The Ice People (French: la Nuit des temps) is a 1968 French science fiction novel by René Barjavel.
Scientists in Antarctica discover artefacts from a lost civilization from 900000 years ago. Two living characters are found sleeping: a man and a woman. The scientists manage to wake up the woman, starting with her because the man looks injured.
She is named Éléa and tells Simon (a French scientist) many things about the civilization of Gondawa, which possessed incredibly advanced technology and ended in a terrible war against a civilization named Enisoraï. She and a scientist named Coban were selected to repopulate Earth later (they didn't predict that this part of Gondwana would move to the South Pole and become Antartica), however she hates him and would have wanted to die 900000 years ago with her lover, Païkan.
Countries from all over the world are very interested in the technologies that may be found in the Gondawan ruins (or from asking the sleeping man), this being set during the Cold War (of which it deconstructs several tropes).
The Ice People provides examples of:
- Adam and Eve Plot: Éléa and Coban were selected to repopulate Earth after the apocalypse. Interestingly Coban was selected for his intellectual competence, while Éléa was selected for her attractiveness.
- All for Nothing: In multiple ways.
- Éléa and Païkan tried to run away together, only to be re-captured. Éléa was frozen against her consent, and Païkan managed to take Coban's place at the last minute… but they die without even realising they were reunited at last, before the Gondawan archeological site is destroyed and the formula for infinite energy and creation of matter is destroyed with no copies salvaged.
- All the efforts for international cooperation and setting quarrels aside amount to zilch. While the scientists formed genuine bonds and friendships regardless of Eastern or Western block affiliation, said block stop collaborating as soon as there is no longer anything to be won and the geopolitical situation starts escalating again.
- The nebulous third-party organisation responsible for the whole treason that ruins everything were trying to get exclusive access to the formula that allows infinite creation of energy and matter… but their goons die in a stupid accident before they can bring the info back.
- Artistic License – Physics: Conservation of mass and energy were no longer a challenge for Gondawa-era technology.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: In several ways.
- The war between Gondawa and Enisoraï sounds quite similar to the Cold War. In-universe, both western and Soviet scientists can't help but point to the similarities.
- For all its claims of advancement, Gondawa's society was riddled with double standards very similar to our society's own.
- The weapon that [[wiped out most of humanity]] is not very clearly described, but wounds very similar to a doped-up thermonuclear weapon.
- Double Standard: See Adam and Eve Plot.
- Downer Ending: Éléa and her companion die out of a dramatic misunderstanding (Éléa poisons herself while they are transfusing her blood to Coban because she hates him, just as the Simon realises that Païkan had killed Coban and taken his place before they got frozen), and all the advanced knowledge from the past is irremediably lost. The scientists conclude that humanity is just as stupid and prone to self-destruction as it was 900,000 years ago.
- Fantasy Metals: Gondawa developed an almost indestructible Gold alloy.
- Future Primitive: Inverted. To Éléa's Gondawan eyes, we are the degenerated primitives from the future who have gone back to eating meat and plants like primitives and animals.
- Human Popsicle: Éléa and her companion have slept for 900000 years.
- Irony: In-universe. When the Soviet scientist discovers that the Enisor civilisation, ennemies of Gondawa, had developed in North America, she is quick to essentialise it and exclaim to her American colleague that "You were already… you !". She soon discovers, however, that Enisor was much more comparable to her contemporaneous U.S.S.R. in terms of ideology, and that both sides were just as terrible.
- Lensman Arms Race: What Gondawa and their enemies did, and also the struggle of present day nations to acquire ancient technology for themselves.
- The Mole: Lukaş the Turkish genius mathematician answers to an unidentified third faction to steal Gondawa's secrets.
- Mutually Assured Destruction: The civilization of Gondawa made a weapon so powerful that it would destroy both their enemies and them. And decided to use it anyway.
- Mysterious Antarctica: Traces of a super advanced lost civilization are found there.
- No Conservation of Energy: Gondawa and Enisor cracked how to extract energy from nothing, and turn it into matter at will. The food machine produces nutrients out of a vacuum, and decyphering the mathematical formula to reproduce the phenomenon takes an entire story arc before it is stupidly lost forever.
- Odd Friendship: An american scientist and a soviet one pretty much start re-enacting their respective countries' rivalry. Over the course of the book, they start questioning the meaning of it all and develop a friendship, and perhaps even a romance.
- Older Is Better: In Éléa's time, not only was technology infinitely more advanced than our own, but people were physically and mentally much more performant than today, and society appears to have reached utopian-levels of advancement and individual freedom. Later subverted on that last point, when we discover than Gondawa and Enisor could be just as brutally authoritarian and warmongering as the Western and Eastern blocks of Cold War Era, to the point of wiping each other out along with all of their contemporaneous civilisations.
- Our Ancestors Are Superheroes: See above, although as scientifically advanced as they were, they prove not to have been much wiser.
- Our Nudity Is Different: Bordering on No Nudity Taboo. One scene indicates that Gondawan society is pretty much clothing-optional, although with the possibility of double standardsnote .
- Pre-Climax Climax: Éléa and Païkan make love one last time as Gondawa unleashes its superweapon, causing the Apocalypse that razes all civilisation on earth.
- Precursors : The Gondawan and Enisorai civilisations, who fucked up so badly they wiped themselves out and made humanity regress into the stone age.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Played with. The whole plot starts when remnants of Gondawa's civilisation are discovered under Antarctica's permafrost, thanks to an ultrasound emitter that has been working non-stop for 900 000 years. However, it was a structure that was specifically designed to quite literally survive a world-class apocalypse event ; all other traces of civilisation were completely wiped out.
- The Savage Indian / Yellow Peril: the Enisor people themselves. They are, with Coban himself, the main antagonists and are stated to be the ancestors of both Eastern Asians and Native Americans.
- Veganopia: Played with the people in Gondawa, including Elea herself. They enjoyed infinite artificial food, because of the fact they are implied, through Elea herself, to not be able to eat animal or plant-based food. Éléa is horrified at the idea of eating these kinds of food.
