The undisputed masterpiece of Gabriel de Lautrec (1867-1938), THE VENGEANCE OF THE OVAL PORTRAIT, which borrows its title from Edgar Allan Poe, is a collection of 28 stories at the crossroads of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Its singular inspiration owes as much to the author's predilection for dark humor, Grand Guignol and the mixing of genres, as it does to the influence of alcohol and hashish, which he used regularly. De Lautrec was a disciple of Alphonse Allais and the winner of the 1920 Humorists' Award. While he hid behind a smiling mask, his troubled personality is on display in...

Twenty years before Peary, a French scientific expedition to the North Pole becomes stranded in the ice. Because of their knowledge and local resources, they manage to build a super-scientific city dubbed Crystalopolis. However, rival American and Russian explorers threaten the new conquerors of the Arctic... 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 magazines La Science...

During one of Napoleon's military campaigns, Edouard Delmont, a young officer, promised to marry Alinska, a Hungarian girl. Back in France, he goes back on his vows and marries someone else. Several years later, Alinska suddenly reappears in his life, transformed into an avenging vampire. She threatens to kill his wife and children unless he honors the vows he made to her... In La Vampire (1825), Etienne-Leon de Lamothe-Langon tells the story of the first, implacable, female vampire. What makes Alinska stand out in the ranks of female vampires is that she is not a predator, but the instrument...

This is a new collection of seven French proto-science fiction stories devoted to explorations of the future, as imagined in the 1850s and early 1900s, translated and annotated by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford. This collection includes fantastic explorations of Future Paris by Theophile Gautier, Arsene Houssaye, Victor Fournel as well as Alfred Franklin's visionary The Ruins of Paris in 4875 (1875), Maurice Spronck's devastating criticism of socialist utopianism, Year 330 of the Republic (1894), and Jean Jullien's An Investigation of the World of the Future...