Jacques Van Herp (26 November 1923 – 30 December 2004)[1][2][3] was a Belgian publisher, anthologist, science fiction writer and director of collections at Marabout.
He then became director of collections at the Marabout publishing house and specialized in publishing novels written by European forerunners of science fiction, being awarded in 1976 with the Special Prize for Belgium of the European Science Fiction Society.
His anticipation novels were published under several pseudonyms: Van Herp considered that the countries of the Eastern Bloc had notable anticipatory writers like Stanisław Lem, Ivan Yefremov, the Strugatsky brothers and Valentina Zhuravlyova;[5] but he said Sergiu Fărcășan [ro] "crushed" all of them.
[5] After reading Fărcășan's novel A Love of the Year 41,042 [ro], Van Herp considered the author to be the size of Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Fredric Brown, stating that in Fărcășan's work he saw the logical rigor in extrapolating of the first, the high knowledge of the second, and the cosmic sense as well as the humor of the third.
[5] "The comparison seems formidable," Van Herp acknowledged, "but Fărcășan supports it very well (...)".