Nicolas Ancion - improbable tale of an intransigent character, heroic in his defiance, who refuses to cast aside mortal existence without knowing why he cannot prolong it indefinitely, who refuses to die just because the rest of humanity has thus far failed to avoid such a fate

Nicolas Ancion, The Man Who Refused to Die, Dis Voir, 2010.


Is death necessarily inevitable? The Man Who Refused to Die is the improbable tale of an intransigent character, heroic in his defiance, who refuses to cast aside mortal existence without knowing why he cannot prolong it indefinitely--who refuses to die just because the rest of humanity has thus far failed to avoid such a fate. The Belgian-born, French-based writer and comic-book critic Nicolas Ancion (author of L'homme qui valait 35 milliards) and the artist and illustrator Patrice Killofer (Futuropolis, Psikopat, 676 Apparitions of Killofer) draw on the researches of the molecular geneticist François Taddei for this latest installment in Dis Voir's new series of "illustrated fairy tales for adults," which asks "How do literature and science contaminate one another?"--seeking to mobilize scientific research to provoke dreams and meditations on the laws of the universe.

Halfway between science-fiction novel and thriller, this tale by Nicolas Ancion, illustrated by Killoffer, draws freely on François Taddéi's research on the ageing process of bacteria and the transmission of knowledge in nature, from unicellular organisms to human beings. A tell of robots and organ traffic, L'Homme qui refusait de mourir revisits the figures of the mad scientist and the sorcerer's apprentice.


Dying is undoubtedly the greatest concern of man, and to put an end to death is one of the most ambitious objectives of modern science. However, though contemporary research is indeed incapable of fulfilling such fantastic dreams, futuristic fiction writing offers a possibility to imagine that one day humanity will be able to pursue its course ad infinitum. When man defies death and forces science to find solutions to his projects of immortality, one enters fully that obscure zone of contemporary imagination in which machines, biology and artificial intelligence combine to give birth to a new man. But is he also immortal? Patrice Killoffer's drawings combine robots, bacteria, scientists and intestines to encourage the mind to circulate more efficiently in the piping of this captivating tale.