阿兰·达马西奥

Alain Damasio (born Alain Raymond, 1 August 1969) is a French writer of sci-fi and fantasy. He also works as a scriptwriter for comics, radio fictions, movie and TV series. He is also notable as an audio and spoken word artist.

Biography

Alain Damasio was born in Lyon. His father was a self-employed car body repairperson, while his mother was an agrégée English teacher. Alain Damasio graduated from high school with a specialization in science. He then passed the entrance exam for ESSEC Business School, one of France's top business schools, that he left in 1991 without graduating. He then embarked on two solitary retreats to write, residing first in Vercors (France) and then in Nonza (Corsica, France). His works have focused heavily on futuristic politics and incorporate significant science fiction and fantasy elements.

As a young man he wrote many short stories. His first longform fictional work was La Zone du Dehors (The Outer Zone), a futuristic novel dealing with a model of society under control on a democratic model (inspired by the works of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze).

His second novel was rewarded with the Grand Prize of Imaginary Writing (Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire) in 2006, in the works of fiction category: La Horde du Contrevent (The Horde of Counterwind). This novel comes with a soundtrack composed by Arno Alyvan. It was a great success and sold 120,000 copies; this book is regularly quoted as a must-read of French fantasy books.

In 2008, he lent his voice to Bora, a piece of music by Rone.

In 2009, he wrote La Rage du Sage (The Wise Man Wrath or Sage Rage), a poetic and political essay on our times, for the free single of the group Sliver.

Alain Damasio also wrote the script of WindWalkers, an animation film taken from La Horde du Contrevent with Jan Kounen as director and Marc Caro as art director. The project was abandoned due to a lack of funding.

In 2019, he published Les Furtifs (The Stealthies), his most recent novel which was also rewarded by the Grand Prize of Imaginary Writing. In collaboration with the composer Yan Péchin, he has developed a musical environment based on this novel in an album called Entrer dans la couleur.

Works

Collected short stories

Aucun Souvenir Assez Solide (No Strong Memories) La Volte, 2012

Short stories

Les Aiguilleurs du ciel (Air Traffic Controllers), in Onze pour Mille (One out of a Thousand), Cylibris, 2000

El Levir et le Livre (El Koob and the book) in Libelle, pub. In DESS of the Sorbonne, 2001

Les Hauts Parleurs, (The Loud Speakers) in (Another globalization in progress, Mango (Regard sur demain), 2002 (with Karen Bastien et Philippe Arnaud)

Aucun souvenir assez solide, in Galaxies, #38, 2005

So phare away, in Galaxies, #42, 2007

Le Bruit des bagues, (The Ringing rings) in L'Expansion, #723, 2007

Définitivement, (Definitely) in Appel d'air, Les Trois souhaits, 2007

Disparitions, in Apple d'air, Les Trois Souhaits, 2007

Dual universe, 2016

Novels

La Zone du Dehors (The Outer Zone), Cylibris, 1999

La Horde du Contrevent (The Horde of Counterwind), La Volte, 2004 (Folio SF, 2007 paperback)

La Zone du Dehors, new version, La Volte, 2007 (Folio SF, 2009 paperback)

Les Furtifs (The Stealthies), La Volte, 2019

Vallée du Silicium, Albertine/Seuil, 2024

Other written works

Sociétés de contrôle et cinéma, (societies under control and cinema), on the site of La Zone du Dehors

Appel d'air contre la narcose Sarkozy (An In-draught against Sarkozy narcosis) on the site of La Zone du dehors, 2007

La Rage du sage (TheWiseman Wrath) in Memento Mori, 2009 (with SLIVER)

Video games

Alain Damasio is co-founder of Dontnod Entertainment (2008) with Aleksi Briclot, Hervé Bonin, Jean Maxime Moris and Oscar Guilbert. He was director of the narrative department from 2008 to 2010, then he committed this job to Stéphane Beauverger to dedicate himself to his next projects Les Furtifs and Fusion. He has written the first two narrative bibles of the AAA game Remember Me (narrative universe, themes and characters’ profile) before directing a writing workshop of seven people so as to complete the bible of a thousand pages and the first version of the script. Remember Me was published in June 2013 and sold 2.1 million copies.

Remember Me was awarded the prize of the best script at the Paris Games Awards.

In 2022, Alain Damasio is also one of the six writers of Cross The Ages: The Chrome Spell Book. Those books are the spine of the digital collectible card game Cross The Ages: TCG.

Audio creations

Alain Damasio is particularly interested in the music of words and in the potential of sound as language. He worked repeatedly on sound versions of his texts but also created a soundwalk: La Sansouïre.

The Chrones, audio adaptation of several texts from La Horde du Contrevent (The Wind Walkers) (Voice: Alain Damasio - Radio adaptation: Floriane Pochon, with Tony Regnauld) which was rewarded by le Prix du Coup de Cœur du Jury (jury favourite) at the Radiophonies Festival 2012.

La Sansouïre (from the unpublished text by Alain Damasio - adapted for radio by Floriane Pochon and Tony Regnauld). An audio walk on Napoleon beach at Port-St-Louis-du-Rhône, created when Alain Damasio was a guest on Radio Grenouille for Marseille-Provence in 2013.

Since September 2013 Alain Damasio has lent his voice and his pen to several jingles on the web radio Phaune Radio.

In 2014, Alain Damasio started Phonophore with sound directors Floriane Pochon and Tony Regnauld, an audio version of his fiction Les Furtifs (The Stealthies), a composition of 42 audio items (portraits and sonorous landscapes, political cartridges, docufictions...) the project was awarded a grant by the foundation Beaumarchais-Orange in May 2014.

Fragments Hackés d'un futur qui résiste (Hacked fragments of a tough future) is a piece which was originally created for the 2014 version of the Festival des Libertés (Festival of Freedoms) at the National Theatre in Brussels (Belgium) from a scenario by Alain Damasio and audio accompaniment by the studio of art sounds Tarabust and Phaune Radio.