In 1925, Ernest Perochon, a winner of the prestigious Goncourt literary award, penned The Frenetic People, a prescient warning against unchecked technology. The novel takes place in our 30th century, the 5th century of the new Universal Era, after a bacteriological war with Asia. Boundless energy is provided by the controlled disintegration of matter. The secrets of the atom have been uncovered. Cities stretch along the meridians of the globe, forming a planet-wide grid. But another, even more cruel war starts between rival meridians, using new weapons that mutate men and turn them into...

In 1849, the mysterious Doctor Salomon Kanali and his family arrive in a Paris ravaged by a cholera epidemic. But is this Kanali the same embalmer who claimed to have the power to resurrect the dead? And why does his wife fear that her daughter Marthe is being wooed by the same vampire who once destroyed her mother? The Vampire of Val-de-Grace (1862) is a horror story, a love story, a mystery, a comedy and, marginally, a scientific romance; unique in its excess and its bizarre absurdity, it has a certain precious verve and a capacity to make the jaw drop.It belongs to the cynical and...

Shortly after the end of World War I, the fall of an asteroid in the Atlantic causes a tidal wave and gives birth to a new island. An expedition sent by the French government discovers that it is made of iron... and gold The exploitation of the new island could upset the world's economic order and start a new World War, as forces from all across the globe converge upon the "Golden Rock." Penned in 1927 before the Wall Street crash of 1929 by the great Theo Varlet (The Martian Epic, The Xenobiotic Invasion, Timeslip Troopers), The Golden Rock is both a homage to Jules Verne and a novel with...

Who is the Baron de Saint-Magloire? Coming from nowhere, he has quickly become the most prominent banker in Paris. Ministers and generals flock to his parties, and he has no equal when it comes to amassing money through speculations. But what is his relationship with Macaron, the dreaded anarchist, and Professor Sokoloff, a genius who has found a way to make gold? From Devil's Island to the City of Light, by ways of the South American wilderness and Chelsea, this is the tale of the irresistible rise and fall of the charismatic Rozen, the first and greatest villain of the Belle Epoque... After...

Mad scientists, parrots from Atlantis, witches, madmen, monsters, korrigans, demons, magical paintings and a water sprite trapped in a mirror are but a few of the amazing characters featured in this collection of 45 stories from the 1890s and early 1900s, aptly entitled The Crazy Corner, which maps out the frontier between madness and nightmare. Of all the late 19th century writers of contes cruels, Jean Richepin (1849-1926) was the cruelest when it came to the treatment of his characters, not so much in the nasty fates to which they were often delivered -- which are typical of the entire...

In Rouletabille at Krupp's (1917), Gaston Leroux followed the template created by John Buchan in Greenamtle (1916), in which a heroic secret agent is conscripted to carry out an officially-sanctioned dangerous mission in enemy territory. Here, it's fearless investigative journalist Joseph Josephin, aka Rouletabille, who is sent into the heart of the Kaiser's armaments factories to destroy the gigantic German super-weapon Titania, capable of annihilating Paris itself in a single shot. The novel displays Leroux's fascination with, and talent for, the bizarre. As a reflection of the imaginative...

Within the history of the French popular fiction, The Conquest of the Air (1875) with its trip around the world in forty days in a steam-powered flying machine, is significant in terms of its prediction of the development of future aviation; as well as its contribution to the development of Vernian fiction. Alphonse Brown was one of the first French writers to follow in the footsteps of Jules Verne, penning a series of "extraordinary voyages" relying on air power and futuristic inventions. He was one of the main contributors to the leading scientific anticipation magazine of the times, La...

Judith Gautier (1845-1917) was the daughter of the great Romantic writer, Theophile Gautier. Isoline features an extraordinary heroine and recycles Sleeping Beauty with a sharp ironic edge. The Serpent-Flower deals with guilt and vengeance from beyond the grave. Too Late is a subversive pastiche of hallucinatory erotic obsession. Her Oriental stories, such as The Prince with the Bloody Head and The Boatwoman of the Blue River, are flamboyant reinterpretations of myths and legends. Judith Gautier's works deal with the painful isolation of the individual and the destructive power of love. They...

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 all of Jules Verne's successors. The novel follows the adventures of the great inventor Philox Lorris, who wants his son to marry a woman whom he does not love, instead of his sweetheart, whom Philox dislikes. This traditional love triangle allows Robida to...