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The Human Arrow, written just prior to World War I, is the story of the first non-stop Paris-to-New York flight by rocket-powered plane as it never happened. French engineer Henri Rozal faces tough competition from rivals for the hand of his fiancée, as well as shady dealings from financiers trying to steal his invention. But…
In Baal (1924), the great and seductive sorceress Palmyre teaches her assistant Renée the secret of her magic, including her ability to interact with creatures from other worlds, such as the unspeakable Baal, whose octopus-like form is the three-dimensional projection of an unfathomable four-dimensional entity. The book includes The Devil’s Lovers (1929), a heroic saga…
The Wing, A Romance of the New Age (1911) is the story of the alerion, a flying machine capable of neutralizing gravity by harnessing Earth’s telluric currents, powered by atomic disintegration and controlled by radio signals; but even more, it is the story of its inventors, their lives and loves, and the tragedies that bind…
Aurore Lescure, the first woman astronaut to have gone into space, returns to Earth with deadly alien spores which feed on electricity and threatens to utterly destroy our civilization. Theo Varlet’s 1930 novel shows the influence of J.-H. Rosny Aîné’s classic disaster story The Mysterious Force (1913) and Henri Allorge’s award-winning The Great Cataclysm (1922),…
The World in 2000 Years (1878) is a work of science fiction based on economics. In the future it describes, the primary objective of economic policy is the prevention of the accumulation of money into the hands of relatively few individuals. While making money remains an objective, it is subsidiary to the determination to steer…
Gustave Kahn, born in in 1859, was at the heart of the Symbolist Movement in the 1890s, a pioneer and champion of free verse and one of the editors of the prestigious Mercure de France. Much Symbolist prose — The Tale of Gold and Silence (1898) is a cardinal example — can be construed as…
The Adventures Of A Parisian Aeronaut In The Unknown Worlds (1856) by Alfred Driou is a social satire in which our satellite is reached via hot air balloon. It stands out as a markedly anomalous literary item of his times, not merely for its imaginative extravagance, but also for its keen interest in technological progress….
This is a new collection of 12 French proto-science fiction tales penned between 1757 and 1924, translated and annotated by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford. From a pioneering venture on the exploration of “inner space” by renowned Swiss philosopher Emerich de Vattel to visions of Paris in ruins being explored by future…
Edmond Haraucourt (1856-1941) was amongst the pioneers of French scientific romance influenced by H. G. Wells, easily ranking alongside the better-known Maurice Renard and J.-H. Rosny Aîné. In this collection of nine ground-breaking science fiction stories, published beween 1888 and 1919, he describes the rise of the Antichrist, the cataclysmic consequences of the discovery of…
Henri de Régnier (1864-1936) was by far the most prolific and the most popular of the Symbolist writers. His high fantasy stories, collected in La Canne de jaspe (1897) and Histoires Incertaines (1919), both included in this volume with several additional genre tales, were best-selling books, reprinted numerous times and still in print today. A…
In Timeslip Troopers (1923), a squadron of World War I soldiers from the Trenches is transported back to the Spanish town of Valencia in the 14th century where they ally themselves with the Moors to fight the Spanish Inquisition. While it is one of several French novels inspired by H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine…
The Double Life (1858) is a collection of supernatural stories on the theme of dreams, glimpses into life beyond death and other posthumous experiences by Romantic author Charles Asselineau, better remembered today for his friendship with Charles Baudelaire, but also a significant pioneer in the literary development of dream materials. It includes two remarkable items…
The Dominion of the World (1900) represents a transition from classic Vernian anticipation to the pulp serials of the 1920s and 1930s. It is also the only science fiction work that sought to dramatize the “Transatlantic Peril”, positing a fundamental difference of culture and attitude between the United States and Europe. Despite some of its…
The Dominion of the World (1900) represents a transition from classic Vernian anticipation to the pulp serials of the 1920s and 1930s. It is also the only science fiction work that sought to dramatize the “Transatlantic Peril”, positing a fundamental difference of culture and attitude between the United States and Europe. Despite some of its…
The Dominion of the World (1900) represents a transition from classic Vernian anticipation to the pulp serials of the 1920s and 1930s. It is also the only science fiction work that sought to dramatize the “Transatlantic Peril”, positing a fundamental difference of culture and attitude between the United States and Europe. Despite some of its…
The Dominion of the World (1900) represents a transition from classic Vernian anticipation to the pulp serials of the 1920s and 1930s. It is also the only science fiction work that sought to dramatize the “Transatlantic Peril”, positing a fundamental difference of culture and attitude between the United States and Europe. Despite some of its…
