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 fiancee, as well as shady dealings from financiers trying to steal his invention. But as the shadow of war looms, is Rozal's utopian dream of a peaceful planet traversed by powerful flying machines fated to turn into an apocalyptic nightmare? This edition is the first time that the two versions of the story, the original 1917 edition as well as its...

In Baal (1924), the great and seductive sorceress Palmyre teaches her assistant Renee 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 about Satanism and Witchcraft that follows the adventures of a poacher and his daring wife in war-torn 16th century France. These two ground-breaking supernatural thrillers from early feminist writer Renee Dunan, also known for...

Written in 1911, this 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 them.

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 Aine's classic disaster story The Mysterious Force (1913) and Henri Allorge's award-winning The Great Cataclysm (1922), both available from Black Coat Press. It is an exhilarating thriller which extrapolates ideas about dangerous alien lifeforms with considerable verve and polish, and foreshadows many similar-themed novels of the 1950s.

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 it in the right direction and redistribute it in such a way as to give every member of society the opportunity to earn a living free of hardship and strife. Whereas readers in 1878 could only make a simple comparison between their own world and the world of 3878 as it...

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 an exercise in the further development of the archetypal images subsequently categorized and explored by Jung. The Tale of Gold and Silence (1898) occupies a location that is virtually unique. It is not only Kahn's most overtly extravagant symbolist novel, but one of the most overtly extravagant symbolist...

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. Predating Jules Verne whose Five Weeks in a Balloon was published in 1863, Driou might be reckoned a pioneer in the popularization of science in France. The Adventures Of A Parisian Aeronaut is just as anomalous in the history of imaginative fiction as it is in the context...

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 antiquarians; from interplanetary communication with the planet Mars to the discovery of a spaceship from Mercury, which crashed in the Antarctic, and the moving saga of the Earthmen who tried to save its alien pilot, this fifth collection provides...

A collection of supernatural stories on the theme of dreams, glimpses into life beyond death, and other posthumous experiences by romantic author 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 of supernatural fiction, "The Second Life" and OThe Musician's Hell," which Stableford calls "eccentric masterpieces of the genre," as well as the experimental classic, "The Lie" (1846).