68 Camille Flammarion’s Lumen, initially published in the late 1860s and continually reprinted and augmented until the end of the century, had familiarized writers and readers of French scientific romance with the idea that the finite velocity of light in an infinite universe implied that the history of the Earth could be viewed in its entirety from sufficiently distant points in space, by souls possessed of a prodigious acuity of vision and immune from any limitation of velocity—and would still be subject to such inspection long after the Earth had ceased to exist.
69 There is an untranslatable double meaning here, the French word parabole signifying “parable” as well as “parabola” thus conferring an extra metaphorical dimension on the florid phrase.
70 Roughly, “so many heads, so many ideas”—meaning that there are as many different ways of looking at things as there are people looking.
71 Unlike many of Mullem’s linguistic improvisations, this is not a neologism; the term “photoscope” was applied to at least three different 19th century optical devices, more than one of which produced an image that could be, and sometimes was, called a “photoscopie” in French and a “photoscopy” in English.
72 I have transcribed this improvisation directly from the French; its second part is derived from the same Latin root as “colony” and means “inhabitant,” so the whole signifies a native of the air, embracing birds, flying insects and other airborne life-forms.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION
Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company
Charles Asselineau. The Double Life
Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse
Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller
Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future
Alphonse Brown. City of Glass
Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow
Didier de Chousy. Ignis
Captain Danrit. Undersea Odyssey
C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)
Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole
Georges T. Dodds. The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men
Alfred Driou. The Adventures of a Parisian Aeronaut
J.-C. Dunyach. The Night Orchid; The Thieves of Silence
Henri Duvernois. The Man Who Found Himself
Achille Eyraud. Voyage to Venus
Henri Falk. The Age of Lead
Charles de Fieux. Lamékis
Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega
Edmond Haraucourt. Illusions of Immortality
Nathalie Henneberg. The Green Gods
Michel Jeury. Chronolysis
Gustave Kahn. The Tale of Gold and Silence
Gérard Klein. The Mote in Time’s Eye
André Laurie. Spiridon
Gabriel de Lautrec. The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait
Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny. The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (2 vols.)
Gustave Le Rouge. The Vampires of Mars; The Dominion of the World (4 vols)
Jules Lermina. Mysteryville; Panic in Paris; The Secret of Zippelius; To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers
José Moselli. Illa’s End
John-Antoine Nau. Enemy Force
Henri de Parville. An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars
Gaston de Pawlowski. Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension
Georges Pellerin. The World in 2000 Years
Henri de Régnier. A Surfeit of Mirrors
Maurice Renard. The Blue Peril; Doctor Lerne; The Doctored Man; A Man Among the Microbes; The Master of Light
Jean Richepin. The Wing
Albert Robida. The Clock of the Centuries; Chalet in the Sky
J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Givreuse Enigma; The Mysterious Force; The Navigators of Space; Vamireh; The World of the Variants; The Young Vampire
Marcel Rouff. Journey to the Inverted World
Han Ryner. The Superhumans
Brian Stableford (anthologist) The Germans on Venus; News from the Moon; The Supreme Progress; The World Above the World; Nemoville
Jacques Spitz. The Eye of Purgatory
Kurt Steiner. Ortog
Eugène Thébault. Radio-Terror
C.-F. Tiphaigne de La Roche. Amilec
Théo Varlet. The Xenobiotic Invasion (w/Octave Joncquel). The Martian Epic; (w/André Blandin) Timeslip Troopers
Paul Vibert. The Mysterious Fluid
English adaptation and introduction Copyright 2011 by Brian Stableford.
Cover illustration Copyright 2011 by Mike Hoffman.
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ISBN 978-1-935558-82-8. First Printing. February 2011. Published by Black Coat Press, an imprint of Hollywood Comics.com, LLC, P.O. Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416. All rights reserved. Except for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The stories and characters depicted in this novel are entirely fictional. Printed in the United States of America.
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