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...