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André Couvreur's Human Seed, (1903) was one of the most shocking works of its era, one that attempted more fervently than any other to push back the boundaries of the conventionally-unmentionable, such as contraception, abortion and eugenics, illustrated through the lives of the eighteen children of the Grignon family, afflicted by the ongoing social disasters of syphilis and alcoholism.It will seem to many contemporary readers to be a truly bizarre novel, not so much in putting forward the argument that it does, but in shaping the plot that illustrates and exemplifies said argument.Human Seed is part of a series which includes The Necessary Evil and the futuristic utopian fantasy Caresco, Superman, featuring the brilliant but unscrupulous surgeon Caresco. Human Seed is a truly original work, and a crucial element of a unique and spectacular whole.

Young knight Konrad de Felseneck, last descendant of a noble line, discovers that a curse hangs over his family: women are the curse of the Felseneck since the betrayal of his ancestor during the first crusade. Then he falls into the hands of the beautiful and cruel Gertrude, a young widow whose previous husbands have killed themselves in despair.The Angel and the Sphinx (1897) is one of the most phantasmagorical and intense Romantic and Symbolist novels on the themes of femmes fatales, reincarnation and expiation. Penned by Edgar Schuré, the author of The Great Initiates (1889), it appeals to fans of flamboyant fantasy fiction as well as connoisseurs of Symbolist fiction.

Meet the oddest superheroes ever - Baron Sarcasm, a Scrooge-like, wealthy, cantankerous elderly man living in a castle somewhere in the French countryside; his niece, the pretty, spunky Mademoiselle Mademoiselle, also a brilliant inventor, her son Gizmo, and their cousin, a gentle giant nicknamed Captain Camembert. Together, they built a rocket in their backyard shed in 1954, went exploring into outer space, and returned today, having barely aged a day, now transformed into… The Lunatic Legion! But are they the same astronauts who left half a century ago?Discover the origins of the Legion and its first adventure in two stories by writer Jean-Marc Lofficier, French artist Cyril Bouquet and Spanish-born artist David Lafuente, known for his work on Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man and The Adventures of Archer & Armstrong.

The present volume contains De Lautrec's short novel The Sacred Fire (1904), and a selection from short prose poems (1898). The latter benefit from being juxtaposed with the former because one of the episodes of the novel reveals the circumstances in which they were composed, with not only explains their surreal nature but allows them to serve as an illustration of the argument made in that episode.The Sacred Fire opens with a description of a secret ritual practiced by one of the cults of the French Occult Revival, and much of the discussion featured in the story deals with the nature and philosophy of magic. Despite its ground-breaking nature, it never achieved publication in volume form until now.The prose poems are among the most important precursors of surrealism, contemporary with the most significant contributions that Alfred Jarry made to the preliminary foundations of that movement. They are among the most extreme examples of the Decadent Movement, and together with the short novel a fascinating commentary on its psychology and esthetics.

William's Angel (1838) is based on the story of William FitzOsbert, who led a popular uprising by the citizens of London in the spring of 1196, and was executed. S. Henry Berthoud goes on to weave a semi-mythical retelling of this incident, that includes the characters of Robin Hood and Richard the Lionheart.This book also includes a collection of ten other stories illustrating how Berthoud became an important pioneer of the conte cruel, and one of the first writers to experiment with that would later be called "stream-of-consciousness" narration. The love of reckless fantasy that was evident in many of his early works is still evident in these conspicuously Gothic horror stories.

During the Reign of French King Charles VI, a fierce struggle for power develops between the king's brother, Louis d'Orléans, and his cousin, Jean de Bourgogne. When the latter instigates the murder of the former in 1407, the conflict degenerates into a civil war between Burgundians and Armagnacs.In the midst of this blood-drenched background, a mysterious comedian and proto-anarchist nicknamed the "Prince of Fools" schemes to save the innocent, punish the villains, and undermine the aristocratic order invisibly and subtly through the medium of plays.The Prince of Fools was initially published in 1887 prefaced (or possibly extensively rewritten?) by Gérard de Nerval's editor, Louis Ulbach, who claimed to have located the manuscript, which was itself based on an unproduced play by Nerval.

