New Releases May 2018

by X. B. Saintine - adapted  by Brian Stableford - cover by Mandy. READ AN EXCERPT - 504 p. - US$ 36.95

Jonathan the Visionary (1823) is a collection of fantasy tales told by a mysterious immortal called Jonathan (who is only featured as an active narrator in a few of them). It includes The Story of an Antediluvian Civilization, which retells the history of a civilization from Ethiopia, only a few distant echoes of which survive today. Ranging from prehistorical fantasy to post-apocalypse, it provides a prophetic indication of the manner in which our own civilization might degenerate. The fact that scientific and technological progress is presented here as a symptom of social disease makes Saintine’s vision more modern and radical than any of his contemporaries.  

to purchase

by X. B. Saintine - adapted by Brian Stableford - cover by Mandy. READ AN EXCERPT - 304 p. - US$ 23.95

The Second Life (1864) was Saintine’s swan song. This collection of fictitious dreams, hallucinations and metaphysical fantasies examine the nature of dreaming from a viewpoint infused by contemporary psychological science, when the phenomena of dreams and hallucinations had begun to attract serious attention, but had not yet reduced to Freudian analyses. The Second Life is a remarkable book, as much in its self-indulgence as in its strangeness, covering a remarkably wide spectrum, while always retaining a firm moral anchorage. It is one of the finest and most ambitious 19th century extensions of the tradition of contes philosophiques.

to purchase

by Etienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon - adapted by Brian Stableford - cover by Mike Hoffman. READ AN EXCERPT - 300 p. - US$ 23.95

In The Mysterious Hermit of the Tomb (1816), the evil Arembert consigns his father to a dark dungeon, and has his brother assassinated in order to get his hands on the vast family estate of Saint-Felix. Bur unbeknownst to him, his brother has survived and returns in the guise of a strange Hermit, intent on persecuting Arembert using all the tricks that the darkest phantasmagoria can provide. The action takes place during the bloody Albigensian crusade of the 12th century. Lamothe-Langon attempts to blend Gothic horror fiction and chivalric romance, depicting the genocidal participants of the Albigensian crusade as if they were knights of medieval romance, and adding Gothic villains and castles replete with subterrains and garish hauntings into the mix. The resulting work does have a surreal charm that transcends the limits of the genres it tries to amalgamate.

to purchase