen die from acute radiation sickness, the child reaches New York, a futuristic city of functional autonomous machinery. There, he meets two humans from a shipwrecked space crew, who heal him. He develops tremendous intelligence, learns human history, and gains superhuman powers including matter and space manipulation, flight, and psychokinesis. He creates a spaceship, sends the humans to Venus, recreates them and his tribe, relocates Earth to the galaxy's center, and creates a copy of himself. The novel's legacy includes a 2012 graphic novel adaptation by Olivier Vatine, translated into English by Dark Horse Comics in 2018.

Did You Know?

• The novel's title comes from the pronunciation of New York City.
• The Black Child becomes shaman by eating the previous shaman's brain and adding a vertebra to a necklace.
• The tribe gains enhanced abilities after eating a tentacled monster mutated by nuclear waste.
• The protagonist uses alien technology to move Earth into a different orbit within the solar system at the novel's end.