S. Henry Berthoud (1804-1891) was a writer of considerable ability, remembered today mostly for his often reprinted collections of folkloric legends from Northern France. Yet, he was a writer who came close to inventing science fiction as early as the 1840s.This unique collection assembled, translated and introduced by Brian Stableford, gathers 32 of Berthoud's best works, displaying his often pioneering surges of imagination. It includes samples of his remarkable supernatural stories, his eccentric scientific fantasies, featuring real or imaginary scientists, his ground-breaking visions of...

Prince Bonifacio (1864) is a bold conte philosophique, which sets out to mock politics in the scathing fashion of Voltaire and Jonathan Swift, mimicking the form of folktales, but substituting pseudoscientific speculation for magic, and adding an element of satire directed against "mad scientists." This collection also includes three historical stories that flirt with supernatural themes, and two that are innovative endeavors on the margins of the roman scientifique. Louis Ulbach (1822-1889) was one the fieriest Romantics, notorious for his pugnacious diatribes against Emile Zola published in...

One night, young Marius Foulane is mysteriously attracted by the light of the star Gemma and travels by astral projection to the planet Cybele which orbits it. He discovers a world identical to Earth, but historically displaced by 6000 years in the future. On Cybele, Marius discovers evolved dogs capable of speech, computers, and even peaceful relations with other alien species from the same Solar System. Cybele (1891) does have authentic claims to being a significant contribution to the development of French futuristic fiction, and it contains a good deal of material that is still capable of...

Published in 1908, the same year as Gustave Le Rouge's The Vampires of Mars, this pioneering planetary romance is the third French Martian epic after Doctor Omega (1906) and Jean de La Hire's The Nyctalope on Mars (1911), written three years before Burroughs began work on A Princess of Mars. The bold French Engineer Serge Myrandhal travels to Mars in a ship propelled by the power of thought, followed by his fiancee, the brave American novelist Miss Annabella Carpenter, and her guardian, the eccentric British millionaire Sir Washington Pickman. There, they make numerous wondrous discoveries...

The Necessary Evil (1899) features Dr. Armand Caresco, a conscienceless surgeon carrying out medical experiments. Caresco sees himself as an intellectual superman whose discoveries might enable humankind to take a leap forward. This daring book dared to broach such shocking topics as the methodology and occasional necessity of hysterectomies. Andre Couvreur (1863-1944), himself a medical doctor, depicts Caresco's surgical exploits in an explicit, even flamboyant, fashion that harks back to the notorious Marquis de Sade. In spite of his flagrant disapproval of Caresco's morality and alleged...

Dr. Caresco returns in Caresco, Superman (1904), in which the brilliant but mad scientist rules the body-shaped island of Eucrasia whose inhabitants have been transformed--"improved"--by a variety of advanced surgical techniques. The natives are addicted to sensual pleasures, subservient to the will of Caresco, whom they call the "Superman," for fear that he will castrate them--or worse. 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...