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J.-H. Rosny Aîné is the second most important figure in modern French science fiction after Jules Verne. Rosny, who was a member of the distinguished Goncourt literary academy, was also the first writer to straddle the line between mainstream literature and science fiction. Until now, Rosny has best been known to the English-speaking public for…
Twenty thousand years ago, the North Pole was orientated toward a star in Cygnus. On the plains of Europe the mammoth was about to become extinct, while the emigration of the large wild beasts toward the Land of Light and the northward flight of the reindeer were coming to an end. The aurochs, the urus…
This is the fifth in a series of seven volumes translated and annotated by Brian Stableford presenting the classic works of J.-H. Rosny Aîné, the second most important figure in French science fiction after Jules Verne. Until now, Rosny, a member of the Goncourt literary academy, has best been known to the English-speaking public for…
In The Young Vampire (1920), a London girl is possessed by an extra-dimensional entity which mutates her body and turns her into a living vampire. The Supernatural Assassin (1923) tells the tale of a murderous wraith. Finally, Companions of the Universe (1934) is Rosny’s last, great novel, a brilliant scientific romance in which a secret…
The deadly Madame Atomos is a brilliant but twisted Japanese scientist who is out to avenge herself against the United States for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where she lost her family. Opposing her are Smith Beffort of the FBI, Dr. Alan Soblen, and Yosho Akamatsu of the Japanese Secret Police. This classic French…
Mostly forgotten today, Henri Falk was a comedy writer who, not unlike Thorne Smith in America, penned several sardonically humorous speculative fiction stories, three of which have been translated and collected here for the first time. In ‘The Age of Lead’ (1922), the Sun’s increased emission of gamma rays cause a universal scourge, the only…
Marguerite Sadoulas continues her efforts to wrest the fabulous fortune of the de Clares by ensnaring its rightful heirs, one-armed Clément and circus girl Lirette, in a murderous conspiracy. Meanwhile, the deadly sociopath Cadet-l’Amour has stepped into the vacuum created by the destruction of the High Council and seeks the Treasure of the Black Coats….
A team of spelunkers is found dead in mysterious circumstances in the shadow of the once-proud Cathar redoubt of Montsegur, in Southern France. What mysterious treasure were they seeking–and did they find it? A ruthless battle over long-buried secrets is going to pit the Roman Catholic Church against an ancient secret society and descendents of…
In The Experiment of Dr. Mops (1939), a man’s vision is modified so that he can peer into the future at an accelerated rate, giving his entourage foreknowledge of events yet to come. Can the future be changed? And what will the subject see after his own death? The unhappy protagonist of The Eye Of…
Richard Bessière made his mark on 1960s French science fiction through a number of novels that featured an original blend of horror and SF. Two of his best works of the period are The Seven Rings Of Rhea (1962), in which Earth is described as seven concentric spheres with Hell at its core, and The…
Han Ryner (1861-1938) was a French anarchist, a philosopher and a startlingly original science fiction writer in pre-Wellsian, French scientific romance; he was once voted the Prince of Storytellers by a popular magazine. In The Superhumans (1929), Ryner tells stories of the Time of the Mad Sun, a second sun which lights the Earth in…
1823. Thanks to the technique discovered by Victor Frankenstein, it is now possible to resurrect the dead. Many competing factions now plans to use such technology to reshape the world. Scotland Yard Superintendent Gregory Temple is forced to team up with Victor Frankenstein and the vampire Count Szandor against a secret cabal of Illuminati led…
This collection of 18 proto-science fiction tales, translated and edited by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford, includes such ground-breaking tales as Charles Cros’ An Interastral Drama (1872), about an unlawful love between an Earthman and a Venusian woman, Victorien Sardou’s The Black Pearl (1862), the first romance of forensic science, Eugène Mouton’s…
The father of science fiction illustration, and the author of The Clock of the Centuries and The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul, Albert Robida (1848-1926), was the most significant of all of Jules Verne’s successors. In A Student in 1950 (1917), Robida returns to his fictional world of 1950 that he introduced in his classic The…
Jules Lermina (1839-1915), the author of Mysteryville, Panic in Paris and To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers, was one of the most interesting authors of French romans scientifiques in the latter part of the 19th century. This collection includes The Nail (1870), featuring a prodigious detective predating Sherlock Holmes by 20 years, the classic Burn This!…