The Alluring (1931) is what is known as a Robinsonade-an account of a castaway on a desert island and his hard battle for physical and psychological survival. Félicien Champsaur, having decided to write a Robinsonade, aware that he was following in a great tradition, wanted to make it a Robinsonade that would go further than any other: a kind of ultimate Robinsonade.His principal interest is not in the basic requirements for physical survival, but in the subtler demands of mental survival: hypothetical solutions to the problem of psychological isolation.The Alluring is worthy of attention, not only because of the imaginative extravagance of the story, which displays an exuberant and sometimes blackly comic playfulness typical of Champsaur's work, but also because of its idiosyncratic nature.

Who is the mysterious enitity who has transported the indomitable GUARDIAN OF THE REPUBLIC to Mexico in the 16th century? And for what obscure reasons?The course of history is being threatened by the invasion of the powerful Baal-Sagur, a.k.a. THE NECROMANCER, who intends to chase the Spaniards and other Westerners from the New World and seize control of the American continent for himself. But the villainous mastermind did not plan for the intervention of CAPTAIN DRAGUT and his lovely companion, the vampire SCARLET LIPS...What role will the GUARDIAN play in this frantic battle for the future of the New World? And will the TIME BRIGADE from the 41st century be able to thwart the machiavellian traps that an old enemy of theirs has laid across the strands of time?This historical epic by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Alfredo Macall starts on New Year's eve and spans three eras in a mad quest for the control of the future.

The TWILIGHT PEOPLE, hidden for centuries, are awakening, thirsty for their ancient rituals of blood, reaady to strike in the City of Angels in this new millennium... But then comes the one able to fight the forces of darkness... Returning to Los Angeles to investigate the death of his father and the disappearance of his brother, the young RICHARD DAMON discovers the existence of a monstrous conspiracy spanning millennia... Story by Jean-Marc Lofficier; art by J.M. Arden & Manuel Martin Peniche; cover by Manuel Martin Peniche; colors by Anthony Dugenest & Studio Cique.

The novel is set in the 1480s, during the war in which the French annexed Bretagne. At the Benedictine Abbey in Paimpol, a scholarly monk named Ollivier, reputed to have practiced necromancy, is buried under the watchful eyes of two Dominican heresy hunters, the burial only attended by his fellow scholar Brother Primael, who believes him to be innocent of any wrongdoing, and believes the same of Gilles de Rais, whose court at Tiffauges both men visited in their youth. Before falling ill, Ollivier had spent three months at the Château de Tardivel and the forested region of Herbriant, where the epileptic chatelaine was once locked away by her husband as a madwoman, and her daughter Aidrena, is also chronically ill, while the young Vicomte who has recently inherited the title, Corentin, has indeed been practicing necromancy with Ollivier's aid. Primael is sent to Tardivel at Corentin's request, ostensibly to give succor to his mother and sister, but actually to assist him in his experiments in necromancy, now aimed at the summoning of Ollivier's spirit. Primael is immediately engulfed in a nightmarish series of events, both hallucinatory and real, through which he must negotiate a path in the hope of deciding in which direction virtue really lies, and solving the puzzle of exactly what Ollivier and Corentin had accomplished in their necromancy, and what its consequences might be for the inhabitants of Tardivel.

HOMICRON is a NASA scientist whose body is inhabited by a mysterious alien from planet Alpha. STARLOCK is the former servant of supremely powerful cosmic entities who has managed to escape from his Martian prison and is hiding on Earth. FUTURA is a mysterious woman from a parallel dimension. JALEB is the secretive agent of a Galactic Federation of telepaths. JAYDEE is a teenage, alien metamorph, abandoned on Earth as a baby, and who may well be the deadliest killing machine in the universe...These characters, all "strangers" to Earth, are brought together by TANKA, a former jungle lord who has been recruited by entities from our planet's farthest future to be their "time agent" and is now empowered to protect our world from extra-terrestrial menaces.In this third volume of Strangers, which completes the second season of the series, the Strangers at long last confront the supremely powerful galactic entities known as the Towers, who desire to recapture Starlock. Meanwhile, Futura faces up to the deadly Zorr-Ko and the god Coyote, while Jaleb is hunted by the Galactic Federation. Special guest-stars: Ozark, master of the Mystic Arts, Stormshadow, shaman of the Twilight People, and the Hexagon group!Six full-length stories written by Jean-Marc Lofficier with art by Sergio Fernandez Davila, Mariano De La Torre, Anthony Dugenest, Alfredo Macall, Victor Nava and Alfonso Ruis.

