Edmond Haraucourt (1856-1941) was amongst the pioneers of French scientific romance influenced by H. G. Wells, easily ranking alongside the better-known Maurice Renard and J.-H. Rosny Aine. In this collection of nine ground-breaking science fiction stories, published beween 1888 and 1919, he describes the rise of the Antichrist, the cataclysmic consequences of the discovery of an immortality serum, a journey across the ruins of Paris in the Year 6983, the fall of the Moon upon the Earth, the last of the Great Wars that ends all life on Earth, and even a futuristic "Planet of the Apes" where...

Edmond Haraucourt's Daah: The First Human (1914) begins with the proto-humans Dah and his wives, Hock and Ta, living a solitary existence, and then sketches, episodically, an account of their slow ascent towards civilization. With Daah serving as a kind of "collective hero," the novel proceeds through a sequence of epiphanies that includes the invention of families, the axe, clothes, religion, fire and, ultimately, a burgeoning awareness of what will someday become our world. Daah is a milestone in the genre of prehistoric fantasy, taking into account the then-new discipline of physical...