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A collection of fairy tales bearing the signature Mademoiselle de *** was originally printed in Paris in two volumes in July 1697, and reissued in 1707, this time being attributed to Charlotte-Rose Caumont de La Force (1650-1724). Of all the pioneering writers of contes de fées, Mademoiselle de La Force is perhaps the one who took the greatest imaginative license from the freedom to make arbitrary inventions and narrative moves. Her tales tell a story that is very different from the historical fantasies built on Perrault's moralistic tales for children. The morals attached to Mademoiselle de La Force's tales are certainly not aimed at children. In fact, what distinguishes her tales from those of her most famous contemporaries is their evident moral unease. By far the most famous of her tales is "Persinette" which was plagiarized by Friedrich Schultz, who retitled it "Rapunzel" (1790), and it was subsequently collected under that title by the Brothers Grimm. That version became the basis for the Disney film Tangled (2010).All eight stories collected here give evidence of some painful existential wounds that led the author to say of herself, "I have always been deceived, and only found in my entire life one good friend; I have had perfidious and false friends in quantity…."

The Iron Man is a fascinating cross-section of the works of Louis-Sébastien Mercier (1740-1814), a unique writer whose originality and enterprise has never yet been given the full credit that it deserves. From an early contribution to the development of the literary vampire to a pair of revealing philosophical spectacles, from a world that seems to be the best of all possible worlds to interplanetary voyages, and the eponymous "Iron Man," a precursor of superhero fiction, many of Mercier's visionary fantasies are still fresh and original today, his exploratory zest not having been weighed down by the burden of subsequent sophistication. We can best appreciate the full effect of the liberation that the device of dreaming gave to his literary imagination, turning him into a genuine precursor of surrealism who created a number of what were to become conventional tropes of supernatural fiction in original ways.

Stories by Catherine Bernard, François Fénelon, Louis de Mailly and Jean de Préchac. This volume includes three tales by Catherine Bernard (1662-1712), one of the originators of contes de fées, that deliberately subvert not merely their narrative strategy, but also their entire mythology; two enigmatic allegories of French history as seen through the prism of faerie by Jean de Préchac (1647-1720); four stories by François Fénelon (1651-1715), and The Illustrious Fays, a collection of tales by Chevalier de Mailly (1657-1724), which shows how the contes de fées quickly became suited to very different narrative purposes. The variety embraced by these stories is a striking illustration of the versatility of a format that seemed, at first, to be rather narrow. If some of stories seem more stereotyped and less ambitious, the spectrum they display is not lacking in color and variety, and the more flamboyant of them make significant additions to the imagery assembled by the core writers of the original school.

The remarkable stories included in this volume, published in the 1730s, show a marked evolution in the contes de fées, each being more substantial, and more imaginatively innovative than its predecessor.Although they clearly attempt to take up where Baronne d'Aulnoy and Comtesse de Murat had been forced to leave off, in terms of their imaginative extravagance, their use of metamorphoses and their quirky employment of allegory exhibit a further development in the direction of the calculatedly absurd and the surreal.These are not the only works of the period to extrapolate its licensed disorder to the chaotic brink of surrealism, but they do so more self-consciously than most. The stories gathered herein provide an intriguing kaleidoscopic pattern, and can justly be reckoned to be more than the sum of their parts.

In The Murdered City (1925), Blasius, an unknown and mocked scholar, manages to create a philosopher's stone which transforms everything it touches into gold. This diabolical man acquires an island, gathers other unfortunate people, builds a fantastic city and reigns over it.The Murdered City has affinities with accounts of island utopias gone wrong and doomed superscientific cities. Science enables the fulfillment of the ancient alchemical dream, but gold here functions as a symbol of modern civilization as an irresistible force of corruption. A second novel included in this volume, By Wireless (1927), shares the speculative elements of the plot, the strange character of its disfigured protagonist, and the bizarrerie of his hopeless and fatal amorous obsession.

