18 Édouard Branly (1844-1940) was France’s most significant radio pioneer, and also a committed pacifist—as Varlet was. The physicist Paul Langevin (1872-1946) was one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes in 1934 and subsequently went on to be president of the Human Rights League.
19 The BBC built a radio station in the Northamptonshire town of Daventry in 1925, from which the Empire Service (now the World Service) began broadcasting in 1932, making the introduction “Daventry calling” internationally famous.
20 The Dana House became Harvard University’s first observatory in the 1890s.
21 The American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard (1882-1945) launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926, and continued testing improved models, mostly in secret at Roswell, New Mexico, until 1941, in spite of mockery in the press and the effects of the Wall Street crash.
22 Eros, the first asteroid discovered whose orbit cross that of Mars, was discovered in 1898, but interest in it had been renewed during an approach in 1930-31 when an international project was undertaken to make parallax measurements to determine its exact distance from the sun, under the supervision of the British astronomer Harold Spender Hones. It eventually became the first asteroid to be visited by a spacecraft, in 2001.
23 Pour prendre congé [to take leave]—i.e, to say goodbye.
24 Named for Urania, the muse of astronomy.
25 Émile Belot (1857-1944) published numerous works on cosmology between 1911 and 1932, including L’Origine dualiste des mondes et la structure de notre Univers (1924), which had a preface by Camille Flammarion.
26 Victor Margueritte (1866-1942) was the younger brother of the writer Paul Margueritte. His reputation as a writer suffered as a result of a trilogy of novels about sexual relationships, whose future-set culminating volume, Le Couple (1924) anticipated a radical liberalization of social attitudes. His fervent pacifism is reflected in much of his work, including La Patrie humaine [The Human Fatherland] (1931).
27 Elektron is a magnesium alloy used by the Germans during the Great War to make a special kind of incendiary bomb that could not be extinguished and was so light that considerable quantities could be carried in airships and aircraft.
28 It is unclear whether or not Aurore is improvising the second part of hominien from “chien,” but my Anglicization could pass for a similar adaptation of “canine” if that were the case. In 1936 the word hominine did exist in English, fugitively, but it did not have the narrow taxonomic meaning it now has, merely meaning “human-like,” which might equally well be what Aurore is implying.
29 The tuatara, better known nowadays by the generic name Sphenodon.
30 The language schools founded by Maximilian Berlitz in the USA in the 1880s spread to many other nations, his teaching method being exhibited in France at the 1900 Paris Exposition; they are still providing the relevant service today.
31 And to me: there is no reason why Styal should remind Oscar of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, and it seems more likely that he has borrowed the name because of its similarity to “polycopie”—the French term for cyclostyle duplication.
32 The members each of the French Academies are often referred to, metaphorically, as the Immortals, and often designated, too by their number, as the Forty.
33 Maurice Maeterlinck’s La Vie des termites was published in 1926, a belated sequel of sorts to his lyrical study of the organization of the society of the bee-hive, La Vie des abeilles (1901).
34 Borsippa was a city in ancient Sumer, some 75 miles south of the site of Baghdad, where numerous cuneiform tabelets were excavated in the late 19th century relating to astronomy.
