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 Centaurs, learns that the One Law has been broken by the new creatures called Men, whom he calls The Accursed Ones. Meanwhile, the beautiful Katilda, one of the few remaining female Centaurs, refuses to bear offspring with the males of her species and instead falls in love with a young...

This volume is the first of a set of three books showcasing the work of Frederic Boutet, the other two volumes being The Voyage of Julius Pingouin and Other Strange Stories and Claude Mercoeur's Reflection and Other Strange Stories. Viewed as an ensemble, they illustrate the range and development of Boutet's early work, and provide representative samples of its later evolution. Although several stories by Boutet were translated into English in the 1920s, especially in America, they were selected from his later works, when he was writing sentimental stories and crime fiction for popular...

S. Fowler Wright's novel, The World Below, one of the classics of British scientific romance, was hailed as a masterpiece of science fiction when it was published in the U.S. Originally intended as a trilogy, the novel was cut short when Wright's business went bankrupt. Now Brian Stableford, with the permission of the author's estate, has penned the sequel that master never had the chance to finish.

THE MAN WHO LOST HIMSELF tells the story of Michel Bedee, a brilliant scientist whose work on the new element that he's discovered--sirium--has alienated him from his mother, his sister, and his wife. He cannot bear the fact that, although he loves his wife dearly, he cannot make her happy. Unfortunately, when she finds an alternative route to happiness, he cannot bear that either. Forced into isolation, he completes the formulation of the theory that will integrate the properties of sirium into a revised physical chemistry. Then, having exhausted what remains of his reasons for living, he...

The modern literary archetype of the mad scientist was wonderfully incarnated in the French proto-science fiction saga of The Mysterious Dr. Cornelius, a sprawling novel serialized in eighteen volumes in 1912-13, written by the prolific Gustave Le Rouge, author of The Vampires of Mars and The Dominion of the World. Dr. Cornelius Kramm and his brother, Fritz, rule an international criminal empire called the Red Hand. Cornelius is a brilliant surgeon, nicknamed the "Sculptor of Human Flesh" because of his diabolical ability to alter people's likenesses through the science of carnoplasty. One of...

The Vampires of London (1852) is a nested series of contes cruels aggregated into a quintessentially Romantic roman frenetique, and one of the most excessive and convoluted works of that kind. Some of the scenes featuring the necrophilic vampire Lord Lodore or the one in which a young man tries to pimp his sick sister to a resurrectionist are masterpieces of the grotesque. Angelo de Sorr (1822-1881), the son of a family of vine-growers in Bordeaux, made his debut as a novelist in 1848 and eventually went on to build a substantial career, working as a writer for various periodicals and...

In An Invasion of Macrobes (1909), Professor Tornada, unhinged by the death of his wife and daughter, and unable to withstand the blow of having been rejected by the French Academy, unleashes giant, flesh-eating bacteria, immune to the assaults of artillery and high explosives, on Paris, intent on smashing it flat. In the ground-breaking The Androgyne (1922), Tornada turns a man into a woman. Andre Couvreur (1865-1944) was a medical doctor who penned several medical treatises, and was also the author of eight romans scientifiques dealing with "medical concepts" featuring the mad scientists...

In The Phosphorescent Waltzer(1923), the indomitable Professor Tornada creates an android and in Memoirs Of An Immortal(1924), he tackles the concept of suspended animation. Andre Couvreur (1865-1944) was a medical doctor who penned several medical treatises, and was also the author of eight romans scientifiques dealing with "medical concepts" featuring the mad scientists Doctor Caresco, then Professor Tornada. These are collected in a series of five volumes, translated and annotated by Brian Stableford, presenting for the first time the ground-breaking works of this pioneer of French science...