This two-volume collection assembles all the known tales of the fays published by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy (1651-1705).From the early 1690s onwards, Madame d'Aulnoy was an active member of a literary salon where she and the Comtesse de Murat became the most prolific contributors to the new genre of the contes de fees, which they helped invent, shape and develop. Like almost all of the other members of her coterie, she became a renegade female aristocrat writing tales for the select consumption of other renegade female aristocrats about a world the corrupt glamour of which they understood only too well, with a depth of sarcasm that the innocent could not be expected to comprehend.One should regard Madame d'Aulnoy and the Comtesse de Murat as significant writers of Decadent fantasy, and one wonders what they might have done had they been allowed to continue with their work. Given that both had extraordinary imaginative range, it is hard to imagine that they would have run out of inspiration, had they not been violently stopped in their tracks. We have to be grateful that they contrived to publish as much as they did during their brief window of opportunity, leaving behind fugitive material that could be recovered once the worst of the repression had blown over.Considered separately Madame d'Aulnoy and the Comtesse de Murat were great writers of imaginative fiction, but as a competitive collective, they are unique in literary history, and it is as part of that collective endeavor that Madame d'Aulnoy is fully entitled to her classic status today.

This two-volume collection assembles all the known tales of the fays published by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy (1651-1705).From the early 1690s onwards, Madame d'Aulnoy was an active member of a literary salon where she and the Comtesse de Murat became the most prolific contributors to the new genre of the contes de fees, which they helped invent, shape and develop. Like almost all of the other members of her coterie, she became a renegade female aristocrat writing tales for the select consumption of other renegade female aristocrats about a world the corrupt glamour of which they understood only too well, with a depth of sarcasm that the innocent could not be expected to comprehend.One should regard Madame d'Aulnoy and the Comtesse de Murat as significant writers of Decadent fantasy, and one wonders what they might have done had they been allowed to continue with their work. Given that both had extraordinary imaginative range, it is hard to imagine that they would have run out of inspiration, had they not been violently stopped in their tracks. We have to be grateful that they contrived to publish as much as they did during their brief window of opportunity, leaving behind fugitive material that could be recovered once the worst of the repression had blown over.Considered separately Madame d'Aulnoy and the Comtesse de Murat were great writers of imaginative fiction, but as a competitive collective, they are unique in literary history, and it is as part of that collective endeavor that Madame d'Aulnoy is fully entitled to her classic status today.

Galaor de Montbars, Musketeer of French King Louis XIII, is forced to flee France because of the schemes of the sinister Cardinal de Richelieu. Later, he is transported far, far into the past to Mû, the legendary fifth planet, the destruction of which produced the Asteroid Belt. On this world of gold, steeped in legends, rich in treasures and secrets, a cosmic crossroads where the gods of the past and the men of the future have clashed, Galaor fights the undead armies of Lord Kesh, the witches of the Isle of Doom, and other dark forces that threaten the Topaz Throne of Empress Nikkan...This prodigious saga of word & sorcery is illustrated by Alfredo Macall, Philippe Xavier, and Stéphane & Oliver Peru.

In 1720, Nicolas Treml de La Tremlay is a pro-independence Breton lord. One day, he decides to go and have a duel with Philippe II, Duke of Orléans:, Regent of France. If he wins, Brittany will be free, but if he loses, he will be sentenced for crime of lèse-majesté. Before he leaves Brittany, he makes an agreement with his cousin, Hervé de Vaunoy so that his grandson, Georges, will inherit his vast estate if he dies. But Georges is just a five-year-old child and Nicolas is imprisoned in the Bastille with his faithful servant, Jude Leker. Meanwhile, the villainous Hervé tries to drown the boy to steal his inheritance. But a mysterious albino known only as Jean Blanc watches and rescues the infant.Twenty years later, the forest of Rennes near Treml has become the lair of the Wolves, a band of poor peasants who want to take revenge upon the local lords who oppress them. The Wolves' leader is a mysterious masked man called the White Wolf. A young officer of the King of France, Captain Didier, is sent to Brittany to suppress the rebellion and capture the White Wolf. But the crime committed by Hervé twentuy years earlier casts a large shadow, and events unfold in a way no one could have predicted... In this remarkable historical novel -- amongst his first, published in 1843 -- Paul Féval throws a light on a little known period of French history, while evidencing his fascination for criminal gangs and masterful villains. In The White Wolf, he makes use of the obin Hood myth, but also anticipates the characters of Zorro and The Scarlet Pimpernel in the operson of his eponymous masked avenger.

