"The Master of Light" (1933) is a murder mystery solved thanks to luminite, a glass-like substance which slows down light as it passes through, and through which one can actually witness the past. It is the fifth of a series of five volumes, translated and annotated by Stableford, devoted to presenting the classic works of this pioneering giant of French science fiction.

Twenty thousand years ago, the North Pole was orientated toward a star in Cygnus. On the plains of Europe the mammoth was about to become extinct, while the emigration of the large wild beasts toward the Land of Light and the northward flight of the reindeer were coming to an end. The aurochs, the urus and the red deer were grazing forests and savannahs. The colossal cave-bear had perished in the depths of its caverns a long time ago. This is the fourth in a series of seven volumes translated and annotated by Brian Stableford presenting the classic works of J.-H. Rosny Aine, the second most...

In The Man Who Found Himself (1936), a starship transports the protagonist to a world orbiting Proxima Centauri. After a three-year journey at the speed of light, the hero discovers that that planet is identical to Earth in every respect, except that its history is unfolding 40 years in arrears. His arrival offers the 60-year-old protagonist the opportunity of "finding himself" at 20. Will his knowledge of future events enable him to manufacture a better life for his family? The Man Who Found Himself is one of the earliest French texts to feature interstellar faster-than-light travel and...

This is the fifth in a series of seven volumes translated and annotated by Brian Stableford presenting the classic works of J.-H. Rosny Aine, the second most important figure in French science fiction after Jules Verne. Until now, Rosny, a member of the Goncourt literary academy, has best been known to the English-speaking public for his prehistoric thriller, Quest for Fire. A man is found mysteriously duplicated in the trenches of World War I. Brilliantly prefiguring the theme of cloning, The Givreuse Enigma (1917) features the "bipartition" of a human being into two totally similar...

In The Young Vampire (1920), a London girl is possessed by an extra-dimensional entity which mutates her body and turns her into a living vampire. The Supernatural Assassin (1923) tells the tale of a murderous wraith. Finally, Companions of the Universe (1934) is Rosny's last, great novel, a brilliant scientific romance in which a secret group of physicists attempts to breach the limits of the universe beyond photons, sub-particles and wave-sequences; while at the same time offering an in-depth study of the perversity of human sexual relationships. This is the sixth in a series of seven...

Mostly forgotten today, Henri Falk was a comedy writer who, not unlike Thorne Smith in America, penned several sardonically humorous speculative fiction stories, three of which have been translated and collected here for the first time. In 'The Age of Lead' (1922), the Sun's increased emission of gamma rays cause a universal scourge, the only remedy of which is lead, which suddenly becomes more valuable than gold. 'Master of the Three States' (1911) tells of a scientist who creates a machine that can transform the human body into a liquid or a gas. In 'The Astonishing Adventure of Sebastian...

Marguerite Sadoulas continues her efforts to wrest the fabulous fortune of the de Clares by ensnaring its rightful heirs, one-armed Clement and circus girl Lirette, in a murderous conspiracy. Meanwhile, the deadly sociopath Cadet-l'Amour has stepped into the vacuum created by the destruction of the High Council and seeks the Treasure of the Black Coats. But he is thwarted by the specter of Colonel Bozzo-Corona, the ruthless leader who ruled the evil empire for over a century and seems to have mysteriously returned from the grave... Written last in the series in 1875, before Feval was...

A balloon ascent to the Heavens... A man with X-ray vision... A utopian metal city built on giant pylons above Paris... A sexless world in which women reproduce parthenogenetically and man is unknown... Is science insane? Unholy? See nine French authors of the 19th century grapple in a ground-breaking fashion with the future themes of science fiction. All the stories included in this volume predate the first translation into French of H.G. Wells. They are representative of a distinct tradition of romans scientifiques whose cardinal influences included astronomer Camille Flammarion and...