The Engineer Von Satanas
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THE ENGINEER VON SATANAS
by Albert Robida
adapted by Brian Stableford
cover by Step-han Martiniere
A deluge of fire... crushed under machines... Slaves in the mines or factories... and to finish, miraculous escapes under fire, through the networks of electrified wire...
After fifteen years of absence at the North Pole, a man rediscovers Europe on the verge of war in 1929.
Written in 1919, four years after World War I, The Engineer von Satanas is a classic of futuristic fiction, thirty years ahead of its time, and still relevant today because the threats it describes still exist and still serve as a significant motor of anxiety in contemporary science fiction.
The book also includes both the 1883 and 1887 versions of Robida's classic War in the 20th Century.
Albert Robida (1848-1926), was a remarkable and far-sighted prophet in anticipating future warfare and its consequences on human survivors. The most interesting fact about the shift between the 1887 and 1919 accounts is his realization, as a result of the actual war of 1914-18, that that he had been more accurate than he had supposed, and far more than he had wanted to suppose.
Also included are two additional stories illustrating other close-range reactions to the Great War by French writers who found imaginative fiction an appropriate medium for dramatizing their anxieties.
Contents:
- L'Ingénieur von Satanas (La Renaissance du Livre, 1919)
- The first version of "La Guerre au vingtième siècle" (La Caricature, 1883)
- The second version of "La Guerre au vingtième siècle" (Georges Decaux, 1887)
- De la pluie qui surprit Candide en son jardin et d'un entretien qu'il eut avec divers personages
by Adrien Bertrand (1888-1917) [The Rain that Surprised Candide in his Garden] in L'Orage sur le jardin de Candide (Calmann-Lévy, 1917)
- Comment Paris a été détruit en six heures le 20 avril 1924 (le jour de Paques) by Louis Baudry de Saunier (1865-1938) [How Paris was Destroyed in Six Hours] (Ernest Flammarion, 1924)
Introduction and Notes by Brian Stableford.