Catulle Mendès (1841-1909) wrote more tales featuring fays than any other French writer-nearly twice as many as Madame d'Aulnoy. However, by the 1880s, the genre had been largely misremembered and remained unread for a hundred years. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Mendès elected to draw his own imaginative raw materials from Shakespeare rather from than any original French sources.Even though his tales feature a different species of fays, Mendès' belated contributions to the genre have closer affinities with it than he may have suspected. He is a deliberately subversive writer, not only employing the narrative dynamic of his fantasies to insist that amour is far from perfect, but frequently applauding certain aspects of that imperfection.This volume provides a useful illustration of a significant, if eccentric, phase in the history of the genre.

1914: Hurtling to Earth like a meteor comes the Great Brain, a vampiric monster frantically determined to survive the end of his reign on Mars. Seizing the mind of a human, he inadvertently prevents a catastrophic World War, but transforms Earth into a dark, horror-filled planet with massive techno-cities and nightmarish technology.1920: Irma Vep, the legendary cat-burglar of the Vampires, and her lover/partner, the fearsome being only known the Eidolon, investigate a series of terrible murders that has shaken the city of Marseilles. Together, they face not only the powerful criminal empire of the Red Hand, but also demonic forces stirred by the Great Brain. The fate of the world, not to mention a little profit, lies in the balance! Irma Vep, played by the lovely Musidora, was the star of Louis Feuillade's 1915 silent serial, Les Vampires. Frank Schildiner is the author of the Frankenstein and the Napoleon's Vampire Hunters series for Black Coat Press. This novel, the first in a new series, blends dystopic science fiction elements with characters created by legendary French author Gustave Le Rouge. Afteerword by Jean-Marc Lofficier.

The Contes de fées, defined here as tales that contain fées, i.e.: "fays" (as opposed to "fairies," which in British literary history referred to imaginary entities often different from the French fées), were invented by aristocratic women of the 17th century, such as Madame d'Aulnoy, the Comtesse de Murat, Madame Leprince de Beaumont, etc.In making visible the operations of the human heart, they also did so with their torments, fears and resentments: the tightly-laced corset of social convention, the catastrophe of arranged marriages; the tyranny and frequent brutality of those in legal control of their lives and fortunes.Such aspects of everyday life were exaggerated by the conventions of the genre: the princesses were the most beautiful in the world, or the ugliest; the prisons in which they were contained were inaccessibly tall towers or lightless subterrains, often guarded by dragons; their captors were ogres, hags or giants, often addicted to setting them impossible tasks to complete, under the threat of dire punishment. And the fantasies of their salvation were exaggerated in consequence, beyond all reasonable expectation: the magic wand of a good fay, and, perhaps even more implausibly, the trustworthy love of a good man.Since the 1970s, there has been a spectacular increase in the popularity of a kind of fantasy that has revivified many of the imaginative materials previously developed in the contes de fées, and they can now be seen as a key link in a strand of imaginative literature that extends forwards from Classical literature and Medieval Romance all the way to a significant sector of contemporary literary production, and its extensions into visual media, connected not merely by the complex transference of imagery, but by the underlying psychology of composition and consumption. In order to understand modern fantasy fully, it is therefore necessary to understand its roots in previous literary genres, and one of the most important is the conte de fées.This volume also includes 38 exemplary stories sampled from 1696 to 1914, forming the most complete anthology devoted to the History of the Faerie to-date.Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 70 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He has also translated many of the works reviewed herein for Black Coat Press.

Zigomar is a character dreamed up by Léon Sazie in 1909, two years before the now much more celebrated Fantômas. An evil, nefarious character, a criminal genius, Zigomar was so popular in his time that his picture could be found on bags of bread, pipes and matchboxes. Masked, hooded, or in disguise, Zigomar constantly bedevils the law. The first of the masked super-criminals, he shares with Fantômas a taste for gratuitous, melodramatic crimes, imaginative atrocities (typhus-bearing mosquitoes being only one such example), murder, kidnapping, robbery, and torture. His inevitable escape from the clutches of the law, his perpetual evasion of justice, made him very popular with the public and he left his mark on the history of crime fiction.Of Basque origin, Léon Sazie was born in Algeria in 1862 and died in an accident in Suresne near Paris in 1939. When he was still a child, his father committed suicide after being ruined in a bank fraud. Sazie eventually became a journalist, before turning to theater and, eventually, to serial fiction. He created Martin Numa, King of detectives, in 1908, and Zigomar a year later. He was also a brilliant fencer who fought several duels. This volume, translated and introduced by Michael Shreve, contains a translation of the first of the six Zigomar novels, plus an introduction, bibliography and filmography (Zigomar was adapted three times for the screen in silent movie serials).

