The Conqueror of Death
THE CONQUEROR OF DEATH
AND OTHER STORIES FROM LA SCIENCE ILUSTRÉE
Eight proto-science fiction tales by Alphonse Brown, Paul Combes, Camille Debans, Emile Gautier & Georges Price
adapted by Brian Stableford
cover by Yoz
It is, therefore, on 24 June 1999 that America will have the immense pride of inaugurating, by virtue of the genius of its most illustrious son, the new era in which people will be able to say: "I shall no longer die."
US$ 22.95 /GBP 14.99
5x8 tpb, 308 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1-61227-230-6
In the 1890s, a generation before Hugo Gernsback, Louis Figuier, editor of the French popular science magazine La Science Illustrée, made a concerted effort to define and delimit the genre of roman scientifique, using that term to head a series of feuilletons that ran in his magazine from 1888 to 1905.
This is a new collection of eight French proto-science fiction stories taken from the pages of La Science Illustrée, translated and annotated by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford. Included here are Vernian romances, tall tales featuring the dramatic extrapolation of natural phenomena, stories highlighting the scientific obsessions of geniuses with its social and psychological costs, and stories of everyday life in which scientific knowledge comes to play a significant role.
Contents:
The Tribulations of an Angler by Alphonse Brown (1891)
The Story of an Earthquake by Camille Debans (1892)
Le Désiré by Émile Gautier (1893)
Fire Island by Camille Debans (1893)
Springfield's Doubloons by Georges Price (1895)
A Steam Duel by Camille Debans (1895)
The Conqueror of Death by Camille Debans (1895)
The Gold-Mines of Bas-Meudon by Paul Combes (1898)
Introduction and Notes by Brian Stableford.