The landscapes of the soul are more wonderful than the landscapes of the starry sky. Not only are their Milky Ways thousands of stars, but their shadowy abysses are a life multiplied by a thousand…In the Venezuelan jungle, a team of scientists led by Karin Stockhausen -- the daughter of a wealthy American - are kidnapped by a criminal organization that offers to free them in exchange for a large ransom, or else... The astrophysicist Phil Caldwell is then beheaded by the kidnappers. With his awareness now trapped inside his brain, Phil gradually discovers different facets of his personality.Outre-Blanc is a vertiginous and endless odyssey beyond the boundaries of space, time and consciousness... An atypical duo in the world of the French SF, Oksana and Gil Prou are the authors of seven novels including Un Matin Différent which received the Golden Pen award in 2016.

Singular Amours is a collection of three novellas published in 1886; it is the fruit of the author's interest in psychological science, and represents a significant contribution to the evolving subgenre of "case study" fiction. What Thiaudière calls "singular amours" explores unusual instances of passion, in the hope that the peculiarities of the phenomenon might be brought out more clearly by the contemplation of its extremes.The three examples offered in the book provide an interesting spectrum, from a fascinating account of a psychological haunting, to a study of obsessions couched as a mystery story, nda remarkable narrative of psychological dependency.Edmond Thiaudière (1837-193)) was a novelist, poet, philosopher, a pacifist and the founder in 1876 of the prestigious Revue des Idées Nouvelles.

Bel Demonio takes place in the Spoleto region of Italy between 1625 and 1655. Ercole Vitelli murders his cousin, Francis Vitelli, who is the legitimate heir of the wealthy Monteleone family, under the eyes of Francis' son, Andrea. Fifteen years later, Andrea returns seeking revenge, posing as "Demonio," the leader of a ring of bandits. Bel Demonio (1850) and The Companions of the Silence (1857), were retroactively linked by Paul Féval to his saga of the Black Coats, functioning as the backstory of that vast criminal conspiracy. Andrea Vitelli is cast in the same mold as Monte-Cristo. At the heart of the plot is revenge for a crime committed with impunity. But if the revenge plot is the engine that keeps the action going, Féval can't hide his fascination for the character of the criminal mastermind at the center of it all, even if at heart he is secretly a hero. Bel Demonio is an important stepping-stone in the development of modern popular fiction.

Naples, 1806. The new kingdom is under attack from forces that even Napoleon's mighty army cannot defeat. An antediluvian evil has risen and seeks to regain her lost power. The undead are remaking the city into a land of plague and ashes.The Emperor dispatches his vampire hunters, the dour swordmaster Jean Pierre Séverin and the Austrian exorcist Franz Karnstein. With the aid of Bartolomeo Dardi and his lovely daughter, Sylvia, they will face the dreaded Neapolitan secret police, undead creatures from the Vampire City of Selene, horrors from beyond, as well as the deadly Michele Bozzo, a.k.a. Fra Diavolo, the future leader of the Black Coats! Frank Schildiner is the author of Napoleon's Vampire Hunters and two Frankenstein novels, and is a regular contributor to the popular Tales of the Shadowmen series. This novel, like its predecessor, draws from characters created by legendary French author Paul Féval.

In March 1913, a nuclear rocket-powered spaceship leaves France to explore the planets of the Solar System. On board are the intrepid Marquis de Valsorres, the eminent Dr. Portier, the beautiful Zabeth and their loyal companion, Thomas. After a long stay on an utopian-like Mars, they reach the prehistoric world of Saturn. But in the meantime the Great War has started on Earth and a rival German expedition threatens their very survival… The Ring of Light first appeared as a feuilleton serial in the daily newspaper Le Petit Parisien from 6 November 1921 to 4 February 1922, more than a year Herman Oberth's seminal By Rocket into Interplanetary Space (1923), and Otto Willi Gail's The Shot into Infinity (1925). It is of considerable interest with regard to the history of French speculative fiction, especially interplanetary fiction, for it is one of the earliest responses to the popularizing of the notion that space travel might become practicable with the aid of rockets, and particularly rockets propelled by atomic power derived from radium.