As the contes de fées suffered a decline in fashionability in the 1750s, they began to rely on hybridization with Oriental and Medieval fantasies. The thirteen stories collected in this volume may be replete with fays, ogres, magic swords and other motifs, but they also revolve around a series of moral dilemmas, provided with fanciful magically-aided resolutions, although reflecting real philosophical debates of the times.Among the philosophers and free thinkers who made a contribution to the genre and are included in this volume are the renowned Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swedish diplomat Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, Charles Duclos and François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif two members of the French Academy, and the exiled defrocked nun Marianne-Agnès Falques, who assisted William Beckford on Vathek.

In the tales collected here, published in 1750-55, Madame Fagnan demonstrates that the fantastic can be a useful instrument in the advancement of Enlightenment, because rather than in spite of its absurdity. Her sardonic narrative points out the absurdity of the conte de fées, and emphasizes that the age of the fays, if ever there was one, reached its twilight long before history became possible.Madame Fagnan's work as a whole asserts that fays are not, and never could be, up to the task of providing miracles, because the inevitably corrupting effects of their power would always lead them to indifference toward human suffering, if not to the malevolence of causing it. That, rather than any scientific skepticism relating to the workability of magic, is the Enlightenment that hammered the nails into the coffin of the genre, and although the final nail had yet to be added, that coffin was already sealed by 1755.

Established in 1950, Hexagon Comics is France's oldest comics publisher, with a universe of characters as diverse and varied as Marvel's or DC's.This profusely illustrated 300-page history, assembled and edited by RJM Lofficier, includes articles by Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Joe Kubert, Roy Thomas and Mike Baron, ten comics stories, four prose stories by America's best pulp authors, illustrations by Paul Pope, Stan Sakai, Steve Rude, Steve Bissette, Jean-Claude Forest and dozens of the world's best comic artists, interviews, biographies, characters' profiles, a text that traces the history of Hexagon, from its first publication in 1950, and more.HEXAGON COMICS: THE FIRST 70 YEARS is "a discovery of unsung European comic books, heretofore unseen by American readers" (Will Eisner), and an "eye-filling collection of some of the best series that Hexagon produced during its long and lustrous history" (Stan Lee), not to be missed by any true comic-book aficionado.

Françoise le Marchand deserves to be reckoned a significant, if slightly shadowy, figure in the revival of contes de fées in 1730s and 1740s France.It is not obvious why either of the two novellas translated here, Florine (1713) and Boca (1735) had to be published illicitly, but it undoubtedly reflects the fact that the genre was effectively under a royal ban in the aftermath of the scandal that had caused Louis XIV to break up the coterie of female writers who pioneered it. Le Marchand could not have been unaware of the fact that the scandal involved allegations of lesbianism, and the two works presented here contain odd features, which might not be unconnected with that context. While a little eccentric in their construction, both works stand out for their imaginative imagery.

The Comte de Caylus was one of the major writers of the "second wave" of fairy tales produced in the 1730s and 1740s, when the publication of unlicensed works became far too abundant for effective suppression by the authorities. He displayed a flair for the bizarre that continually edged into the surreal, and never entirely forsook the spirit of parody in which he had commenced. His tales expand on the notion that the fays have a council which regulates their activity and Faerie comes to refer to the polity of the fays, a kind of parallel world in which fays and other supernatural beings live.His collection of tales set in a land where faerie has determined the people must change sex every year on their birthday also aspires to the status of a conte philosophique. The real strength of his longer stories lies in their many phantasmagorical elements. No other writer of fairy tales gives the impression of dabbling in the genre purely for fun, even if Caylus does take time out to add a literary flourish, make a shrewd observation, or insert a serious argument. Because of that, in spite of its literary flaws, Caylus' work remains very entertaining.

