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Forty-three years before Jules Verne, and ninety-three years before Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jacques Collin de Plancy, remembered today for his Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology, penned Voyage to the Center of the Earth (1821), which is both an adventure story and a utopian fantasy in the Voltairean tradition. An expedition is mounted to discover the…
The Chimerical Quest (1932) deals with an eccentric scientist, crippled during the Great War, who has discovered a method of converting lead into gold but wishes to give his secret away as soon as he has perfected it, so that anyone will be able to make gold, thus fulfilling his dream of turning society upside…
The Virgin Orient, an Epic Novel of the Year 2000 (1897) is the account of a preventive strike by Europe, united under the government of Anarchism, against the perceived Yellow Peril. Even though his accounts of two crucial battles fought in India are extended and bloody, Mauclair’s primary purpose is not to detail the war…
British, French and American traditions of speculative fiction developed separately for more than a hundred years, with only slight overlaps prior to 1926, and continued to develop thereafter in accordance with different foci of interest and narrative methods, until the importation of the American label of “science fiction” initiated a process of fusion that was…
This collection presents four French “utopian fantasies” which were all ground-breaking in their day. Victor Considerant’s The Complete News from the Moon (1836) is a utopia in which the society described is only related to existing societies in satirical terms, and very subtly. Fernand Giraudeau’s The New City (1868) and Joseph Déjacque’s The Humanisphere (1899)…
In The Discovery of the Austral Continent by a Flying Man (1781), Victorin devises a set of artificial wings to abduct his beloved Christine, before setting her up on top of a mountain as queen of her own utopia. Then he relocates to the southern ocean where he visits islands inhabited by giants and other…
Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806) produced over 180 books, totaling some 57,000 pages, many of them printed by his own hand, on almost every conceivable subject. Praised in Germany, he was mostly forgotten in France until being rediscovered by the Surrealists in the early 20th century. Two of his most important seminal works are…
Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806) produced over 180 books, totaling some 57,000 pages, many of them printed by his own hand, on almost every conceivable subject. Praised in Germany, he was mostly forgotten in France until being rediscovered by the Surrealists in the early 20th century. Two of his most important seminal works are…
Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806) produced over 180 books, totaling some 57,000 pages, many of them printed by his own hand, on almost every conceivable subject. Praised in Germany, he was mostly forgotten in France until being rediscovered by the Surrealists in the early 20th century. Two of his most important seminal works are…
In 1839, 25 years before Jules Verne, French botanist and geologist Pierre Boitard (1789-1859) published Journey to the Sun, the first story of adventure and scientific popularization for young people, depicting a voyage through the solar system, with the beings of each of the planets representing a different stage of Man’s evolution. Two years earlier,…
The French Fantasy Treasury serves as an introduction to French fantasy, which has a long and noble history, quite distinct from its British and American counterparts. Its three volumes chronicle the history of the genre, from its origins through modern times, and include stories, excerpts and novellas by some of the most prestigious authors in…
The French Fantasy Treasury serves as an introduction to French fantasy, which has a long and noble history, quite distinct from its British and American counterparts. Its three volumes chronicle the history of the genre, from its origins through modern times, and include stories, excerpts and novellas by some of the most prestigious authors in…
The French Fantasy Treasury serves as an introduction to French fantasy, which has a long and noble history, quite distinct from its British and American counterparts. Its three volumes chronicle the history of the genre, from its origins through modern times, and include stories, excerpts and novellas by some of the most prestigious authors in…
An alchemist, his family and his valet, Caliban, settle in an isolated village. After their deaths, their young son, Abel, who has read only fairy tales, falls in love with a local girl, Catherine, whom he mistakes for the legendary Pearl Fairy. But the scheming Lady Sommerset, infatuated with Abel, plans to use his delusions…
The Son of Silence (1911) tells of the quest of the legendary philosopher Pythagoras looking for a vision of utopia in the philosophical and religious doctrines of the Samothracian and Eleusianian Mysteries, and the teachings of Ancient Egypt and Zarathustra.Ryner’s construction of his fictional Pythagoras is both intriguing and ingenious, and telling his story represented…
Tenebras — a phantom-like criminal who defies all the police of Europe. Against him are arrayed the forces of Harry Dickson, the American Sherlock Holmes, and the dynamic Inspector Loustaud of the French Sûreté, but also the Simpson Brothers, two ruthless American billionaires who will do anything in their power, and commit any crime, to…