FRENCH SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY COLLECTION
02 Henri Allorge. The Great Cataclysm
14 G.-J. Arnaud. The Ice Company
61 Charles Asselineau. The Double Life
23 Richard Bessière. The Gardens of the Apocalypse
26 Albert Bleunard. Ever Smaller
06 Félix Bodin. The Novel of the Future
92 Louis Boussenard. Monsieur Synthesis
39 Alphonse Brown. City of Glass
89. Alphonse Brown. The Conquest of the Air
40 Félicien Champsaur. The Human Arrow
81 Félicien Champsaur. Ouha, King of the Apes
91. Félicien Champsaur. The Pharaoh’s Wife
03 Didier de Chousy. Ignis
17 C. I. Defontenay. Star (Psi Cassiopeia)
05 Charles Derennes. The People of the Pole
68 Georges T. Dodds. The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men
49 Alfred Driou. The Adventures of a Parisian Aeronaut
-- J.-C. Dunyach. The Night Orchid;
-- J.-C. Dunyach. The Thieves of Silence
10 Henri Duvernois. The Man Who Found Himself
08 Achille Eyraud. Voyage to Venus
01 Henri Falk. The Age of Lead
51 Charles de Fieux. Lamékis
31 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega
70 Arnould Galopin. Doctor Omega & The Shadowmen
88 Judith Gautier. Isoline and the Serpent-Flower
57 Edmond Haraucourt. Illusions of Immortality
24 Nathalie Henneberg. The Green Gods
29 Michel Jeury. Chronolysis
55 Gustave Kahn. The Tale of Gold and Silence
30 Gérard Klein. The Mote in Time’s Eye
90 Fernand Kolney. Love in 5000 Years
87 Louis-Guillaume de La Follie. The Unpretentious Philosopher
50 André Laurie. Spiridon
52 Gabriel de Lautrec. The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait
82 Alain Le Drimeur. The Future City
27-28 Georges Le Faure & Henri de Graffigny. The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (2 vols.)
07 Jules Lermina. Mysteryville
25 Jules Lermina. Panic in Paris
32 Jules Lermina. The Secret of Zippelius
66 Jules Lermina. To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers
15 Gustave Le Rouge. The Vampires of Mars
73 Gustave Le Rouge. The Plutocratic Plot
75 Gustave Le Rouge. The Psychic Spies
76 Gustave Le Rouge. The Victims Victorious
72 Xavier Mauméjean. The League of Heroes
78 Joseph Méry. The Tower of Destiny
77 Hippolyte Mettais. The Year 5865
83 Louise Michel. The Human Microbes
84 Louise Michel. The New World
93. Tony Moilin. Paris in the Year 2000
11 José Moselli. Illa’s End
38 John-Antoine Nau. Enemy Force
04 Henri de Parville. An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars
21 Gaston de Pawlowski. Journey to the Land of the Fourth Dimension
56 Georges Pellerin. The World in 2000 Years
79 Pierre Pelot. The Child Who Walked On The Sky
85 Ernest Perochon. The Frenetic People
60 Henri de Régnier. A Surfeit of Mirrors
33 Maurice Renard. The Blue Peril
34 Maurice Renard. Doctor Lerne
35 Maurice Renard. The Doctored Man
36 Maurice Renard. A Man Among the Microbes
37 Maurice Renard. The Master of Light
41 Jean Richepin. The Wing
12 Albert Robida. The Clock of the Centuries
62 Albert Robida. Chalet in the Sky
69 Albert Robida. The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul
46 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Givreuse Enigma
45 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Mysterious Force
43 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The Navigators of Space
48 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Vamireh
44 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. The World of the Variants
71 J.-H. Rosny Aîné. Helgvor of the Blue River
24 Marcel Rouff. Journey to the Inverted World
09 Han Ryner. The Superhumans
20 Brian Stableford. The Germans on Venus
19 Brian Stableford. News from the Moon
63 Brian Stableford. The Supreme Progress
64 Brian Stableford. The World Above the World
65 Brian Stableford. Nemoville
80 Brian Stableford. Investigations of the Future
42 Jacques Spitz. The Eye of Purgatory
13 Kurt Steiner. Ortog
18 Eugène Thébault. Radio-Terror
58 C.-F. Tiphaigne de La Roche. Amilec
53 Théo Varlet. The Xenobiotic Invasion (w/Octave Joncquel)
16 Théo Varlet. The Martian Epic; (w/André Blandin)
59 Théo Varlet. Timeslip Troopers
86 Théo Varlet. The Golden Rock
94 Théo Varlet. The Castaways of Eros
54 Paul Vibert. The Mysterious Fluid
IN THE SAME SERIES
The Xenobiotic Invasion
English adaptation and introduction Copyright 2013 by Brian Stableford.
Cover illustration Copyright 2013 Jean-Félix Lyon.
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ISBN 978-1-61227-177-4. First Printing. May 2013. 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.