Around 1970 several Tintin stories were published for the first time as proper albums in Swedish. Before that, they had only appeared in magazines. I found the albums in the school library and immediately fell in love with Objectif Lune and On a marché sur la Lune. The exciting adventures, the bulky pre-transistor technology, the mixture of drama and slapstick — what more could an 11-year’s old sf-fan ask for?
Fifty years have passed and I still enjoy the Tintin adventures, particularly the thrills and joys of the protagonists’ traveling to remote places. Hergé was a stickler for technical details and I can see how he honed his skills with each album. The merchant ships in L’Étoile mystérieuse were not really up to the mark, but in Le Trésor de Rackham le Rouge a few years later the depictions of ocean voyages had improved notably.
The passing of time has made the content turn from “contemporary” to “retro”; the heroes’ comfortable journey to the moon is a piece of lovely 1950s tech-nostalgia. (The Apollo astronauts went to the moon inside a command module the size of small car and they drove a skeletal dune buggy on the lunar surface.)
I have subconsciously picked up one or two pieces of literary tactics from Hergé and put into to use in my own stories. The protagonists travel into the unknown aboard well-rendered vehicles/craft that are distinct “localities” by themselves. When the heroes set out on a daring adventure, it is never clear what they really are going to face. Unpredictability and danger — and clever solutions to escape the hazards. (Even though I nowadays find the denouement of Le Temple du Soleil too contrived.) When I wrote about Johnny’s and Linda’s journeys in diesel-powered juggernauts across the ice plains of Alba in The Ice War, the spirit of Hergé’s story-telling accompanied me.
The Dream Forge 