Trompe l'Oeil! To cheat the eye! To concoct the perfect illusion! To deceive, lie and dissemble! What better way to encapsulate the myriad of tricks employed the villains to gain the upper hand on the heroes? But do the latter always fall victim to such cunning snares? Not so -- as illustrated in the twenty stories collected in this volume!Doctor Omega faces his deadliest arch-enemy in a strange museum… Professor Challenger attempts a bold physics experiment… The Nyctalope and Judex unite to fights a fascist regime… Arsene Lupin faces the Devil Doctor… Irma Vep attempts a very risky robbery… Rotwang's robots invade 14th century Spain… Spiridon the Giant Ant investigates a sinister plot… Edgar Poe is snatched from his own time by the Philadelphia Experiment…In this fifteenth volume of Tales of the Shadowmen, the only anthology dedicated to international heroes and villains of pulp literature, writers from England, France, Switzerland and the United States unite to pay homage to those great champions and master criminals who enchanted our adolescence.

From the darkest streets of Venice in the 16th century to the lonely beaches of Yucatan today... From the Île Saint-Louis in Paris to Hitler's Germany... the vampire Scarlet Lips leads a merciless war against the mysterious organization called "the Dawn," with the fate of the human race in the balance... Spanning the centuries, Scarlet Lips crosses the paths of Dragut, the Black Lys, the Prince of Night and the Partisans... She struggles to defeat a fantastic conspiracy which threatens not only her survival but also that of her race, the legendary Twilight People... Marv Wolfman (Tomb of Dracula), Jean-Marc Lofficier (Dr. Strange) and Mario Guevara (Solomon Kane) have crafted here a saga imbued with blood and wonders, illuminating the entire Hexagon Universe with a crimson glow!

JUNE 1944. The day before the Allied landing. A group of super-powered Nazis threatens the success of Operation Overlord: Stahlmann, Vampyr, Scarlet Lips and other, even more terrifying creatures can stop the progress of the Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy... But Churchill and De Gaulle have anticipated the danger! They dispatch a team of fearless heroes led by Captain Rick Ross, a.k.a. Baroud, the Archer Princess Sadko, the French Guardian of the Republic and Marianne, the famous Black Lys, the legendary Metal Man and the young American Ricky Rox... The fate of Europe is now in the hands of THE PARTISANS!A prodigious saga of the last days of World War II published in France to commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day and brilliantly staged by Roy Thomas (All-Star Squadron, Invaders), R.J.M. Lofficier (Dr. Strange) and Mario Guevara (Solomon Kane).

Mademoiselle de Lubert's first fantastic tale, published in 1737, was the striking original Tecserion in which the eponymous king of the Land of Ostriches is madly in love with Belzamire, Princess of Flowers, who herself dotes on the King's nephew, Melidor. The story is replete with elaborate descriptions of strange societies, including one located on Venus. The fascination extravagantly displayed in her stories with the metamorphoses of humans into animals is reflected in the ambiguous naming of realms and individuals. Such metamorphoses are a common motif within the genre, but no other writer ever deployed it with the same intensity and fascination as Mademoiselle de Lubert. Both Princess Camion and Prince Frozen and Princess Sparkling (1743) strike a better balance between surreal extravagance and narrative discipline, but remain flamboyant and intent on defying conventional expectations. There is justice in the fact that Princess Camion is now her best known work by virtue of the availability on line of a video of a 2014 dramatization by a French theater company.

The stories collected in Victor-Emile Michelet's Superhuman Tales (1900) reveal his determined and constant ambition to push various envelopes in horror, fantasy and supernatural, which gives them a unique, particular edge. Michelet makes considerable efforts to distance his work from the conventional formulae. His tales draw energy and charm from the earnest esotericism of their central motifs, and poignantly exploit the author's fascination with death. Filled with the ironic spirit of the contes cruels, which dominated upmarket short fiction during the fin-de-siècle, they are visionary fantasies with a peculiar obliquity that is the hallmark of his work. Michelet took his fantasy and symbolism seriously, especially when their extrapolation led him by convoluted paths to the strange conclusions displayed in this collection.

Journey to the Isles of Atlantis is the sixteenth volume in a series of anthologies translating antique items of French roman scientifique. Included in this collection are Fututistic Paris in 5839 (1822), a story for which the editor was fined a thousand francs and sentenced to three months in prison; The Clockmaker of Nuremberg (1882) and The Inventor (1902), which anticipate the age of aviation; King Beta (1905), in which an aeronaut ends up in a kingdom where modern science is unknown and people still believe in the power of enchanters. Optimistic accounts of the human future future are presented in Humans in the Year 3000 (1907), dedicated to H G Wells, and The Discovery of the Earth in 2009 (1909). Finally, the eponymous Atlantis-based fantasy written in 1914 features Plato's fictitious island, and uses that vanished civilization as a satirical reflection of contemporary France.