Simon Tyssot de Patot

Simon Tyssot de Patot (1655 – 1727) was a French writer who penned two very important, seminal works in fantastic literature.

In Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé [Voyages And Adventures Of Jacques Massé], published in 1710, Tyssot de Patot dispatched his heroes to a fictional country located near South Africa. While the book did not range much beyond the confines of the traditional Utopias of the times, it did, however, include "living fossils," giant birds and strange flora that survived from prehistoric eras, arguably making it one of the first modern Lost World novels.

In his 1720 La Vie, les Aventures et le Voyage de Groenland du Révérend Père Cordelier Pierre de Mésange [The Life, Adventures & Trip To Greenland Of The Rev. Father Pierre de Mesange], Tyssot de Patot introduced the concept of a Hollow Earth. This was the first time that the notion of a journey to the center of the Earth was depicted in a realistic, pseudo-scientific fashion, as opposed to the various mythological journeys to Hell, such as Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy. Tyssot de Patot's book predates that of Danish writer Ludvig Holberg Voyage of Nikolas Klimius (1741) and Jules Verne's classic Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864).

Tyssot de Patot described how his protagonists discover a hidden, underground kingdom located near the North Pole. That kingdom is inhabited by the descendants of African colonists who had left their homeland four thousand years earlier. This proto-Pellucidar is lit by a mysterious fire ball and is inhabited by small man-bat creatures. The novel also featured the character of the Wandering Jew.

External links

• (French) Gallica has works by Tyssot in pdf and tiff format
• Simon Tyssot de Patot at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database