On the Brink of the World’s End

This is the thirteenth in a series of anthologies of exemplary texts in the evolution of the French genre of roman scientifique. The seven stories collected here were published between 1784 and 1928. They include two remarkable tales about Future Paris, the first story to seize upon the potential of air balloons as imaginative devices, and an extraordinary pseudo-case study in magnetism by Nobel prize-winning physiologist Charles Richet (writing as “Charles Epheyre”). Also included are a novella about the “death” of iron and how it changed the fate of the Great War, mind-reading technology and how it can be used to solve crimes, and the eponymous 1928 novel by Colonel Royet, which explores in a colorful fashion how a mad scientist threatens the stability of the world.