Pan's Flute (1897), Etruscan Amour (1898) and Setne's Women (1903) are three bold and lurid mythological fantasies dealing with erotic obsessions and ancient civilizations.J-H. Rosny Aîné is the second most important figure in modern French science fiction after Jules Verne. Rosny, who was a member of the distinguished Goncourt literary academy, was also the first writer to straddle the line between mainstream literature and science fiction. Until now, Rosny has best been known to the English-speaking public for his prehistoric thriller, Quest for Fire.Pan's Flute is the eighth volume in a set published by Black Coat Press devoted to presenting the classic works of this giant of French science fiction.

X. B. Saintine (1978-1865) was a prolific dramatist who collaborated in more than 200 plays with Eugène Scribe and a noted figure of the Romantic Movement. 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.

X. B. Saintine (1978-1865) was a prolific dramatist who collaborated in more than 200 plays with Eugène Scribe and a noted figure of the Romantic Movement. 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.

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. But 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. The Mysterious Hermit boldly pioneers untrodden territory, exhibiting a bold defiance of literary conventions, and displaying an admirably zestful iconoclasm.

Edmond Haraucourt's Dieudonat (1906, exp. 1912) fits in the rich French tradition of the contes merveilleux by endowing its eponymous hero at birth with the supernatural ability to produce miracles. Upon adulthood, Prince Dieudonat is forced to leave his kingdom and embarks on a quixotic, picaresque, and ultimately tragic, journey. Dieudonat is a work of such tremendous verve and ambition that it inevitably provokes admiration, and if the nutritive value of some of the food for thought that it contains is a trifle suspect, it is nevertheless a phenomenal feast.

Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, Comtesse de Murat (1670-1716) was one of the leading authors of tales of enchantments crafted in the literary salons peripheral to the court of Louis XIV in the 1690s which ultimately gave birth to a large sector of modern fantasy fiction. The Comtesse's earlier stories are set in the time of the fays, a remote mythical past, but her later ones take place contemporaneously in countries that are only separated pseudogeographically from France.Her stories are remarkable for the imaginative extravagance of their plots; the superbly surreal depiction of magical civilizations, the extreme trials to which she subjects her heroes and heroines, caused by jealous rivals intent on breaking the amorous bond between them, and their often deliberately atypical conclusions.This collection presents thirteen novellas and short stories published between 1698 and 1710. It includes her masterpiece, The Goblins of Kernosy Castle (1710), a surprisingly sophisticated work for its time and remarkably modern in its lightly humorous tone and ingenious intricacy.

Penelope's Secret (1922) picks up where Homer's Odyssey ends, after the slaying of Penelope's suitors and the discovery that her stubborn virtue was somewhat exaggerated, which causes Ulysses to seek advice from Minerva, Menelaus and his old tutor, the centaur Chiron. Plato in Search of Amour (1926) described the manner in which Plato, emerging from adolescence, feels the pangs of young love and seeks the guidance of Socrates who hands him over to the great courtesan Aspasia. Naïs at the Mirror (1920) features the notorious courtesan whose self-examination includes accounts of her dealings with her lovers, her observations of Athenian mores and the conduct of contemporary philosophers, such as Epicurus.

Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier de Villandon (1664-1734), a relative of the better-known Charles Perrault, was among the most important creators of the fairy tales genre. This ground-breaking collection gathers four stories originally published in 1696, a year before Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose, the classic The Dark Tower and the Luminous Days published in 1705, as well as an essay written in the form of a letter, in which Mlle L'Héritier casts more light on the detail of her thinking, the process by which the tales came to be written and the various things that she was attempting to achieve.These stories may well be the source material that inspired Cinderella and the Brothers Grimm's Rumpelstiltskin, amongst others, and are not an adaptation of folklore, but an attempt to recycle literary inventions attributed to the medieval troubadours.

Brian M. Stableford's latest novel, The Pool of Mnemosyne, concludes the saga of the immortal Axel Rathenius, from the artists' colony of Mnemosyne, an island located off the northern coast of what in our world is called France, in the Everlasting Empire, 2,000 years after the birth of the Divine Caesar... Rathenius now returns to Mnemosyne after his meeting with the legendary Madame Minerva only to be confronted by a new conspiracy which threatens to annihilate his beloved island...Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 80 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He has also been translating the works of numerous authors of French mysteries, scientific romance and fantasy for Black Coat Press, which has previously published his four Mnemosyne novels.