The Ice People (Barjavel novel)

The Ice People (French: *La Nuit des temps*) is a 1968 science fiction novel by French author René Barjavel. In the story, a French team working in Antarctica discovers the remains of a civilization that existed 900,000 years earlier. Scientists from around the world gather at the site, and the entire planet watches via satellite television as they find a chamber containing a man and a woman preserved in suspended animation. The woman, Eléa, is revived. Using a translation device, she recounts her world, her lover Païkan, and the war that destroyed her society. She also hints that her still-sleeping companion, a scientist named Coban, possesses extraordinary knowledge—represented by something called Zoran’s equation—that could provide free energy and food for everyone. Eléa despises Coban for separating her from Païkan. The world’s superpowers, unwilling to let this knowledge spread, demonstrate that humanity has not matured in 900,000 years and is ready to repeat its mistakes. The international team works under constant fear of sabotage, which eventually comes true when one scientist kills a colleague and then himself.

The remaining scientists decide to awaken Coban, who could share the knowledge directly. He requires a blood transfusion, but Eléa—the only compatible donor—poisons herself to kill the man she hates and end her own life. Unbeknownst to her, while she was being anesthetized for the freezing process, her unconscious mind recorded events she was not aware of: at the last moment, her lover Païkan confronted Coban, killed him, and took his place. The man she poisoned with her dying blood was actually Païkan, whom she had never seen since the freezing. She dies before the scientists can tell her the truth, at the same moment her lover dies. All recordings and engravings of the advanced knowledge are destroyed or rendered unreadable, and humanity loses it once more. The novel ends with Dr. Simon returning to France, heartbroken, ignoring the sounds of war and youth protests. The final lines read: “They’re here! They’re us! They repopulated the world, and they’re just as dumb as before, and ready to blow up the house again. Isn’t it great? It’s man.”

The novel was first published in 1968 by les Presses de la Cité. It was translated into English by C. L. Markham and released by several publishers in the early 1970s.