Showing 81–96 of 1000 resultsSorted by popularity
In New York, the Mage Ormus, claiming to be the reincarnation of Tutankhamun, has gathered around him a coterie of disciples chosen amongst the world’s wealthiest elite in order to relive the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt. One of them, the Duchess of Rutland, may well be the reincarnation of Am-Phaoli, the Pharaoh’s wife. But is…
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…
In 1918, silent film director Louis Feuillade and writer Arthur Bernède resurrected one of their greatest characters for a second adventure: a mysterious avenger, wearing a slouch hat and a dark cloak — Judex! His name means “Judge,” and he has sworn to mercilessly punish criminals. On the eve of World War I, the Paris…
Paris in the Year 2000 by Doctor Tony Moilin was published in 1869. A year later, Moilin was charged with involvement in a plot to assassinate Napoléon III and sentenced to prison for five years. He was liberated during the Prussians’ siege of Paris, and enlisted in the National Guard as a surgeon. When the…
Louis Boussenard’s two most memorable novels were The Secrets of Monsieur Synthesis (1888) and its sequel, Ten Thousand Years in a Block of Ice (1889). In the former, we are introduced to the title character, the eponymous “Monsieur Synthesis,” a mad scientist who seeks to control the evolution of Man and modify the orbit of…
In 1675, a female vampire possessing the secret of immortality was burned alive. Forty-five years later, during a dinner at the table of the French Regent, her then-lover, Marquis de la Roche-Maubert, discovers that another guest, Chevalier d’Esparron, is in love with the same immortal woman. However, her attraction to him is not to satisfy…
Aurore Lescure, the first woman astronaut, who starred in The Xenobiotic Invasion, returns in this ground-breaking novel about the first successful interplanetary flight to the planetoid Eros. There, the intrepid explorers discover that evolution on Eros has taken a different turn than on Earth, producing a species of intelligent dinosaurs… The notion of a Japanese-financed…
JUDEX! He whose name means “Judge”! Created in 1917 by writer Arthur Bernède and filmmaker Louis Feuillade, Judex is the first of the dark knights, predating both The Shadow and Batman. To avenge the death of his father, young Jacques de Trémeuse has put on the dark hat and cloak of Judex and embarks on…
Thérèse Arnaud, a.k.a. Agent C.25, is a member of the French Deuxième Bureau secret service tasked with fighting enemy spies operating in WWI France. She is a thoroughly modern woman: independent, intelligent, sure of herself and of her calling. She deploys and controls her own network of sub-agents and poses as Mademoiselle Janine Félerat in…
In Electric Life (1892), Albert Robida imagined the life of the future, imbued with all kinds of fantastic devices meant to simplify the lives of their users. The father of science fiction illustration, and the author of The Clock of the Centuries and The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul, Robida (1848-1926) was the most significant of…
The Centaurs (1904) chronicles the last days of the Era of the Beasts that preceded ours, when Fauns, Tritons and other now-mythical creatures shared the Earth. In that wild world, the balance of nature is maintained by the Centaurs. The One Law is Thou Shalt Not Kill. But one day, Klevorak, the King of the…
“The Revenant’s bounty shall be paid by me personally. The Revenant’s killer must present her head to me.” Such was the decree of Colonel Bozzo-Corona, all-powerful master of the Black Coats. For years, the female vigilante had used the methods of her late mentor, the mysterious Phantom of the Opera, to foil the schemes of…
The Eternal Flame (1931) and its sequel Pink Sky (1933) (included in this volume) are two of the few novels about scientific discovery to focus on the economic implications of such discoveries, including publicity, capitalization and the conflict of vested interests. It was a pioneering work in its development of those themes, especially with regard…
In a Thousand Years (1884) is solidly set in the tradition of “euchronian” fiction, arguing that political reform goes hand in hand with technological progress. Calvet paints a ground-breaking picture of a world transformed by prolifically-distributed electric power and aerial transportation, demonstrating an attention to utilitarian detail rare among other constructors of futuristic utopias. Calvet’s…
In the midst of World War I, German and French explorers discover a vast, mysterious Pacific island where they encounter a race of “missing links” that time forgot. But they also bring to that peaceful utopia the ravages of the bloodiest war ever fought. The Children of the Crab (1921) shares some common themes with…
In the 1890s, Josephine Balsamo, a.k.a. Countess Cagliostro, is poised to take over the powerful crominal conspiracy known as the Black Coats. One person stands in her way: Irina Putine, a female detective, who happens to be the half-sister of Arsène Lupin, the notorious gentleman-thief! Sisters of the Shadows recounts the brutal vendetta between these…
